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Is it wrong to talk openly about a family member’s drug addiction?

May 062010
 

Since making the tough decision to open up and write about our family almost losing H to the drug overdose and beating, I’ve been overwhelmed by the kindness and support of friends and strangers alike. I plan to write more about that support later, as I have time. But today, I gotta admit that the highly critical comments (of me) following yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle’s blog post about of my decision to discuss this issue publicly are kind of hard to see/read.

Ouch.

The three primary criticisms seem to be:

A – That I had no right to share publicly that my son’s current critical injuries are the direct result of drug addiction (Was I supposed to make something up? Maybe something like, “My kid is on life support because he encountered an IED in Downtown Knoxville” or perhaps “My son has a major brain injury after being attacked by a bear while hiking the Appalachian Trail.” ?????)

B – That early experimentation with mind-altering substances (H started at 13-14) have no impact on whether or not someone eventually ends up with a true addiction.

C – That drug addiction is not a disease and that treating it as one only makes the problem worse.

Again, I plan to address all of these specific criticisms in some depth in an upcoming blog post, but for now, I’d like to hear your thoughts on these criticisms, here at this blog. Heck, if folks are gonna talk about this, I’d rather it be here…

Let me wrap up by saying again how much every single kind word and supportive message I’ve received since “coming out” has meant to me. And just to be clear, I have let H know that I’ve begun discussing this issue publicly and that I intend to continue doing so in an attempt to lessen the shame and stigma for other families (after all, people whose children have brain tumors talk about it publicly without shame), and to help raise awareness. I told him that keeping the secret about his illness has not helped him, our family or anyone else. In fact, he’s gotten progressively worse. And we’ve kept it a secret for several years now, only talking openly for the first time after it landed him in the intensive care unit with what has now been diagnosed with a hypoxic brain injury that will require intense inpatient physical and neurological rehabilitation after he’s released from the hospital.

But anyway, let’s talk about it – in the comments below.

Namaste – Katie

 74 Responses »

And in other big news, I also wear shoes and socks…JUST LIKE SARAH PALIN!

Apr 202010
 

Several people drew my attention this week to a rather bizarre opinion-slash-feature piece in the New York Times in which writer Liesl Schillinger attempts to shoehorn a painfully forced parallel among Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Nancy Pelosi based solely on the fact that all three of them happen to be mothers to five children….just like me (!!!).

…the three belong to what may be the smallest, most exclusive clique in American politics. The admission requirements are beyond most women, and all men: members must be prominent players in the United States political arena and must have given birth to not one, not two, not three, not even four — but five children, something that presumably gives them more in common than they might like to admit.

What does it say about this country at this moment that, of the small handful of women who have achieved highly visible political roles, three are matriarchs of such very large families? Could it be that the skills of managing sprawling households translate well into holding office? Or that such a remarkable glut of mom cred makes a woman’s bid for external power more palatable to voters? Or are they just related to more voters, which translates into a mysterious edge at the polls?

Whatever forces may be at play, taking a look at present dynamics, any American woman with long-range political ambitions might do well to also look to her nursery.


This story is what I’m blogging about over at Babble today.

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When parenting gets tough, you don’t get to ship them back to Russia…

Apr 122010
 

I’ve been following the story this week of the woman from Shelbyville, TN (right up the road from my hometown of Bell Buckle, by the way) who decided it would be a good idea to simply ship her child “back” to Russia because he was so difficult to deal with. Like everyone else who has read this tale, I’m fairly well flabbergasted. I mean, kids don’t really come with some sort of money-back guarantee – whether you birth them or adopt them. As I say to mine when I feed them something they aren’t crazy about, “you get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.” The same is true of parenting: you get what you get. Period. Once you take on the responsibility to parent a child – whether that’s via birth or adoption – you are pretty well stuck with that responsibility – forever. You don’t get to return them to the factory.

Of course, we all hope that our children grow up to be mentally, emotionally and physically healthy adults with no major problems. And we all hope to enjoy our years of active parenting with no major behavioral issues or health problems from our kids disrupting family life. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Some of us hit the jackpot, with a child or children who make parenting easy and mostly enjoyable, and who grow up to make us proud. Others of us are handed a different parenting menu, involving a child with mental, physical or behavioral challenges that try our patience and cause us pain.

It’s mostly just the luck of the draw what balance of pain and pleasure our parenting will bring us. And it’s all tremendously unfair, really. That’s been my experience, anyway. No one deserves to learn that her newborn has cerebral palsy. No one deserves to have her toddler become profoundly mentally disabled after a bout with e Coli. No one deserves to have a child paralyzed after one unwise dive into the shallow end of the swimming pool. No one deserves to live through watching her teenage child sink into drug addiction. And no adoptive parent deserves to end up with a child so damaged by his years spent languishing in state care that he is fundamentally unstable. But some unlucky parents do end up with these “bad” outcomes in our children, despite our best efforts and without regard to whether our children are biological or adopted. And we are stuck with what we get. You don’t get to divorce your children. The parent-child bond is really the only true “for better or for worse” human relationship. And of course, most parents – the great majority – couldn’t abandon their children if they tried, no matter how painful it is to parent them.

I suspect that much of what this much maligned adoptive mother in the news is telling the press about her child’s emotional and behavioral problems is true. The child probably did threaten her and spit at her and disrupt her family life and home. I have tremendous compassion for any parent who feels lost and overwhelmed by her child’s problems. I’ve certainly been there in my own ways, and yes, I have been tempted to come up with some equivalent plan to shipping the kid in question off to Russia…or Antarctica…or into space. But it’s just not an option – not for me and not for any other mother. You don’t get to trade your kids in for an upgrade. It just doesn’t work that way.

I hope the child who was sent back to Russia finds a real family who will stick with him through the hard parts. I wish we lived in a world where women had better control over their own fertility and better access to family planning services so that fewer unwanted children ended up abandoned in orphanages where they eventually become emotionally unstable – like this little boy apparently did. And I hope we can all try to be a little more compassionate and less judgmental toward parents of children with physical, emotional or mental challenges – parents who may become overwhelmed and desperate.

Maybe if someone had reached out to this woman and offered her a shoulder to cry on or information on resources for helping her child, she would not have done something so very wrong. Maybe…

(And as an aside, just because I won’t REALLY ship my children to Russia if they cause me too much hassle doesn’t mean that I am above THREATENING to put them on a plane to Russia… I’m just sayin’…)

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Health care reform question of the day

Mar 252010
 

For your discussion: If the states’ attorneys general who are suing over the new federal health care reform legislation manage to get the Supreme Court to declare that forcing people to carry health insurance is unconstitutional, would states then no longer be able to require that drivers carry auto insurance? What do you think?

 14 Responses »

And the award for dumbest news headline of the week goes to….

Feb 272010
 

….MSNBC, for this winner today:

“Is Nature Out of Control?”

(ANSWER: why yes, MSNBC, yes she is…)

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Jody Powell, Amy Carter & Me

Sep 152009
 

I was sad to read tonight that Jody Powell died of a heart attack. And I was surprised to learn that Mr. Powell, the White House Press Secretary under President Jimmy Carter who went on to become one of the partners in powerhouse Beltway PR firm Powell and Tate ( the “Tate” is Sheila Tate, Nancy Reagan’s former press secretary) was only 65 years old when he passed away today. That means he was only in his mid 30s when he came to DC from Georgia and braved, then won over the aggressive White House Press Corps of that era.

Powell

By all public accounts, Mr. Powell was a truly nice man, and I believe it, because he was awfully nice to me.

In 1978, I was a budding news and political junkie living in Bell Buckle, TN. While other little girls in my elementary school class were playing with Barbie Dream House, or experimenting with their mother’s set of Clairol hot rollers, I was more likely to be sitting in a tree in the backyard re-reading about the exploits of Woodward and Bernstein, or maybe flipping through the pages of “The Boys on the Bus.”

During that particular stretch of my childhood, we were allowed to watch some TV (for long periods here and there, when my parents would decide my little brother and sister and I weren’t reading or playing outside enough, we had a TV-free house). I particularly loved the smart, literate Saturday morning news pieces for kids that CBS ran between cartoons, reported by Christopher Glenn.

In these Saturday morning pieces, and on the evening network news, I loved seeing Jody Powell do his job, explaining President Carter’s policies. In our household full of Democrats, with two parents who were journalists, Mr. Powell’s job looked just ideal to me. I didn’t know whether there had ever been a girl White House press secretary (there had not, and would not be for another 14 years, when Dee Dee Myers finally broke that barrier), but I figured I’d aim to be the first.

So I wrote Mr. Powell a rather lengthy letter on the special, new stationery I had gotten for Christmas, the flowery blue paper with my name and address printed at the top. In the letter, I explained to him how I thought that being White House Press Secretary looked far more interesting than being President, and I explained how I intended to be the first girl to land the job. I also asked him whether Amy Carter – who, like me, appeared to be a bookish 10 year old girl with really bad glasses – liked living in the White House.

My parents gently cautioned me that the very busy Mr. Powell might not have time to respond to my earnest letter, but he did, telling me that he appreciated my letter, and that he hoped I would aim even higher than being White House press secretary. And included with his response was an autographed, 8 by 10 photo of Amy Carter, playing with her cat.

cartercat

I cannot tell you how excited I was to receive this letter. And the photo of Amy and her cat hung on my bedroom wall until it was finally replaced with a poster of Duran Duran.

I think the letter and photo may still be tucked away in a drawer at my parents’ house, along with some other treasured autographs I collected as a child, including Miss Lillian, The Fonz, and both Ponch and John from CHIPs.

Godspeed, Mr. Powell. And condolences to the Powell family on their loss.

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Parents who did not allow kids to see the President’s speech are teaching anti-American values

Sep 082009
 

My new blog post at Babble is about why parents who did not allow their kids to see the President’s speech at school today should think very, very carefully about the anti-American message their decision is sending their children. Go read it, and let me know your thoughts.

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A counterproductive way to make a point

Aug 262009
 

In the past two or three days, folks around Knoxville have been rather horrified to see a large banner with a graphic photo of an aborted fetus being flown overhead, pulled by a plane. In the case of my sister, the plane flew over her 7 year old and 10 year old outside their school, leaving the children upset and frightened.

What I don’t get is how anyone thinks that this kind of tactic actually does what they claim they are trying to do, which is reduce the number of abortions in this country. I suspect that they are actually just attention hounds, like the PETA people, who care more about creating spectacle than they do about creating real change on this issue they claim to be so passionate about. And I have heard several of my staunchly pro-life friends say that they are equally annoyed by how extreme and pointless grandstanding like this gives people the wrong impression of their cause and the people who support it.

My sister took the time to track down the contact info for the organization behind this week’s city-wide campaign of visual harassment, and here it is for those of you fellow locals who also want to contact these people and tell them to knock it off:

Fletcher Armstrong, PhD CBR Southeast Region Director
P.O. Box 20115, Knoxville, TN 37940
phone: 865-776-3261
e-mail:Fletcher@CBRinfo.org
For more information on CBR-Southeast: www.ProLifeOnCampus.com

This is the email my sister sent them:

Mr. Armstrong,

As I picked up my elementary aged children from school today, they and several other children were excited to hear an airplane overhead, as children are known to do. We all looked up and were horrified to see a picture of a dead fetus. I told the children to look away but it was too late. I wonder if you would find it appropriate for war protestors to show pictures of mangled bodies to children? What about if, as a protest to rape, children were shown pictures of women being brutally sexually assaulted?

Your methods don’t serve a purpose. As an adult in a society filled with graphic news stories and movies, that picture didn’t have any shock value for me. But for my children, who are not yet able to understand pro choice or right to life, it was a picture that confused and frightened them.

You should be ashamed of yourself for not protecting the children who are living with the same fervor that you claim to want to protect the unborn.

Sincerely,

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