Renascent

When I was 13, my mom found recovery. She did it through Alcoholics Anonymous. I can’t say that I was excited. Instead, I was keenly aware of the judgment from people around me. The stigma of having a mother struggling with alcoholism was profound. As a new teenager, the last thing I wanted to talk about was my mom’s addiction or the fact that she was going to meetings.

For children who grew up in addicted homes there may have been nowhere to run. The adults who they would normally have gone to for comfort and to help them understand what was scaring them were unavailable. And to make matters even worse, it may have been the adults themselves causing the fear and stress. For the child living with addiction, this becomes a double whammy.

The ACOA trauma syndrome is a post-traumatic stress syndrome in which unresolved pain from childhood emerges and gets played out in our adult relationships. Pain that has gone underground re-emerges days, months, years, even decades after the fact. We leave our homes behind but we import them and what went on in them into our adult relationships.