Hi nanny ger, I’m sorry that Christmas has been so hard and painful. Reading your email reminded me so much of my last few Christmases, trying to fix on a smile that doesn’t want to be there for other people living more normal lives, and constantly going round and round the question of how on earth we got here. I don’t think the pain ever goes away, like you have said, its about remembering strategies that have helped before in surviving and not going mad. I obsess about the start of all of this, a few years ago, when my son lived in another city and had a good job. I wish so much that I had known about it when he first started using.
Its very hard to extract much joy from life when all of this is going on in the background.
Something that has helped me is from the 12 steps, there is stuff written for families, and it talks about just focusing on today, making a decision at the start of the day that this is all you’re going to worry about – sometimes it works! I try and hold on to the fact that lots of people do recover.
I hope you find some peace xxx