Entering 2020, I’ve been telling myself as I do every new year that this will be the year I put me first. Not sacrificing my son to achieve this but making a conscious decision to help us both by allowing my focus and priority to be on me.
How hard this is to do!!! Barely a week in and we have already had some challenges, and I find myself falling into familiar patterns. Without even thinking, my first instinct is once again to jump in and fix, proof positive to me. I cannot trust myself.
Guilty until proven innocent doesn’t seem to apply to addicts, but does that mean allowing others to continue to judge his mistakes? More often than not, instead of letting the pieces fall, I am caught between defending his right to be human and have made mistakes or the continued examination of past failures. While I try to be positive that he will fly, can he when he is continually held down by the weight of others’ judgment?
After all, there is no recovery without relapse.
Are we not all allowed to have a fresh start?  A do-over? Why do we have to bring others down to lift ourselves up, and does that somehow reflect less on the errors in life we have made?
It seems to me that support is needed more than exposing. That letting someone recognize the flaws in their actions would be more beneficial than displaying imperfections.
Even though I think it is common after so many times of watching the shoe fall, you expect it to do the very same thing we must push ourselves to refrain from pointing out or assuming this most obvious conclusion.
As I’ve said so many times as I write my struggles with my addicts, I will try! If I was perfect, my learning completed. I could say I will, but as a mom, we are only human as our addicts are, and we are not without missteps.

For 2020 I will try to give my addict and me the right to fail to succeed.