Carol Burnett about her daughter " I had to love her enough to let her hate me"+

[Signorina]

She's on The View and talking about her new book which is a mother daughter love story - her daughter Carrie was an addict for 3 years in her late teens. She also talked about being so afraid of saying or doing the wrong things because she didn't want to make her daughter "worse." And she and Barbara Walters commiserated a bit--BWs daughter had a troubled time too- and they both grabbed hands and teared up. Not happy tears; the tears that remember how awful it was. The look on their faces so much like my face in the mirror sometimes, yet Carrie got well and was clean until she died of cancer at age 38 and BWs daughter is clean and well for many years now.

Can I just say that I hate that? I hate that the awful feeling remains even afterwards...that just the memory of those times changes their faces so,

My boy is more ds than difficult child for now, but the tears are always just a moment away and the thud in the stomach is on instant recall. It's like innocence lost or something.

 

[buddy]

That really touches my heart.

I'm so glad your son continues to do ok for now! Praying he continues to grow and reach his dreams!

 

[AmericanGirl]

Sig...

Im so so glad he's doing ok. Praise God!

i saw Carol interviewed on GMA. She made the same statement. It's really accurate and very empowering to those parents who have used tough love.

 

[exhausted]

I absolutely know what you are saying. Saw her on Sunday as well. Glad your boy is holding it together. There is hope yet
it is so scary.

 

[Nancy]

I didn't see it today and I usually watch it. I'm so glad your son is doing well but I also undestand how close to the surface the tears are for all of us.

 

[Signorina]

My son IS doing well for now. He is treading water in the shallow end and I am grateful, but the real test will be when his peers return for the summer. I am not looking forward to that trial by fire. His head is too easily turned. I am doing my best to keep my eyes wide open, I miss my naivete. I want so much to believe that he is getting back on track, but the honest truth is that he had nowhere else to go. And he has lied so easily and so well in the past; he literally played us for fools as you all know -- and I can't quiet that subconscious thought in my head.

When I wrote this after seeing the show, I couldn't think of a word for the look I saw in CBs and BWs face. But I know what it was - grief. Pure grief. The grief we all experienced when our kids took that awful fork in the road and we watched them and it became painfully apparent that we were powerless to change their path - we couldn't force them or cajole them or pray them into changing course. I am not sure I will ever get over that grief.

And that grief lead me to obsessing over everything I did or said soso afraid that the wrong words or actions would make him worse. And in many ways, I am still skating around many things I would like to say to him, I still want to shake some sense into him, but I am so afraid of spooking him. And i guess that's something that only a fellow loving parent of a substance abuser can understand. I thank God everyday for the friendship I have found here.

 

[scent of cedar]

Grief is exactly the word, Signorina. We have lost our children while they are still alive. Imagine the grief you see expressed when a parent loses a child to death. Imagine the community support, the testaments to the character and worthiness of the dead child. Imagine the child's memory, sacred and sacrosanct in the mother's heart. Imagine the mother's courage as she picks herself up and goes on with her life.

We have none of that. While we have, indeed, lost our children...not only can we not grieve ~ publically or privately ~ but we are shamed by our communities and even by our families and ourselves, for what has happened to our children. We agonize over what went wrong, what to say (or what we should have said), how we must have handled this, that, or the next thing badly for this to have happened to our child.

There was a thread here once, years ago, addressing the question of whether it was more painful to lose a child to death, or to lose one to drugs. It was decided, I believe, that while those of us who haven't yet lost our children sustain repeated shocks, and exist in an ever-deepening, downward spiral right along with our drug-addicted kids...at least we have hope.

At least we know it isn't over.

And that is something to hang onto.