Sober Daughter: A Memoir of Grief, Addiction, and Recovery

By Fawna Asfaw

An empowering account of a lost daughter’s fight for her identity and sobriety—and her mission to help others.

The only child of a doting Ethiopian father and a strong-willed African American mother, Fawna Asfaw felt her life shatter when she lost both her parents to illness. As grief pulled her into a downward spiral of addiction and shame, Fawna had to learn to harness her power and rebuild her life with a new perspective that changed everything.

In this emotional memoir, Fawna recounts feeling paralyzed by the monumental task of advocating for her parents’ medical needs and eventual hospice care. After their heartbreaking premature deaths, she buckled under the realization that she had no idea how to live without them. Unable to process her loss and overcome by grief, she collapsed into alcohol-induced psychosis and despair—until a catastrophic seizure landed her in a remote treatment center without a penny left to her name. That’s when the backbreaking work of her personal redemption began.

Now a powerhouse in the recovery industry, Fawna Asfaw shares how she accomplished a courageous evaluation of self and ultimately sacrificed everything to build a sober life on her own terms. Having witnessed firsthand the lack of recovery services readily available to women of color, Fawna is devoted to leveling the playing field. The opposite of addiction is not recovery—it’s connection, and Fawna aims to help everyone fight for their own best selves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fawna Asfaw
• Release date: May 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985274912

Book preview

Introduction

My Story: A Daughter Without a Family

They told me to get a journal and start writing, so I did. Little did they know, I had kept and written in journals since I was about eleven years old, but I lost all of them later, in The House. Specifically, in my purple bedroom, in the house I grew up in on Lowry Road. I had an entire bookshelf filled with my journals. All different kinds. Some were hardbound with pictures of dogs, some floral, and a few were expensive leather-bound ones I had been gifted. I absolutely loved my journals. I would arrange and rearrange them constantly, from tallest to shortest or largest to the most delicate, and just stare at them all day. They were my own mini trophy case—reminders of all my battles, defeats, curiosities, and softly spoken desires. They were my secrets. They were my refuge.

Growing up, I loved words. They were so comforting to me. I loved to get lost in my own fantasies and daydreams. I would let words swim in my head like visual notes to the Flight of the Bumblebee or like oversaturated paint flung off a brush. They were so whimsical and romantic, nothing like my actual life. I soaked up words and laced them together into poems, stories, and longings I could only dream of while being alone in that purple bedroom, in The House.

I didn’t know what exactly I was supposed to write in this new unfamiliar journal. My fingers couldn’t grip the pen as they used to; it hurt to hold things. The paper was sharp and rough to the touch. I had spent countless months avoiding things like that, things that felt too real or invasive. I had learned how to exist with minimal contact, physical or anything else, for as long as possible. This new journal felt too intimate and judgmental. As if it were an assignment to a course I had already dropped.

Nothing about writing seemed to feel the same; the words weren’t colorfully flying through my head. By now my thoughts weren’t making much sense, and I couldn’t tap into anything within me. I tried to put my pen to the paper, but nothing happened. Whatever essence I once had was gone. The words wouldn’t come. My head hurt.

They asked me to write about us. About what happened to us—to me—and why I did it.

But whenever I would try to put my pen to paper and write again, I knew whatever spark for us I may have held had now left. I made sure long ago to keep it sealed up tight. Packed so far down within me that I couldn’t even recognize it anymore. It was as if I were trying to keep a tiny kindle ignited in a snowstorm. The memory of us was precious, fragile, and about to blow out. It was too weak. So was I.

On top of that, I really didn’t like the new journals at all. They were hard, utilitarian, and who the hell wanted to write in mandated-treatment journals anyway? The rehabilitation center’s name had been aggressively stamped across the front, and it opened to a cover page with an elusive quote scripted across it: "And Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today." I had no idea what that secret was supposed to unveil to me—or even literally mean—but it sounded like a string of random incompatible words slung together in haste. A last ditch at kitsch for the sake of marketing. Acceptance? I didn’t know what that word meant, and I immediately felt it was attacking me. Verbally assaulting me as if they’d known I had been adamantly raging against acceptance of any kind for months, maybe even years.

Avoidance and denial had served me quite well before. It had kept me from shattering into a million pieces, from feeling the searing pain in my gut, from letting go of their hands and warm embraces. I refused to accept anything, especially a reality where they didn’t live anymore, where I buried them both, and where I lost the battles to save their lives. No. I staunchly fought against any peace that would come of finally laying them in the dirt, throwing away their flowers, and losing their embrace. My tears, pain, and howling were not done. My death dance had more steps. I would not pretend and write in that insulting journal. I was angry, and the last thing I would do was write or accept that the only us I ever knew was gone.

They didn’t know how close we were and that the us was all I ever knew. They didn’t know that my culture taught me to be selfless and put my parents first. They didn’t know that failing my parents would be a worse life sentence than death. They didn’t know how hard my parents fought for a better life in America, or how my parents knowing their only daughter couldn’t keep up their dreams and had buckled under the pressure would be the worst shame anyone could think of. They didn’t know that losing them was worse than losing myself, and I couldn’t face another day in that guilt. They couldn’t know that I felt I failed and I’d rather be dead. They couldn’t know that asking me to write again, about us, would be impossible.

They needed to stop testing me and asking me to write my precious feelings. I wasn’t raised to discuss feelings or insecurities. Why would I start now? My so-called feelings were on fire and burning me alive. My skin hurt, my stomach was filling with acid, and my body had stopped working. I made my decision; why were they pushing me? I said I wanted to leave a world, a place, where my parents ceased to exist, and I was completely and utterly alone. I couldn’t exist without them. I’d much rather remain blissfully unaware and noncompliant in that truth, to dance one last time with their shadows in my pity party instead. I tried to exit my horrific nightmare as soon as I could. I tried to run as far away from reality as possible. I looked for anything that would take me away: denial, drinks, lies, starvation, anything that would stop my heart from breaking. But now I was in this faraway center, with this silly journal and these fingers that didn’t work, hearing strangers ask me why I tried to kill myself.

Chapter 1

My Little Family

I remember when I was eight years old, sitting in the back of my parents’ 1985 Volvo. You know, the faux military tank, perfect rectangle cookie box car. My parents had a matching shiny pair. Blue for my dad and candy-apple red for my mom. It was ridiculously cute. Sometimes they would find each other in Los Angeles’ gridlocked traffic and tap each other’s bumpers to say hi. We called it a love tap. We played this game all the time. Spotting each other’s matching cars and saying hello, like a kindergarten game of chicken. Until one day at a red light on Los Feliz Boulevard, turning onto Lowry Road. My mom pulled up behind my dad, looked at me in the back seat, laughed, and said, Should we say hi? I giggled and screamed Yes! So she inched up to his bumper and gave him our infamous love tap. Our bumper knocked his, and we laughed and laughed until the man in the blue Volvo turned back to us and yelled, Lady, what the fuck?! It wasn’t my dad at all, and I quickly realized how silly some of our games were and how scary outside really was.

My parents and I were always joined at the hip. My father had come to the United States when he was twenty-five as an airline attendant from Ethiopia to start a new life, and he fell in love with my mother, a boisterous, charismatic African American woman from Ohio, who also left everything to start anew in Los Angeles. They were both brilliant students who met at college, shared a love of education, and were on a joint mission to save the world from racial injustice and social inequality. They marched to the beat of their own drum, taking on multiple education degrees and numerous charity works, and traveled the world; they never slowed down or took anything for granted.

My mother had left her staunchly religious background and nuclear family back in Ohio when she was only eighteen years old. She was raised by her God-fearing mother, who was against all things progressive and lavish. My grandmother, being a strong Black woman in Midwest America, made it very clear to my mother that luxuries of excess were against God and that my mother should operate from a place of scarcity and for the greater good. My mother wasn’t allowed to shop, have pets, listen to secular music, or express herself creatively. I remember the first time I met my grandmother, at eight years old; she had taken her first flight across the country to visit us in California, and she was horrified by how much my parents coddled and spoiled me. She told me their money wasn’t mine to spend and that every penny had to go back to the family. I hated when she visited. She made me feel guilty and shameful for having things she didn’t, and I knew at eight that I was supposed to put family and humility first. I didn’t understand what that meant at that age, but I knew I had better keep my mouth shut and do what I was told or an unknown vengeance would strike me down.

My father came clear across the world to leave the civil unrest at home and start a new life in America. He was also raised by a single mother who was powerful and served the greater good. My grandmother on my father’s side was a local hero. She was married at eighteen to her love, a local political figure in Adwa, Ethiopia, who was campaigning for education and civil rights when he was gunned down by a ragtag band of outlaws, leaving my grandmother alone to raise their two children. Being one of the few lucky women to be educated, my grandmother moved to the capital, Addis Ababa, to raise her kids and take in all the other local children who needed a place to stay while they went to school. She barely had enough to survive, but she instilled in them all that if they put individual needs aside and shared collectively, they could make it. My father took this lesson literally and never spent a dime that wasn’t absolutely needed or could help others first.

So when my mother and father finally met and combined their joint love of education and service to the greater good, nothing could stop them. That was until they were on a joint study-abroad program in Brazil, when my mother fainted and had to be taken to the hospital, only to find out that they were in fact pregnant. Pregnant with the only child they would have, a daughter to be the only carrier of their hopes and dreams; they would protect and shelter me from the outside world, as dangerous and hard as they knew it to be. We would become just us three.

As a child I grew up with my two loving, devoted parents always by my side and taking me everywhere with them. I went with my parents to their work, to fundraisers, to charity runs, and even to other countries. I was protesting with my parents against apartheid in South Africa when I was just in a stroller. I remember falling asleep at my father’s charity fundraisers for Ethiopian relief when it was two o’clock in the morning and I had to wait for him to finish. My parents didn’t see the need for separation between their lives and mine because my life was to be a continuation of theirs. Everyone knew me as Fawna, the daughter of Shakeh and Terfu, never me as myself. And neither did I.

From the day I was born until I was eight years old, I grew up and was raised in Hollywood, California. The old, unrestored Hollywood, in a run-down, slumlord apartment building close to Hollywood Boulevard. My parents and I lived in a rented one-bedroom apartment with all the other forgotten housekeepers, immigrants, and hard workers, fighting for the elusive American dream. My Hollywood was a melting pot of first-generation American-born kids and their foreign parents. My best friend’s parents were from Mexico and Croatia, my neighbors were Peruvian, my school friends were Korean, Jewish, Brazilian, and Filipino, and I was Ethiopian–African American. That was where I fit in. I felt so comfortable with the other highly sensitive confused intersectional kids. I still have the same friends to this day. That was the foreign American dream I knew, but unannounced to me, by the time I was nine years old, my little family would move into a grand new place, a new house. The House. And we would grow even more insulated and codependent than ever. The house would become much more than just a new place to live; it was a statement, a dream, an embodiment of Black and African excellence. My mother and father took all the tools they learned about sacrificing and saving. They knew their hard work would pave the way for them to be the first in their community to break into the homeowner bracket in Los Angeles, and provide a safe refuge for anyone, family or friends, who needed a place to stay. It was an immense pressure, duty, and obligation—for all of us. For better and definitely for worse.

I was eight years old, and I remember it was one of those envious golden LA summer afternoons, when my mom had picked me up after school to meet a real estate agent and to go looking at houses for sale in a neighborhood called Los Feliz. It was a tucked-away, pseudo-suburban area right in front of Griffith Park, one of the biggest public parks in the United States. It was a much larger and more rugged version of New York’s Central Park. I was in awe of it. I had never seen so much green and wildlife. I could smell the freshly cut grass and crisp, clean air. It was a stark contrast to my block, which was littered with trash and exhaust from overworked tailpipes. The day before we left the old apartment, I remember seeing my neighbor playmate get run over by a fast, cheap car doing a drive-by gang-affiliation hazing, leaving the trampled kid to bleed in the street. My father and I rushed to help him before the ambulance slowly made its way to our apartment. But he didn’t make it. Looking back, that incident assuredly confirmed to my parents they had made the right decision to move, and it also wouldn’t be my last encounter with an ambulance. But I had no idea at the time; I just knew my parents wanted us to move, and fast.

I stared out our car window in utter amazement while driving down the main boulevard, seeing what I thought was a citywide golf course. Just huge sprawling old oaks and windy grass lawns. It was night and day from our dingy apartment, which had foil on the windows to keep out the blaring sun, where I was safe, where we were together, where we all slept in one bed. This new neighborhood looked too big, too easy to get lost in, and as if it would cost too much money. But my mom was convinced that this move needed to happen for our little family, so I went along playing make-believe with her even though I couldn’t grasp that we were going to be moving into one of these monstrously huge houses ourselves.

My mom fell in love with our house on sight. It looked just like a Norman Rockwell postcard designed to sell the American dream: only thirty years of your life and you too might be able to enjoy it! The house was undeniably beautiful. It was a large white two-story Victorian with black shutters and a redbrick entry. It was on a partial cul-de-sac, and we were right in the middle, between all the other huge, well-kept mini-mansions. It was grand and showy. She already knew where all her Black art would go that she couldn’t hang in our dusty little apartment. And what holidays would look like there, and how many rosebushes she’d plant in the front yard, and where we’d take all our family pictures. She absolutely adored that house. She had been waiting for that house. So after years and years of working overtime, working through summers and saving . . . my parents bought their first home. Our house. The House: 7777 Lowry Road.

My parents’ friends and my friends always knew that if they needed something, anything, they could go straight to 7777 Lowry Road. It was the hub, it was the beat, it was the nucleus, it was all my mom.

Later that same summer, when we finally moved in, we arrived with only enough furniture to fit in a small one-bedroom apartment. Everything we owned looked out of place, haphazardly staged in that enormous space. My dad’s fresh-off-the-boat friends showed up with their broken Hondas to help us move in, and with our tiny pieces of furniture, I knew we all looked out of place. Just looking at my father’s zebra and lion pelts, placed across the living room floor as rugs, signified that we were different. The Coptic crosses and staffs my father had brought with him from his grandfather, along with my mother’s indigenous art, carried Black and brown people’s hidden histories and hopes right into our new dining room.