I had a very confusing childhood. I would live for a while with one parent, then with the other parent. Finally a judge gave custody of my brother and me to my mother. Since I lived with my mother – who was living with my grandmother and grandfather – I was raised by an assortment of people. Mostly good people, but still people with different values. As part of the divorce settlement my father was allowed to take my brother and me for one weekend each month.
And since he was a functioning alcoholic who was always angry and fighting with somebody, my brother and I got a different sort of education from him.
Finally, when I was about five years old, my father picked my brother and me up for a weekend visit and took us to live in Oregon, where he'd bought a farm. My mother didn't know where we were for three years. And it was another four years before she was able to regain custody of us and take us back to California, where she had custody.
Needless to say, living for seven years with an angry, raging alcoholic taught me to also be angry and frustrated. I learned how to solve my problems by fighting or going into a rage. And it took many years for me to change that. My anger led me down a dark path. Into alcoholism, drug addiction, mental hospitals and prisons.
I cite this brief biography, because many of our clients were raised in similar situations. A lot of our work at TLC is to teach people how to be responsible. Many are stuck on the trauma that was imposed on them by parents who either didn't care or didn't know better. It's understandable why many people drank and used drugs. It's because they don't know any better. It was a shortcut to killing pain and the short term solution to their problem. But eventually, life and justice caught up with them and their life continues to spiral downward. They either got into trouble with the law, or their health gets bad, and they lose everything they might have accomplished to that point in their lives. And then they end up either in jail or in a place like ours trying to change.
Our job is not easy. It's not easy to get people to look at themselves and realize that they're the ones who are responsible for change. Even though I agree that what happened to them might have been traumatic or terrible, they're the only ones who can rescue themselves.
And the only reason I can state that with such authority is because that's what happened to me. In my early fifties I decided that I was either going to get clean and sober or else my habits would kill me. My childhood had traumatized me to the degree that I was always in pain. And it took me a lot of therapy and looking at myself before I was able to accept that those things had happened. And that I could do nothing about them today but accept them as part of the reality of my early upbringing. Once I did that, my anger subsided and I realized that I had to make the best of what was left of my life. And so I did.
I believe today that I was one of the fortunate ones who was able to work my way through all my issues and get to the place I am now. I know there's nothing I can do about the past, other than accept it and all the ugliness that went with it. And it's the same with the future: whatever comes I must accept it if I want lasting happiness.
And that's what I do today.
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