After many years away, I finally feel a real spiritual awakening. I think it's probably been about 22 years. I was having a reasonably good Easter Day when, while cleaning out boxes in the basement, I discovered a journal my daughter had probably forgotten  about while she was in various stages of addiction and recovery. When a beloved family member is addicted, communication and trust suffer beyond the limits of what I used to think was love. I had to look. I wanted to see what her real state of mind may have been before she attended rehab the first time. Was she aware of the danger she was in? Of the dangerous people she had allowed into her life? 

On the first few pages I saw the name of her horrendous boyfriend at the time. Ick. I don't want to read this, I thought. But then I turned the page, and there it was -- the whole story of the day she was (first) raped as a child. She wrote this within a few months of her disclosure to me. The details...I've often said, "Is it better to know the details, or not to know them?" Well, now I can answer for myself. And the answer, for me, is that knowing is better. Because the details more than corroborate the report she gave to the police last year; there's so much detail that I had to close it up, to continue my reading later. That corroboration will be good if she ever decides to prosecute. It's also good because my husband and I may sue him for damages without my daughter ever having to set foot in court.

The damages....what is the total? I count a decade of addiction, one near-fatal car crash, two totaled cars, at least three subsequent rapes as a young adult, one brutal beating by a boyfriend, one escaped shooting during a drug deal, one addiction treatment program that cost us our life's savings (and which the doctors allowed her to fail), another rehab in which she (against all forewarnings) fell in love with the man who beat her, stacks upon stacks of medical bills for treatment of all of the aforementioned, nearly five years of college for which we paid cash -- ditched, with just two classes to go, four apartments on which we co-signed and had to forfeit deposits, pet deposits we had to pay so we could care for her pet in our rental homes (plus the cost of pet care), constant handouts before we realized that they weren't going to be used to pay for textbooks or car parts, etc., two cars she essentially gave to boyfriends, thousands of dollars in new clothes so she could "start over" after relapses.....and endless, ubiquitous infringements on our right to happiness. 

More than the damage to our family as a whole, this inventory documents the miraculous survival of our daughter. I have never before known anyone up close who has endured more violence over the course of a lifetime. I had no idea I would give birth to that person.

On my way to work today I was listening to "Jesus Christ Superstar," and Jesus on the cross says, "Where is my mother?" I thought of my daughter's suffering, alone or forcibly separated from me. I thought of her sacrifices -- keeping a toxic, burning secret every waking and sleeping second of her life for 15 straight years before disclosure, because she wanted to protect us. Keeping so very many other secrets from us because she was just trying to survive and because she knew they would bring us deep sorrow and, yes, shame -- a sense of failure at our most treasured role as parents. Heroic and tragic, hand in hand.

A friend of my husband knows the barest of bones of our daughter's story -- the childhood sexual abused, the addiction. He has said to my husband, "How is it you can even get out of bed anymore? How is it that you can still go to work, or go on vacation? How is it that you can still laugh and tell jokes?"

Sometimes we ask ourselves the same thing. Many days it has been nearly impossible to function on even the most basic level. But it is because of the miracle...."Where is my mother?" Standing, supporting you, my little angel, because you are still standing in spite of the hell you have lived, because I am still your mother -- because we are still your parents. If you can do it, so can we.