Amazing Grief A Healing Guide for Parents of Young Addicts.

By Rev. Charles Harper

Amazing Grief: A Healing Guide for Parents of Young Addicts, by Reverend Charles F. Harper, M. Div., is a hands-on, interactive guide that represents 30 years of working closely with addicted young people in crisis.

Harper, a recovering addict, ex-advertising executive, senior pastor, spiritual counselor, and graduate of Yale Divinity School, has worked with over 200 families devastated by the addictions and behaviors of their sons and daughters.

His conclusion? “Parents are the most neglected partners in the recovery of a young addict. Yet a parent’s emotional and spiritual good health is essential to the recovery of their child. Specifically an addict is twice as likely to recover when parents focus on their own physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.”

Harper offers his well-articulated “11 Stages of Grief” to help parents cope with the loss of innocence of their children and the overwhelming guilt and shame they often feel after the shock of discovering that their son or daughter is an addict.

For each stage of grief, Harper presents a composite portrait of a fictitious family based on his direct experience with addicted teens and their parents. Universal themes of addiction and recovery are revealed in the raw, in-your-face drama and wreckage wrought by addiction. Then a transformative antidote to each stage of grief is presented as a virtue—anger has its antidote in forbearance, denial has its antidote in honesty.

This helps parents find inner strength as they creatively process their grief. Powerful exercises, meditations and prayers accompany a discussion of each stage of grief to assist families on their journey. The meditations and prayers are also available as downloads on www.amazinggrief.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rev. Charles Harper
• Release date: Oct 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466116313

Rev. Charles Harper

Background Rev. Charlie Harper began his career working with teenagers in crisis and their parents as the house manager and resident counselor at a home for single teenage mothers and street gangs in Pomona, California. He received his BA in Psychology from Pitzer College and his Master of Divinity from Yale Divinity School. He spent eight years in church ministry focusing on youth ministry. For the past 10 years Rev. Harper has served as a street minister to families and young people in crisis. Rev. Harper is a father of two and a stepfather to four. Over the past 10 years, in addition to attending to his own recovery from alcoholism, public speaking engagements, and a teacher of drama and art, he has served over 200 families in crisis. His experience as a church pastor, spiritual director, faith counselor and life coach coalesced into a unique perspective and practice of recovery, and particularly, the lack of care and concern for the parents of young people in crisis. Through his experience, faith and education Harper has taken his extraordinary life experience and 35 years of working with young people and their parents... and put them together between the covers of Amazing Grief: A Healing Guide for Parents of Young Addicts. It is based on three life saving observations: 1. When parents took care of themselves during a crisis, their child was twice as likely to recover their life. 2. Unlike the death of a loved one, the stages of grief for a parent of a child in crisis has a far more complicated grief process, including 11 stages of grief compared to the commonly accepted 6 stages of grief. 3. Most remarkably, he found that when parents applied the principles of his stages of grief and their antidotes, they were empowered to heal and became an empowering force for their child’s recovery while growing spiritually and emotionally themselves. Rev. Harper is available for talks to large groups, workshops and individual and family spiritual counseling.

Book preview

AMAZING GRIEF

A Healing Guide for Parents of Young Addicts

by

Reverend Charles F. Harper, M. Div.

Smashwords Edition

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Published on Smashwords by:

Copyright 2011 by Rev. Charles F. Harper

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Editing by Sylvia Somerville and Rebecca Anderson

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to all the parents of addicts, especially my own, Paul and Eleanor Harper, who have known the grief of having a child with the disease of addiction, yet have managed to love me until I could learn to love myself.

It is dedicated to my children Cate, Molly, Jaylani, Nic, Tristan, Madalynn and Gabriella; my wonderful nieces and nephews; and all the children of the world who are threatened by the epidemic of addiction. May they know the wonders of the God of their understanding and never be held back by the shackles of addiction.

It is dedicated to my brothers and sisters, Sam Harper, Lindsay DuPont, Jessica Harper, William Harper and Diana Harper, whose creativity has been a never-ending source of inspiration to me.

Last but not least, I dedicate this book to Karen Pritzker, who in spite of incredible demands on her time and energy, always was there for me as a critic and a friend, and without whom this book simply would not have been possible.

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Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: The Stages of Grief and Their Antidotes

Chapter 1: A Still Small Voice: Dan’s First Use

Chapter 2: Shock & Refection

Chapter 3: Anger & Forbearance

Chapter 4: Denial & Honesty

Chapter 5: Depression & Hope

Chapter 6: Self-Pity & Enlightened Self-Interest

Chapter 7: Action & Faith

Chapter 8: Guilt and Blame & Forgiveness

Chapter 9: Loneliness & Detachment

Chapter 10: Selective Memories & Revisions

Chapter 11: Financial Martyrdom & Financial Sacrifice

Chapter 12: Resistance & Acceptance

Part 2: Making Room for Your Spiritual Growth

I. Who Are You? Keeping Your Integrity in a Strange Land

II. Your House of Being

III. In Practice, How Does the House of Being Look?

IV. Starting a New Relationship with Your Child in Recovery

V. Why Is It So Hard for Teenagers to Stay Sober?

Part 3: Epilogue

Dan’s Story

About the Author

About the Whole Soul Recovery Community

Special Gratitude

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Preface

I decided to write this book because of repeated encouragement from parents of addicted teens with whom I have worked. The following dialog is typical of the conversations I have had.

Dear Charlie,

I want to thank you for working with Dan, Maddy and me. For the moment, It’s all good. ‘I know. I know,’ you’ll say. Don’t settle for ‘good.’ It could be hiding the ‘best.’ Anyway, Dan’s enrolled at community college, and he has a part-time job. When he comes to visit, I find that we feel like a family again: laughter and love is all around us.

When we first came to you, you advised us that Dan’s disease was not his alone, and that when it comes to teenage addiction, the whole family needs to make a commitment to recovery—not just Dan’s recovery but also our own. You said, Dan needs to develop coping skills to deal with life on life’s terms, and you, Mark and Maddy, need to develop coping skills to deal with the emotional roller coaster of living with someone in recovery. I learned that this disease could be seen as an invitation for my own spiritual growth or as a burden to be endured until Dan was cured.

At that moment, I looked at you as if you were out of your mind, like you were some kind of New Age woo woo guru…. I believed that this addiction was Dan’s problem: a problem that was to be solved. As his father, protector and provider, my job, I thought, was simply to find and fund the best professionals, institutions and resources to get him back on track. Other than that, I was to go about my life as if nothing had changed.

I learned something. I learned that this was about me as much as it was about Dan. Today, I can honestly say that I’ve been a true beneficiary of Dan’s addiction. I have learned things about my-self. I’ve raised my consciousness about my own defects of character and attitude, and I have developed an awareness of my hidden gifts. In the process I feel as if I’m morphing into becoming a better person, a better father and a better husband. I thank you for encouraging me (us) to avoid being detached observers and becoming fellow travelers on Dan’s journey through recovery.

I only wish I had known what you had to teach me at the beginning of the journey instead of halfway into it. I believe had I known then what I know today, I’d have come to a place of acceptance or serenity (as you like to say) a lot sooner. Not to mention, I’d have saved myself a few grey hairs, a few shekels from my 401(k) and maybe even avoided Dan’s relapse.

I’d like to suggest that you share your experience and insight with a wider audience. I think parents at the beginning of this nightmare journey might avoid some of the sleepless nights, anxious days and missteps we had to endure before meeting you. What do you think?"

Sincerely,

Mark A.

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Dear Mark,

Thank you for your suggestion and encouragement.

I applaud Maddy’s and your courage. You’re one of the few: one of the few parents who are willing to take the bold step of accompanying your child into the strange land of addiction. By doing so, through faith, self-reflection and action, you’ve traveled to a place of greater understanding not only of Dan and his addiction but also of yourselves. I may have provided the road map, but you did all the driving. You can honestly say, With the help of a Higher Power, we did this ourselves.

I do know that if more parents chose your courageous path, their children would stand a much better chance of withstanding the serpentine ways of addiction. They themselves could walk with their recovering child without the all-too-common burdens of resentment, loneliness, exhaustion, anger, guilt and despair.

Thank you for sharing all that you have experienced with me. As with so many of my clients, I feel as if I have learned more from you than I could possibly have taught you. … In the meantime, may you continue to enjoy the triune pleasures of life: love, joie de vivre and faith in a power greater than yourself.

Very truly yours,

Charlie

Reverend Charles F. Harper, M. Div.

P.S. I hope this book meets with your hopes and expectations.

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Introduction

Parents Matter Too!

Alone in our grief, we parents of teenage addicts are strangers in a strange land of emotional and spiritual tossing and turning that leaves us in the wallows of self-pity, guilt, fear, anger, resentment and shock…a place where serenity and the memories of laughter with our innocent child beneath a fat August sun with love all around us seems as distant as a January snow hill.

How many times have I heard parents in one way or another cry out in this strange land of addiction, My God, my God, where are you? How many times have I heard parents weave stories into nightmares about where their child is in the bewitching hours of broken curfews, or in the anguish of broken promises, or in the shatter of family gatherings where their addict’s mood swings from a chilly polar winter to a sunny summer disposition or from the gentle words of contrition to rage-filled f**k yous. Indeed, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me and my child? Where are you in my need? become reasonable questions.

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When it comes to teenage addiction, given its death-dealing ways, even if you only suspect your child is experimenting, it is imperative that your child get help now.

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I would not wish the agony of witnessing a child’s addiction on my worst enemy, let alone the beloved parents, grandparents and primary caretakers I’ve had the privilege of serving. This book and its accompaniment of resources are written and designed to help parents through the valley of the shadows of adolescent addiction. However, before we get to the care of you, the parents, I feel compelled to briefly remind all parents who know, suspect or even intuit that their child is using drugs, to get their suffering child help.

By now you know and I know that teenage addiction is a reality that crushes all barriers. It rolls over racial lines, leaps social stratospheres, hops economic highs and lows, ignores ethnic origins, leans on genetic codes, and finds a home in all religious and spiritual platitudes. It’s among us, and it’s an epidemic among teenagers. If you’ve picked up this book, it’s probably shown its gargoyled face in your own home. Indeed, when it comes to teenage addiction, given its death-dealing ways, even if you only suspect your child is experimenting, it is imperative that your child get help now.

Why?

My experience parallels the findings of the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Among high school students, the top four causes of death are motor-vehicle crashes, other unintentional injuries, homicide and suicide. In addition, it is estimated that 150 young people per week die as a direct result of drug and alcohol abuse. We can only guess at how many more have died as an indirect result of alcohol and drug abuse associated with high-risk behaviors that teenagers would have normally avoided.

To get started finding help for your child, you’re invited to visit www.wholesoulrecovery.com for recovery resources and links. You may also order Charles F. Harper’s book Breaking the Cycle: A Young Addicts Guide to Freedom! It is a spiritual guide for teenage addicts designed and written to be used by teenagers on their own or in concert with a therapist, parent or sponsor.

Back to you: Your well-being will impact the recovery of your child

I know how tempting it is for us parents to focus all of our attention and resources on the child with the disease of addiction. However, we do this at our own peril and the peril of our suffering child. When your child is suffering from addiction, the best place to start is not only by laying out the objectives, strategies and tactics for getting your child into recovery but also in the name of enlightened self-interest it is imperative for you to make plans for the care and nurture of yourself. Your well-being as well as the recovery prospects of your child depends on it.

Face it, if you’re NOT emotionally, spiritually and physically at your best, it will decrease the probability of your child’s recovery while increasing the probability of leaving you emotionally, spiritually and even financially bankrupt. Therefore, if you remember nothing else from this book, remember this: You matter too!

The number-one barrier to a parent’s well-being is the denial of their grief

As a former pastor, I’ve journeyed through the valley of death with more than 200 families. A dozen of those families were burying a child. In addition, as a spiritual director, mentor, peer counselor and pastor, I’ve journeyed with dozens of families who have struggled with their child’s addiction. I’ve found that whether a family is traveling through the valley of the shadow of death or the valley of the shadow of addiction, they share at least one thing in common: They grieve. They grieve deeply.

Now one of the peculiar things about grief is that we may not even know we’re suffering from it. Others close to us might notice, but when they try to tell us that we seem uncommonly depressed or unenthusiastic, we become angry and say something like, . nothing’s wrong with me; just leave me alone. Or Time will heal. Or My boy is just going through a stage. Or Once he’s out of rehab, all will be light and love again. Just wait.

While there is some wisdom to this, it’s also important to realize that grief left alone to fester does cause emotional, spiritual and even physical harm.

Typically, the grief we feel when a loved one dies manifests itself in a series of stages. In his book Your Particular Grief, Dr. Wayne Oates has itemized six stages of grief. They are:

1. Shock when you get the news,

2. Numbness and anger as you try to absorb the shock,

3. Mixed belief and disbelief that this can really be so,

4. Depression: you sob without control,

5. Selective memory: you get along quite well until a fresh reminder of your loss resurrects the whole issue, and

6. A commitment to start living again.

Not coincidentally, my experience with parents of addicts has shown me that their grief includes versions of each of Dr. Oates’ stages of grief plus five more! (See pages17 and 18 for the complete list.) In fact, the grief of a parent of an addict can be far more difficult to cope with than the grief of a parent whose child has died. Don’t misunderstand me; the grief of a parent whose child has died is a grief too deep for words. At least with an addict, as long as he or she is drawing breath, there’s hope for life. Having said that, make no mistake: You will grieve. And you know what? You have every right to grieve. How you cope with that grief will make all the difference in the world to you and your recovering child.

What does a parent of an addict grieve?

The grief of an addict’s parent is deep and wounding. As your child tries to get clean and sober and as you hear and experience the stories and tales of their* life in the drug culture, among other things, you will grieve the loss of your child’s innocence and the loss of your own innocence. You will grieve the loss of trust. You will grieve the loss of expectations and promises. You will even grieve the loss of the life you envisioned for yourself. And that’s just for starters.

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* I have decided to use the plural pronoun they or their when referring to an addicted teen or your child in recovery to avoid the awkward construction of repeatedly using the phrase he or she or simply saying he or she, which would be sexist and exclusionary.

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How is my grief different from the grief experienced when a loved one dies?

Anyone who has known someone who has lost a loved one knows how that loss and the grief that follows can turn someone’s world inside out and upside down. The grief that a parent of an addict experiences is complicated and perhaps even more disruptive to a family’s life than the death of a loved one for four basic reasons:

1. Psychologically, no matter how tragic the loss, the human spirit can adjust to certainty far more readily than it can adjust to uncertainty. Obviously, when someone dies, we as individuals and as a culture have a pattern of rites, rituals and actions we can do to take care of ourselves and the one who has passed away. Even the wider community knows what they can do to support us in our journey through the shadows.

However, when we have an addict under our wings and roof, there are no prescriptions and no how-to manuals for managing our grief. To make matters more confusing, in one moment, our addict may seem alive and well and living large, and in the next, they may seem like they’re possessed—tossing a tantrum of f**k yous and lamps at our struggling psyches and dodging heads. In other words, we don’t know how to cope with the addict’s shifting sands of highs and lows. We ourselves can become aggressive and angry in one moment and resigned and detached in the next. In the chaos, we can lose touch with the values, beliefs, world view, ethics and morals that have centered us for years.

2. An addict can literally bring down the emotional, physical and spiritual health of an entire household. Quite literally, when your child is addicted, your life is at stake. In my experience, I have seen parents lose their physical health. More frequently, I’ve watched as these normally stable emotional and spiritual beings become a chaos of confusion.

This confusion leaves a wreckage of broken marriages, lost jobs, disenchantment with a world once embraced, loss of lifelong friendships, financial bankruptcy and personality transformation from extrovert to introvert and/or optimist to pessimist. In one case, I’ve even witnessed a suicide that could be indirectly attributed to her child’s third relapse.

3. When someone dies, sympathy floods the inbox. Friends, neighbors, work associates and clergy give the family plenty of homemade casseroles to get through the suffering. The family’s grief may be private but their loss is recognized, and they’re given the space and support to do as they will with their grief. When we are grieving the loss of our child to a disease (which many still ignorantly regard as a moral lapse and lack of will power), we’re more likely to hear judgments than receive a Hallmark sympathy card.

4. We go into hiding. When someone dies, we may not share our deepest grief with others, but we usually don’t go into hiding. With the grief of addiction, our doubts about its cause, our suppositions about our role in the addiction, our embarrassment and our sense of failure as a parent make us feel we should keep tea and sympathy at arm’s length.

How Amazing Grief can help

Amazing Grief is written to help parents through the unique stages of grief associated with raising a teenage addict. In this way, parents can help their child through their recovery while maintaining their own sense of self and well-being.

11 STAGES OF GRIEF

1. Shock. That time or moment when for the first time you discover something about your child that shatters your perception of your child’s innocence. Perhaps it’s when you first find drugs or alcohol in your child’s room.

2. Anger as you try to process the shock. During this period, if your child is around, you might confront them with all the angry feelings of betrayal that rise into your gullet.

3. Denial. You are confused about what to believe and what not to believe. You negotiate with yourself and even with your child.

4. Depression/learned helplessness. Nothing you do seems to work. You’ve tried everything from taking away privileges and positive reinforcement to threats of dragging your child to a counselor.

5. Self-pity. You think, Oh poor me. Why doesn’t anything work out? Our culture does not respect or like self-pity. It demands those in this stage of grief to get off the pity pot and take action. I think that’s baloney.

6. Action and reaction. You take a dramatic action. You send your child to outpatient or inpatient rehab. Maybe you go to an educational consultant who, for a large fee, gives you a plan of action that costs more than all the equity you’ve built up in your lifetime. Maybe you throw your child out of the house as you have threatened to do many times before.

7. Guilt and blame. You begin to try and answer the ultimately unanswerable question, Why did this happen to my child?

8. Loneliness. You feel unique. You feel that you are the only parent in the world who has an addicted child or at least the only parent in your neighborhood. You isolate.

9. Selective memories. You think such thoughts as: Our child is getting the help he needs. We get along quite well. It’s back to the ‘works and days of our hands.’ You may even enjoy the guilty pleasure of relative peace in the household. But then you see something that reminds you of your child, and you build a brave new world of self-defeating expectations.

10. Financial. This may sound weird: How can money be a stage of grief? Yet money is the elephant in the corner. You will wrestle with its loss.

11. Acceptance. Somehow miraculously you’ve begun to feel a healthy detachment about your child. You have actually been able to let go and let God.

Of course these stages of grief can vary from one person to the next. The length of time that a particular stage of grief lasts may also vary from individual to individual and circumstance to circumstance. There is also no set timetable for working through your particular grief. Grief is like a mighty river. It knows no bounds and can overflow and overwhelm us even when we think we’re on terra firma. In addition, you may progress from one stage to the next only to regress to a stage you thought you had worked through successfully.

By definition, addicts relapse. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be addicts. So it is probable that you may have to repeat some of the stages of grief. Having said that, I’ve found that once parents get to the stage of acceptance, they are better able to cope with their child’s relapses and other behavioral setbacks.

In the end, the most important aspect of the grieving process is to be conscious of your grief. In other words, it is important to recognize and acknowledge where you are so that you can engage your grief, process it, learn from it and apply what you learn with wisdom to your health and well-being and that of your child. By consciously engaging in these stages of grief, you will learn:

● You’re not alone

● How to cope creatively with the different stages of grief

● How to face with serenity the slings and arrows of misfortune, the winters of discontent and the nausea of meaninglessness

● A new language for coping with life’s other interruptions

● To give yourself permission to give sorrow words

● That when there is a problem, the solution can usually be found within you

● How to answer the question: No matter what happens to my child, where and who do I want to be?

● How to be intuitive and empathetic while setting firm boundaries

● The deepest meaning of what it means to love your child

● How to see/use the traumatic event(s) of your own life as a blessing and not a curse

● How to avoid compassion burnout when it comes to the care of your child

● How to interpret your feelings and how to honor them so that you don’t lose yourself in the emotional ups and downs of others

● Humility, that wonderful gift of the spirit that allows us to turn over to the universe that which we cannot control

● You have as much to learn from your addicted and recovering child as you have to teach them

● You do not need to control the outcome; and by letting go, you will be freed from the wrong-headed belief that your child is somehow a simple extension of you

● To have faith in your own inner moral and ethical compass

● That throwing money at the addiction rarely solves the problem

● To affirm the importance of your spiritual and emotional literacy

● How to balance the physical, spiritual, emotional and intellectual parts of yourself

● To respect the depth of your pain and that you must take the time and effort to manage your stress because this kind of pain can be mortal

● To give yourself plenty of room to reflect, reconnoiter and process in all other aspects of your life.

I know from experience that if you enter this journey willing to embrace it with all that you bring to it—as a person with unique gifts and talents and an appreciation for the gifts and talents of your child—and if you have the faith to accept the things you cannot change and the humility to accept support from those who wish to share your journey, you will emerge from this strange land of addiction and discover a land of enchantment.

How does Amazing Grief help me learn these things?

In order to creatively engage the stages of grief, this book and its companion resources provide stories and practical suggestions.

In Part 1 of Amazing Grief, The Stages of Grief and Their Antidotes, I’ve taken 30 years of stories from parents and teens I’ve worked with and created a composite portrait of each part of the journey and presented it through the experience of both the adolescent and the parent. While the story itself may differ in detail from your own experience, each of the teenage and adult stories is based on actual case studies and have been written to illustrate universal themes of addiction and recovery as experienced by the parent.

In my stories I represent two outcomes as our fictional parents Maddy and Mark react to each stage of grief. The first outcome represents the parents’ raw reaction to a stage of grief. The second outcome reflects their reaction to the same stage of grief after Mark and Maddy have been infused with a particular virtue relevant to helping them creatively process their grief.

The second outcome is followed by a discussion on the particular stage of grief being presented and an offering of a tool to help you grow through that stage of grief. Each chapter also includes exercises, a meditation and a prayer to help you apply the tool to the stage of grief you are experiencing.

Combined, the stories, discussions, exercises, meditations and prayers are designed to help you engage your physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual being in your process of coping with grief. It is my experience that to cope creatively with grief, we need to harness all of these inner resources, which together can take us to a place of hope, joy, forgiveness, compassion, responsibility and faith.

In Part 2 of Amazing Grief, Making Room for Your Spiritual Growth, you will begin by exploring who you are. That is a vision of what values you want to develop and maintain as you go through the experience of living with an addict or an addict in recovery. This part of Amazing Grief will help you define your value-mission statement.

Secondly you will learn about the rooms in Your House of Being, which include the spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical parts of who you are. I will suggest ways in which you can