It’s hard to give up on your dreams. I am trying to come to grips with this right now. My husband and I have always dreamed of moving to New Orleans area. 6 years ago I purchased a piece of property to start inching towards our goal. At that point in time we had 1 daughter that was living in New Orleans and the other planning to move with us. My son, at that point, was still in active addiction. It is a place we have always felt held our heart, it felt like home each time we arrived. Owning this land gave us a connection and hope that we would be able to move.

Because we had refinanced our home so many times we knew that this move or a move in general would be required for us. We would not be able to keep our home when we retired. There had been so many expenses, court costs, lawyers, restitution, items stolen, money stolen and my husband being injured and unable to work that left us with no choice but to take a modification loan on our house. It decreased our monthly payment but added 10 years onto a 30 year mortgage making it 40 years. That would put us in our 80’s before we are mortgage free, not a very good idea when on Social Security.

So now that symbol of our dream becoming reality is going to be sold.  I want to think I have so much time to make it happen, to change my life but the truth of the matter is that dream is never going to happen. At least not in the way I had hoped.

Our daughter would have an in-law suite built onto her house/property. The money from selling our land would pay for that. It would give us our own space without having to maintain the house or property. What it wouldn’t give us is the room to have guests, such as my other children and friends to come and stay with us. It wouldn’t give us the room to host family gatherings. But it would give us a place in New Orleans. It would also allow us to downsize here and be able to be in both places. Since we have 6 grandchildren and 5 are here, 1 in New Orleans, it would be extremely difficult to go 100% south.

No matter how logical it actually is, giving up on my dreams hurts. My husband had to sell a car he had waited his entire life to buy and restore so that he could pay a cost related to our son and now we are selling this property. I guess what I want you to know is that I might have done things differently had I known the future consequences, but I don’t know that for sure. Don’t let your loved one take everything and put you in the position to give up your dreams. Bottom line it was our choice. We wanted to help him, early on we wanted to save him. We wanted to erase his mistakes and give him another chance. We didn’t know we were erasing our own chance.

Given the same situations and the same choices I can’t honestly say I would do things any differently. My son is my son and through all the heartache I will always love him. I have learned to step away and let him fall which is love too. It’s love to allow him to face his consequences and it allows me to remove myself from those consequences. It’s not easy and it never will be.

In the beginning you really can’t see this. I thought his consequences were my burden also. I thought as a mother it was my job to protect and take away all the bad things. I now know it is not my job. But like so many other parents of addicts I came to this realization too late. Please learn from all you hear, I understand you think it will be different for you. I thought the same thing and I was wrong. Addicts all seem to follow the same paths, they act the same way and most of all they do not care who they hurt along the way. It’s not your child, it’s the way the drugs have changed him or her. I know how hard it is to want to help and know that you can’t. It’s when you get to that point that you begin to heal and they begin to take responsibility for their own lives.