My youngest child has always held a special place in my heart.  Like most mothers to their children, my son and I have always been connected to each other through a sweet love and complex bond. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for him…but I couldn’t follow him down a path of destruction and harm, the direct result of his drug addiction.  This child of mine is now a 25 year old man struggling with a heroin addiction, a criminal past which included a year in prison, and a record that I still cannot believe belongs to him.

During the past 8 to 10 years, I slowly evolved into someone I no longer recognized. Travelling that nightmarish journey of my son’s addiction found me fearful all the time, never knowing if he would overdose and die or be the cause of some other kind of heartbreak. My pain was obvious, the isolation from family/whānau, friends and activities felt safe to me. I barely laughed or even smiled anymore.  It was a crazy way to live.  Shame, anxiety, fear, sadness, depression, sleeplessness, or too much sleep became the new normal to me. The raging inside of me and dealing with the craziness of a drug-addicted son took me so far down that I was certain I would never know a peaceful breath again.