In my first twelve-step meeting, everyone kept telling me that addiction is a family disease. I had no idea what they meant. Eight years later, as I sat in another meeting that I had volunteered to chair, several people arrived that I did not know from our usual group. That either means that they are a visitor from another group or they are a newcomer. Newcomers are usually easy to spot. We recognize their fearful and harried look. It is the face that we all know from the early days of our own recovery.
When you chair a meeting, it means that you choose the topic and lead the discussion. Here lately, I let God decide on the topic. It helps keep my ego in check. Since there were so many new faces, I said a prayer and asked for guidance and the topic of the family disease came to mind.
When I was a young girl, there was a family member who was an alcoholic. When people would ask how she was doing during the bad times, I would tell them that she was an alcoholic and that her husband’s drug of choice was her. I understood it back then. But, it was too close to me with my son. I had to have help seeing how our family had rearranged our lives around my son and his disease.
Looking at the new and hurting faces, I sat there a minute and then I thought about reconciling my bank account which I had just done (three months worth). Each month had three or four errors that threw the balance off. It looked like a big mess at the beginning, but after I started to find one mistake, and then the next, the picture became clearer of why we were off.
I started to share with them the idea that if we help our loved one out of a mess that he alone creates, we are interfering with the consequences of his actions and that can throw our family balance off. If we try to create a consequence to ‘teach him a lesson’, then we are manipulating a situation. Again, this throws off family balance. If we are checking on the alcoholic or addict to see if they are drinking or using or if we are looking to see if they are fulfilling their responsibilities, then we have our focus in the wrong place and that is sure to throw us off balance.
Over time, the whole family seems to be focused on the life of the addicted loved one. Boundaries get blurred and this is what psychologists call enmeshment. Others will call it codependent. Either way, the balance is off. We have taken our focus off of God’s will for our own lives and we’ve gotten in His way with our addicted loved ones. No one gets better. Frustration grows.
So how do we reconcile the family dynamic? It starts by paying attention. Have I really admitted powerlessness over my addicted loved one? Am I looking for God’s will in my life? And, what are the intentions beneath my actions? One day, early in my recovery, I Googled ‘novena’ and ‘addiction’ not really expecting a result. I was surprised to see the novena of “Mary the Untier of Knots” come up. This novena gained popularity because our beloved Pope Francis brought attention to it back when he was back in Argentina.
It is based on this painting by Johann Georg Melchoir Schmidtner done around 1700. The painting depicts the Virgin Mary standing on the crescent moon surrounded by angels and with the Holy Spirit as a dove hovering above her as she unties knots into a long strip while holding her foot on the head of a ‘knotted snake’.
If you look at the knots that she holds, they can easily represent the places where we have tried to do things on our own. I use this image to remind me that when I seek to control another, it causes chaos for all of my family. But, if I tend to my business, I might be able to look at my own issues and use the control that I have to clean up the things that I have done wrong–one knot at a time. Today, I strive to choose health for my family by being careful to walk beside them–keeping a clear boundary between us, admiring the journey that God has in store for each of us. Every day, I see a new lovely surprise–if only I trust my family to God.