The New Normal Posted by:Ken Sutton--Monday, May 28, 2007

I want my family to be back to normal. I want my daughter to stay in recovery and have a normal life. I hear the same thoughts echoed by other parents. The problem is that getting back to normal is not the same as getting into recovery and recovery leads us to a “new normal” that is not built on the dreams of our past but exists in the realities of our present.


I am reading 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper. The short version is that he is in a horrific auto accident, dies, goes to heaven, returns to earth and takes several years to recover. In chapter 14 he writes:

“Human nature has a tendency to try to reconstruct old ways and pick up where we left off. If we’re wise, we won’t continue to go back to the way things were (we can’t anyway). We must instead forget the old standard and accept a new normal.”

In Piper’s case he was talking about all the physical things he could no longer do. My experiences in living through the addiction/recovery process with a then adolescent and now young woman have brought me to the same place, an understanding of a “new normal” and making healthy plans to deal with it instead of focusing on returning to that old, romanticized normal.

For the last couple of years a lot of my thinking has been around getting the problem fixed, keeping her under control, stopping destructive behaviors. At this point she has been through several rehabs and placements and is living in a half way house. There really is no more coming home from rehab, dance team, sleep-overs, new jobs, boy friends or proms. There is a major focus on her part to control her own demons. I can help from time to time and provide some monetary and emotional support but besides that, there is not a lot I can do. Powerless.

She is taking a different path through life (though probably not intentionally) and because I have chosen to walk beside her it is now our new normal. And somehow describing it that way helps. It brings acceptance. Not a child to be disciplined but an adult that needs help. Not someone to control but someone to support.

Somehow I have it confused that my daughter’s addiction is about me when really it is about her. Talking with people in recovery always has an emotional impact on me. Hearing a friend of hers talk about everything she lost in one breath and plans for a new job in the next is an amazing testimony to the human spirit. And then I get it. It is the same for my daughter.

Watching my daughter deal with all of this at 19 is so different than at 16. Once they are out of the house the game changes - instead of trying to get them back home and keep them safe (in some ways trying to regain that lost “normal”) you start to, yet again, understand the reality of all of this and accept your role in the new normal.

This change in perspective for me didn’t happen overnight, it is an ongoing process. I am changing my actions of doing things for her to words of advice, “I used to do this for you, now you will have to….” . Each day I make the decision to walk besides her all over again. That’s because each day, all my instincts tell me that I need to fix her problems for her but I’ve learned that I can’t do that. That train is gone and there’s another one coming down the track. If I worry too much about the one that left, I’m not going to be ready to board the new one.