I was honored to be invited to speak at a local high school assembly today, to share my families story. When the assembly was over, a young woman hugged me and thanked me, telling me how much it meant to her to hear it. This was the greatest reward I could have wished for, and the reason that I won't ever stop talking about my baby and everything that we went through to try to save her.
I have shared the speech below, in hopes that it will do good for others as well.
There is no adult who can look at a teenager and say "I know exactly
what you are going through", because life has changed since we were kids. But
that’s OK, because the point of advice, of sharing our stories with you, is to
hope that there is something within them that you will be able to relate to.
We can't tell you that you can lead a life free of mistakes,
because for most of us, our lives are chalk full of them - that is what makes
us grow into successful and wise adults.
What I can tell you, is that some mistakes change your life
forever. Some of these life-changing mistakes can turn out to have a positive
outcome, you can learn from them and make better choices, and become a wiser
person.
Other choices will turn your life into a nightmare.
My daughters’ mistakes cost her her life. Her choices, and my
reactions to them, have taught me many horrible things.
I’ve learned what it looks like to watch your daughter change from
one person, who is good and kind and strong - into another, broken person who
wants to be all of those things, but doesn't believe that they can be anymore.
All because of a series of mistakes.
I can also tell you what it is like to mourn that person. I can
tell you what it's like to know that someone left your child to die, alone in a
gas station bathroom - because those are the choices you make when you take
drugs like heroin.
I can tell you that my daughter, Elannah Rose, did not overdose.
She took a drug that would have killed her no matter what - it wasn't safe in
any dose and there was always going to be a day that she died from it.
The craziest part of everything that happened to my daughter is
that she was an addict for three years before we knew it. At this point, every
time I tell this story, I feel compelled to acknowledge what I believe all of
you are thinking. What kind of a mother doesn’t notice that her child is messed
up for three years? This is something I think about every day.
I believed I was a good mom. I did everything I could to provide
for my daughter. I talked to her about everything I was supposed to talk with
her about. My husband and I made sure that our kids knew they were our first
priority. We ate together, we hung out
together, and we did everything we could to prepare her for the world and to be
there for her. But I still missed it.
There were certainly signs that she wasn’t alright. Looking back I
can see them with perfect clarity. Unfortunately, the signs were never things
that we knew to look out for. And because she was so good at hiding her drug
use, and so good at appearing to be the same person that we knew, we missed it.
I will never forgive myself. Even now, two and a half years after
she died, I lie awake at night thinking about everything I missed, and
everything I lost. I don’t blame my daughter, I blame myself. That doesn’t mean
that I don’t hold her responsible for her choices, but I was her mom, and I was
supposed to know. And I was supposed to save her. From everything bad in the
world.
That was certainly my job when she was thirteen. It was my job
until the day she died.
When my daughter was sixteen, she started using heroin. She had
convinced herself that she could try it and stop, just like she had been able
to “experiment” with every other drug she had tried.
It didn’t take long for her to realize that she was not going to be
able to stop. Within a couple of weeks she realized that she had made a huge
mistake, and she asked for help.
The daughter I saw that night was trying to be sober for the first
time in years. She was shaking and picking at her skin… she looked extremely
ill and a little insane. It was such a huge and sudden change that I almost
convinced myself that she was faking it.
For months we watched her. She begged us not to send her to rehab
and we didn’t understand that people don’t get clean at home… so when, once
again, our little girl seemed to be perfectly together, we believed her. It was
as if all of our prayers were answered.
Throughout this time she maintained a job, she received promotions,
she graduated from high school… the drug use came up a few times, but she was
so capable in everything else that we didn’t understand that she had a major
problem. And it was never heroin again, it was a drink at a party, or a little
bit of pot. She was living a double life, and she was good at hiding her other
one.
We did this little dance for the next few years. She slipped, we
caught her and became more vigilant, she got herself together, we gave her back
her freedom, she slipped, the cycle started again.
Until one day when I was opening our mail and there was a letter
from a lawyer offering to defend her. She had been arrested for possession of
heroin, and this was how I found out. She had spent so much time hiding her
activities that she never even considered we would discover the arrest.
By then, she’d been clean and sober for months, as far as we
knew. She’d been talking about joining the military or potentially looking into
a law enforcement career.
Now she was a felon.
We took her to court, and I cried through the whole thing. I was
terrified for her, terrified for her future. And every time we went to court, I
saw a side of her I didn’t know. A side that was created out of this other
life, this addict’s life.
Even then, we didn’t stop trying to save her. I was so convinced
that it was all my fault that I kept trying to fix everything. I kept believing
the things she told me. I believed that I was helping her.
And then she got high at home. I caught her smoking heroin in our
garage, and I had to kick her out.
This whole time… all these years of helping her… we had two other
kids in the house. It never occurred to me that she would be using in our home
with her brother and sister there. We had never found any evidence of drug use
in the house; we had never actually caught her high.
I didn’t understand an addict’s behavior. I didn’t understand how
good she was at hiding things. And even those things I should have understood,
I didn’t want to believe those things about my daughter.
But this time I couldn’t ignore it. She was putting our other kids
at risk and I couldn’t allow that, couldn’t risk losing them. Elannah Rose was
an adult, our other children weren’t even close, and we couldn’t continue to
make them suffer because of her choices.
Kicking Elannah Rose out was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It
was also probably the best decision I made from the moment I found out she was
using up until that point.
It wasn’t long before she begged to come home, she finally agreed
to go to rehab, and she was willing to do anything not to lose her family. And
she did. And we had a wonderful break from all the craziness, and she was back
for a while.
The problem is, the heroin had changed her. It had altered her body
chemistry and she just couldn’t feel good anymore. And one day, it was worse
than not be able to feel good, she hated what she had become, this person who
never felt right no matter how hard she tried. So she tried to cut her wrists
open, and she was taken to a mental ward and placed on lock down.
And she got better again. And she was given medication that helped
normalize her. But she knew she would never be right, and even though she went
to a new rehab facility, and eventually got through to sober living and then
came home, she never liked herself again. She never really believed she had a
future.
She was grateful to have a chance to be a big sister again, to do
it right. And she did for a while. She helped her little sister with her
homework, she shared a room with her baby brother and cuddled him when he woke
up at night. She loved them, and she wanted them to know it.
But eventually her meds needed to be adjusted, something in her
life shifted, she met up with the folks she used to use with… and she couldn’t
maintain anymore.
A few days before she died I started feeling like she was slipping,
and I mentioned it to her, but she’d made so much progress that I didn’t want
to press her too hard. I just asked her to talk to me if she needed help. She
teared up, and smiled, and promised.
A day or two later she stayed up late cuddling with her dad and me
and watching some goofy TV show. The next day she skipped her AA meeting to go
out with a friend. They were supposed to be studying, but they were shooting up
heroin. That was the last choice she ever made.
I still can’t remember what they said when they came to my house, I
know I kept asking where she was, and that my husband collapsed on the floor.
And I started screaming. I don’t remember a lot about the next few days. I remember
different things at different times, but even though it was only two and half
years ago, it’s the foggiest part of my life.
I do remember picking out her grave-site. I remember lying down
under a tree, and looking up and knowing that that would be her view forever. This little person who had been with me for more than half my life was going to
stay in this place until her body was no more.
And that is what I thought about for months. Her body decomposing
in that box, images of it would wake me up screaming at night, until I got to
the point where I just tried to avoid sleeping.
I’m not sure I will ever be normal again. At least once a day I
have to talk myself out of crying in some public situation. My emotions are
always boiling just below the surface. This is not because I’m a woman, it’s
not because I’m an emotional person, it’s because my heart was broken, and that
is a real thing.
Sometimes, when I think
about Elannah Rose, I am grateful that her struggle is over. I don’t think I
can say that without sounding a little nuts, but it’s true. I am so grateful
that she doesn’t have to fight her addiction anymore and that she is at peace.
But I also know that my struggle will never be over. Parents are never supposed
to bury their children, it is not how the world was meant to be.
And I am here, telling you
this, because even though I know that I cannot ask you to live mistake free, I
hope that some of you will be able to learn from mine, and from my daughters.
