The realities of growing up in an alcoholic home are devastating. It alters who God made you to be, what you think of yourself, and how you operate in the world.

But it is not a life sentence to repeat what you saw. Healing and health is available. Available because we have access to good therapy, wise medical professionals, Jesus, medication, and support networks.

(This would be a good time to note that most of the things needed to adequately address ACOAs needs or to recover from an addiction of your own are expensive. Good health insurance, time to attend meetings, being able to remove yourself from toxic family members are privileges many do not have. I don’t have a neat and tidy solution to this, but I am aware of the resources we have that some do not. Therapy is expensive. Even with insurance, medical help or in-patient/out-patient services are expensive. Support groups and meetings are free, but childcare is not. These are realities for a lot of people who need help. Telling someone there is help without admitting this help is easier for some to get than others is important to note.)

Healing and health is available, but it doesn’t just magically happen one day when you begin to see with new eyes how off track things got. That’s probably the first step in a thousand. Recovering from a childhood with an alcoholic takes a big dose of reality, painful honesty, and a ton of work.

((This would be another good time to remind those who are allowing children to live in a house with an alcoholic: you have more control over this than you are being led to believe. Do not let fear and doubt trick you into thinking this is still the best way. Your children deserve better. You have to be brave and strong. You can be brave and strong. If you don’t know where to start: go get a counselor familiar with addiction. Do nothing but find a therapist. Not for your spouse, for you. Starting with you–getting you healthy–will fundamentally change your family for the better. I promise you.))

Why so many asides, Mary? Seriously, calm down.

How do we fix this? Where do we even start as adult children of alcoholics? How do we move forward from this?

Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D in Adult Children of Alcoholics suggests you begin with acknowledging your upbringing was dysfunctional. We talked earlier about how abnormal your childhood was, but that’s probably not the best term to use. Really, what is normal? I tell my kids all the time we don’t want to be normal. Normal is overrated. The better way to describe it is you either had a functional childhood (one that makes you feel loved and safe while preparing you for relationships, adulthood, decision-making, etc.) or one that was dysfunctional (one that makes you feel unloved, unwanted, and unsafe while leaving you ill-equipped to be successful later in life).

Once you accept that things were dysfunctional, you go about learning what functional looks like. What should an intimate relationship look like? What should a home full of love and stability feel like? What value or lack of value have I given myself that doesn’t match up with truth or scripture? What skills did I learn as a child that are hurting me now? What is an appropriate way to handle conflict and confrontation? Am I able to see reality or do I often still choose fantasy?

You can answer these questions with Al-Anon or Adult Children of Alcoholic groups. You can begin to peel back layers with ACOA books and podcasts. Learning how to reparent yourself through positive affirmations or a trained professional might be helpful.

One thing that has been helpful for Chris is a life coach. That might sound like something you’d hear from a business professional or at a self-help conference, but if you grew up learning the wrong way to live, you might need someone who can start addressing those lessons and giving you practice and ideas on how to begin new patterns. My husband (and all kids) needed his parents to parent him. He needed them to make him feel secure and safe, feel loved no matter what; he needed them to make choices in his best interest and to care for him.

Those things did not happen.

As a result, he has to figure out how to do them for himself and for others with no model. A life coach is helping him do that.

At this point, I’m sure people are tired of hearing me say this, but ACOAs could greatly benefit from therapy. Some very specific things broke you and you need help outside of yourself to fix them. There is a very high chance you learned co-dependency from your family of origin and addressing that will begin to right a lot of wrongs. If you haven’t begun the work of healing your childhood, there’s a good chance you suffer from low self-esteem or anxiety. Addressing those issues, giving you skills and steps to handle them correctly, and hearing from someone when your thinking isn’t healthy will transform every aspect of your life.

Learning and practicing healthy boundaries (things that people who are co-dependent, enablers, or who suffer from low self-esteem often do not do) is good, healthy work too.

What about ACOAs who are parenting children of their own? Geringer Woititz suggests these things as you navigate a season you have no healthy experience of:
-work on yourself and your own person growth (the things above are good starts!)
-listen to your children
-tell the truth; be honest with them
-educate them about the disease of alcoholism
-encourage your children to attend Alateen (or any support group for kids growing up impacted by alcohol or addiction)
-give up denial
-do not protect your children from knowing the ravages of alcoholism (I learned appropriate information to give my children based on their ages in therapy; the older they get, the more they need to know)
-don’t be afraid to show affection to your children (I gently nudge Chris often to hug and kiss and snuggle with our girls; they need it and so does he, but it does not come naturally to him)
-define clear limits for your children
-allow your children to take responsibility for their behavior

Chris turned 36 a few weeks ago.

In our family, when it’s your birthday, my mom makes you a cake from scratch. Whatever your favorite cake is, delivered to your door for your birthday.

One night leading up to his birthday, he mentioned my mom texted him to see what he wanted.

What did you say? Was it something gross? I asked.

My husband and I have very different ideas about what good cake it.

Carrot cake, he said.

GAG. BARF. NOOOOO, I replied in a normal, not-dramatic way.

He laughed.

It would be co-dependent of me to change my cake order because you don’t like it, he said.

It would! You’re right! I don’t want you to change it, it’s your birthday. I’m just teasing you.

Silence for a second.

Wait, have you changed it in the past because I don’t like carrot cake? I asked.

Sometimes. And I think about it. I want a cake that everyone likes. I want everyone to enjoy it.

WHAT IN THE WORLD, I yelled. DON’T DO THAT. It’s your birthday. You get to eat a whole cake by yourself if you want. Who cares what other people like?

I know, I’m learning that. But it’s hard.

Soon after, he headed off to the co-dependency class he’s taking at our church. I thought about that conversation all night. Even now as I type this, some of you will think Chris’ reasoning was sound. Well, he was doing what was best for everyone. He wants other people to eat his cake. It’s okay to not pick your favorite if others are around.

But the point of his birthday cake is to have a cake he loves. He’s important enough and valued enough that even if he has a cake no one else will eat, we will still celebrate him and his birthday. It is not rude to order a cake you like on your birthday. It is not selfish. It is not inconsiderate.

If going to a therapist or a support group isn’t in the cards right now, if it feels too scary or hard, just start with some books and podcasts. While I don’t recommend relying on them solely for healing and recovery, they are good baby steps to understanding hurts and patterns.

Here are some I suggest (if you have something that has helped you or someone you love, add it in the comments! This is in no way the best of the best, it’s just what I’m familiar with or have personal experience with):

Adult Children of Alcoholics: A Step By Step Guide to Discovery and Recovery

Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz

12 Steps of Adult Children of Alcoholics workbook

Perfect Daughters: Adult Children of Alcoholics by Robert Ackerman

Codependency No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself by Melody Beattie

The Christian Codependence Recovery Workbook: From Surviving to Significance by Robert and Stephanie Tucker (this is what Chris is doing through our church and it is really good)

Christian Families in Recovery: A Guide for Addiction, Recovery, & Intervention Using God’s Tools of Redemption workbook by Robert and Stephanie Tucker (this is by the same author of the codependency workbook above; I read through this study over the summer helping my church review some materials and if I could send this to every person who reaches out to me about addiction, I would.)

Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life by Henry Cloud and John Townsend

Go here for a list of Al-Anon and recovery-related podcasts (I’m sure this isn’t all of them.)

Adult Children of Alcoholics world service organization is full of resources and recommendations

I have not yet listened to The Recovery Show, but I’ve heard from others that they’re a good listen. This episode is about ACOAs specifically.

And if you’re unlikely to read or listen to much right now, I assume you spend at least a little time on Facebook. Join a support group there to just listen for a while–see what you can learn. Here’s one I found after a quick search, but I’m not a part of it.

I’ve heard from lots of people this week who grew up in alcoholic (or drug addicted) homes who were unfamiliar with the “adult child of alcoholic” term. Or they knew the term but didn’t know the characteristics or weight of it. I’ve heard from brave people who are speaking up to their loved ones and saying this is me. I want to fix this. Dots are being connected, conversations are taking place, people are starting to search for help.

I’m praying for the challenging, good work you’re beginning. Please don’t quit when it gets uncomfortable. It will absolutely get uncomfortable. Please do not quit.

I’ve also heard from people this week who enable alcoholics. I’ve heard from co-dependent women who have lots of good excuses and reasons why this is not them, their house is different, their children will be different. How dare I group them with the other spouses of alcoholics.

I cannot convince people to get help. I’m not here to bully anyone into therapy or Al-Anon or to leave their drunk spouse. I know the least healthy people scream the loudest when someone points out their mess or responsibility in it. I also know your children will one day have to address this–your part and your spouse’s–and neither of you will come out of it unscathed.

What that looks like for our family is we are no longer in relationship with either of Chris’ parents: the alcoholic or the enabler. If we’re being really honest, more damage might have been done by his enabling mom than his alcoholic dad. There is no tally sheet to count up the damage Chris (and his siblings) experienced as a result of each individual, but the more work Chris does, the more he pays attention to his wounds, and the longer he is sober to remember and feel what he’s been avoiding for a very long time, it just adds more layers of guilt and responsibility on his mom.

He is just beginning to understand the level of manipulation she operated at to keep so many horrible things alive.

Chris and I were separated in September 2017. He had been caught drinking again and was not allowed to live in our home anymore. His mom and he were on their way to Ohio for a birthday celebration–his September birthday included.

Did you father ever touch you? she asked, eyes focused on the road ahead.

No, Chris responded.

I always wondered, she said as they sped down the highway. I always wondered.

The point of that story isn’t Chris’ answer. It might be true or it might not be. The point is my husband’s mom knew for years she was making choices that could possibly be hurting her children and she did not speak up. The point is the person made to protect her children did not want to know the answer to dangerous questions because it might not be what she wanted to hear, it might force her to make some changes.

So she never asked.

Accountability comes for all of us. It came for Chris. It came for his parents. It came for me. What you think you’re avoiding right now will not stay away forever.

Spouses of alcoholics: if you have a little whisper in the back of your head telling you that something is not right, that this isn’t a way to live, do not ignore that voice. It is not worth the consequences.

*Disclaimer: when I began this series, I mentioned that I was barely skimming the surface of what it looks like to be an adult child of an alcoholic. I wrote a couple essays this week to give you a glimpse of what it looks like for Chris and our marriage, but I am leave out a lot.

One night Chris was reviewing a post for the next day and he suggested something I should add. There are lots of things I could add, but I don’t have the time or the space. If your experience doesn’t match up exactly to ours, it doesn’t mean that yours isn’t right. It’s just the reality of trying to give a very complex idea some exposure to help others.

I am not the authority on ACOAs. I am not an ACOA. I’m sharing what it feels like to be married to an adult child of an alcoholic and how it impacts my life. These are my stories, my experiences. People with more experience, closer perspectives, and a lot more education have written about this a lot better than I have. I pray this week is just the beginning of your knowledge of ACOAs, not the end. There are parts of this struggle not made for the internet. There are parts of this struggle that didn’t affect Chris as much. Every story is different. This is mine.

*This is the final post in a four-part series on adult children of alcoholics. You can see the introduction post here, the second post here, and the third right here.

*DISCLOSURE: affiliate links used.

Spouses of alcoholics want to argue the most about facts and research about raising kids in alcoholic homes.

That’s not how it is here.
This isn’t hurting my kids.
Our kids will turn out different.

Don’t you think every single spouse thinks that?

A spouse’s response to information about allowing children to live in an alcoholic home is in direct relation to how healthy or unhealthy the spouse is. No healthy adult can argue a child should grow up around addiction.

Let me say that again: No healthy adult can argue a child should grow up around addiction.

Any rationalization, excuse, or reason you have against that statement is steeped in your own issues. Any rationalization, excuse, or reason you have against that statement is twisted up with co-dependency, enabling, and possibly your own addiction story.

Adult children of alcoholics learn how to be in romantic relationship by watching their parents. If their parents go back and forth between being deeply in love and violent arguments, kids think love has to be intense all the time. If their parents live in the same house but don’t live the same life, kids think love is indifferent and cold.

ACOAs have no frame of reference for what a healthy, intimate relationship looks like because they have never seen one. You can’t have a healthy relationship with an addict or alcoholic. I know that seems like common sense, but you’d be shocked at the people who would argue that it is not true.

This disease does not allow room for healthy relationships, healthy conversations, healthy homes. Your alcoholic house is no different. Denial (and lying, like we talked about yesterday) is a large part of an alcoholic home. Yes, the family living with the alcoholic lies to others, but mostly they lie to themselves. Alcoholics and their families lie to themselves all the time.

Adult children of alcoholics grow up with an overwhelming fear of abandonment. Alcoholism is unpredictable. Lots of promises are made that aren’t followed through on. Lots of commitments are made that get forgotten or skipped. There is an underlying current of is this real? Is someone going to take care of me? in everything they do.

As a result, ACOAs carry that acute fear of being abandoned into adulthood. It’s what makes them stay in dangerous relationships. It’s what makes them keep trying to fix things that shouldn’t be fixed (but they don’t have the appropriate skills to fix a problem so it just keeps getting worse). ACOAs don’t understand what red flags and healthy boundaries look like so they sacrifice themselves at all cost to be loyal to someone they shouldn’t be.

Because that’s what they saw growing up.

This realization shifted something in me. In Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D, she explains that “the fear of abandonment gets in the way of the development of a relationship. The development of any healthy relationship requires lots of give and take, and problem solving. There is always some disagreement and anger which a couple resolve. A minor disagreement gets very big, very quickly for adult children of alcoholics because the issue of being abandoned takes precedence over the original issue.”

This plays out all the time in my marriage. Something comes up that needs to be addressed. I bring up the issue so we can talk about it. Chris immediately begins to panic because what if this is the issue that makes me leave? He says and does what he feels is the best thing to make the conversation go away as quickly as possible: agreeing to things he won’t actually do, admitting things he doesn’t actually want to admit, saying yes to things he has no intention of following through on.

I think we’ve had a conversation. In reality, Chris has just avoided confrontation at all cost because he fears being left.

So then the issue comes up again because nothing was actually handled. I’m angry this time and he’s back to running interference so he’s not abandoned, and we continue this vicious cycle where nothing gets handled because my husband doesn’t know how to get past the fear of being abandoned. Issues keep piling up and nothing ever changes. It is madness.

ACOAs didn’t learn how to love themselves. As children, they didn’t experience unconditional, safe love in their homes. So now they look for love from others instead of learning how to love themselves. This co-dependency means Chris’ value is found completely in how I’m feeling about him at the time. If I’m happy with him, he’s happy and feels loved. If I’m annoyed, he’s scared and unloved.

Understanding this dynamic in our relationship broke my heart. I didn’t grow up with a completely healthy home life, but I grew up with no doubt of my worth, knowing my parents loved me, and understanding they would take care of all my needs no matter what. I don’t struggle with self-worth. I know my value as a daughter of the King and as a human, no matter what others think or say. It was so foreign to me that someone could not understand this. It was inconceivable for me to hear Chris found his worth in me.

At first, I was repulsed by this idea. That type of weakness insulted me.

But then I started to learn how that happens, what children growing up in alcoholic homes learn about love, and what they don’t get from their parents.

Then it just made me more compassionate.

There is a very specific balancing act that has to happen now in our home. I have to make sure Chris knows he is loved and valued outside of anything he does or says. But he is also required to work hard at healing and recovery for his loved-and-valued-self to stay in our marriage. I’m not sure I always walk that line well. My thinking tends to be black and white and this is a gray area. Again, another reason why I keep going to therapy. To check that I’m being fair and not expecting too much. To make sure I’m holding a good boundary and not a bad one. To allow someone else to ask hard questions about what I’m doing and how I’m helping or hurting the ACOA I’m married to.

“Being the child of an alcoholic causes the ordinary difficulties to become more severe.” (p. 71)

That’s the simplest way to put it. Life is hard for everyone. Life is just hard. For adult children of alcoholics, the every day hard becomes more difficult because they were gifted a handicap as children.

We can heal this.
Come back tomorrow and we’ll talk about how.

*The information I’m sharing didn’t originate with me. I’m a constant consumer of information, never satisfied with one or two books on a subject. But a lot of the research I’m sharing comes from Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D. Don’t let the ugly cover throw you off, this book is a wealth of information. ((I’ve also read parts of Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome: A Step By Step Guide to Discovery and Recovery by Wayne Kritsberg and it has good stuff in it too. I’ll share a more complete list of resources tomorrow.))

*You don’t have to be married to an ACOA to benefit from this series. Once I started studying this, I realized a lot of my close friends were also adult children of alcoholics. Understanding their stories better makes me a more compassionate friend.

*Finally, Woititz points out in her introduction that many characteristics of ACOAs can be found in adults who grew up in similar dysfunctional households. Sin is sin and if you grew up around violence or untreated mental illness or another addiction, you might also see yourself in parts of this series.

*If you’re just joining this series, this is the introduction and here’s the second post.

Science fiction saved my husband.

When he was younger, he consumed sci-fi books. Walking along a busy road at way too young an age, he’d trek to the local library to checkout stack after stack of books. The librarian knew his name, what he liked, and recommended books to him.

It sounds like an idyllic childhood, but it was really one of survival and escape. Home was unsafe, unreliable, dangerous for a quiet kid who didn’t want to draw attention to himself. So he read books, hours and hours in his room, at the library, away from his unpredictable dad and his checked-out mom.

I’m an English teacher obsessed with reading who wants so badly to tell you when her husband–no longer a little boy–consumes himself with books, it’s because he has a love for the English language or prose. But the truth is, he uses it as an escape, as a way to avoid the things in front of him. (He does this with television too.)

A skill he learned in childhood that might have saved him, now working against him. Avoiding his wife and kids and responsibilities and conversations now means he will lose those things.

Adult children of alcoholics often grow up steeped in fantasy. It might not be so literal with science fiction novels, but they soothe themselves and the chaos around them by creating worlds in their heads that aren’t as bad. Imagining what it would be like if Dad was sober, if Mom paid attention. They fantasize about what their family would look like it there wasn’t so much fighting or violence or instability.

ACOAs don’t always know how to turn the fantasies off. That became clear for us when Chris’ drinking finally came out of hiding. It completely confused him that I was miserable in my marriage. It was unfathomable to him that our kids were suffering or scared of him. Everything was still fine in his head, what did reality have to do with it?

Denial, rationalization, and manipulation are daily visitors in the home of an alcoholic. It seeps into the kids, into the spouse, into the fiber of their beings. And when kids leave, they can’t shake it off; it tags along as they date and marry, have kids and try to build new lives.

Reality hurts so there’s no need to look too closely at it.

Part of the zoning out children do is a result of the adult things they’ve been made to do far sooner than they should have been. When we give adult problems to children (worries about bills, too much information about intimate relationships between parents, job stress, excess responsibilities at home or in the care of siblings), they grow up too fast. Giving them these jobs doesn’t make them automatically capable of handling them though.

Child development follows a stair step model, gradually increasing once certain skills are mastered. You learn this and this and now you can do this. It is a continuous cycle of practicing and learning, growing and adapting. But ACOAs get too much too fast. They learn skills to survive instead of to safely mature. So they begin checking out of childhood as a coping skill. For many, it’s the major coping skill they bring into adulthood: avoid and ignore.

One struggle ACOAs have as they try to parent their own kids is they have no frame of reference. If an ACOA didn’t have any normal fourteen year old responsibilities, they don’t know what is an appropriate level of responsibility for their own child. They don’t know what is normal teenage behavior and what should raise red flags. There is no healthy past experience able to help them navigate their own child’s emotions, feelings, or questions.

Adult children of alcoholics don’t know how to parent because they weren’t parented.

This is hard for me to admit because the reality for our house is I am, more often than not, parenting two daughters and a husband. As I talk through problems or worries with my pre-teen daughter, I’m also modeling it for my husband. We spent a lot of time this summer dealing with the results of Chris’ lack of impulse control, his lack of ability to see the long term effects of choices he is making.

ACOAs are impulsive. They grew up around selfish people who thought of themselves first. Sure, alcoholics can manipulate you into believing they have your best interest at heart, but no one who truly does will continue on the path of alcoholism (this would be a good time to talk about the disease of alcoholism and how the disease doesn’t really allow for that logic, but that’s not the point today).

If you grow up seeing someone only think of themselves when they make choices, you do the exact same thing. I can hear the alcoholic’s arguments now: I’m not a selfish parent! But your disease makes you selfish. Even if you wish you weren’t. Alcoholism functions on a love of alcohol above all else.

Chris and I have been married for almost thirteen years. It has been just very, very recently that he has started asking himself how a choice he’s making will affect anyone but himself.

As a result, I have spent a lot of our marriage cleaning up messes I didn’t create. Learning about what enabling looks like for me has altered the last few years, but we are still actively living in the results of bad choices Chris doesn’t have the self-control to stop making. This is wearing and heavy. It is one of the reasons I still see a counselor regularly, to make sure my responses to his choices aren’t enabling. (This is a characteristic of an adult child of an alcoholic, but also a characteristic of an alcoholic. Remember yesterday when I said the rates are high that ACOAs will grow up to have their own addictions? That’s where it gets extra messy for us, it’s all intertwined so closely now.)

Impulse control comes with maturity. ACOAs do not mature at the rate of normal kids so they often lag behind in maturity and the better choice-making that comes with maturity. Developing his own addictions in his late teens further slowed the maturity process in Chris; active addicts and alcoholics stunt their maturity. We mature by learning lesson from mistakes and doing better next time. We mature by succeeding and failing, growing in confidence, getting wiser and not just older. Addicts don’t do those things. Alcoholics don’t do those things. Addiction freezes emotional development.

In an alcoholic household, instant gratification is all there is. If a parent promises something and it doesn’t happen right away, there is a low probability it will actually happen. Promises get broken all the time. The child learns that it’s now or never. And they bring that attitude into adulthood with them.

It never crossed Chris’ mind to think it might hurt me or our family as he drank at work. As long as he didn’t do it at home, it was fine. The disconnect between wants and the consequences of those wants is huge. I grew up in a house where we were taught how to be thorough and conscientious. Chris grew up in a house were no one cared for possessions or took care of things. I learned to clean up after myself, leave things the way I found them, and to be aware of who would hurt or be put out by the way I did things if I did them wrong. Chris learned how to survive without drawing attention, to not engage in a family, and to be gone as much as possible. He learned to take care of himself and no one else. No one else was going to take care of him; why should he have to take care of others?

I remember years ago having a cookout with Chris’ family at our house. I stood in line for food behind his sister. As she squirted mustard on her hot dog, it exploded all over the top of the bottle and ran down the side. Globs of mustard went everywhere. Instead of cleaning up the mess she made, she just shut the lid making a bigger mess, put the bottle down, and moved on down the food line.

“Are you going to leave the mustard like that?” I asked.

“I didn’t know if anyone else needed some,” she said.

“And you thought we’d want the stuff all over the lid if we did want some?” I asked confused.

I know it’s just mustard but it wasn’t. That was the Graham motto. Leave a giant mess and let someone else handle it. I was so confused by the mess she made and how she was just able to walk away from. Someone else could clean up the mustard explosion, she got what she needed.

Alcoholic families leave overwhelming mess behind. They often don’t address it themselves, instead shoving it off for someone else to clean up, someone else to fix, someone else to manage.

Our families of origin determine so much of our futures that it is sometimes overwhelming to think about.

But it also lights a fire in my soul to make sure we are not replicating that story, that trauma, that environment for our own children. For a million reasons, Chris has to be sober and actively working on healing and recovery to live in our house. A huge part of that is he is not allowed to pass this legacy onto our daughters. They don’t deserve that just like he didn’t.

You can do that too. If you’re an adult child of an alcoholic. If you’re currently raising kids in a home with an alcoholic. You can stop this cycle if you want to.

It has to stop somewhere. Even if I didn’t really understand what I was getting myself into all those years ago, it has become my life’s work to make sure we don’t give this mess to our daughters.

We are not passing on the Graham legacy of hiding, of immaturity, of ignoring, of lying, of manipulation, of co-dependency. It is a curse I will not allow them to accept.

*The information I’m sharing didn’t originate with me. I’m a constant consumer of information, never satisfied with one or two books on a subject. But a lot of the research I’m sharing comes from Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D. Don’t let the ugly cover throw you off, this book is a wealth of information. ((I’ve also read parts of Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome: A Step By Step Guide to Discovery and Recovery by Wayne Kritsberg and it has good stuff in it too.))

*If you’re just joining us, I started this series on adult children of alcoholics yesterday. You can see that first post here.

I had never heard the term “adult children of alcoholics” until about two years ago.

I didn’t know it was a thing.
I didn’t know the way it scarred you.
I didn’t know the way growing up with an alcoholic stunted your emotional development.
I didn’t know that it meant a life of playing catch up, missing social cues, and trauma recovery.

But I know now. And it makes perfect sense.

This week I’m writing about what growing up in an alcoholic house does to children. I’m writing about what it looks like in those children who grew up to be adults. I’m writing about some unflattering characteristics that could be clouded in shame and embarrassment.

But I pray you find hope in this too.

With more knowledge comes better awareness, more tools, more acceptance about where you might be and how you can more forward.

No child chooses to grow up with an alcoholic parent. This isn’t something a child would ever pick. Most kids growing up in alcoholic homes don’t know their normal isn’t really normal. They won’t see that until they’re older, until they start to see how the non-alcoholic houses live.

Then they’ll have to grieve and heal.

If you’re raising kids in an alcoholic home, let this be a glimpse into their future. Maybe this can be a jumping off point to make some changes. Let this be your wake up call. The reality is your kids are learning or have already learned many of these characteristics. It’s not a death sentence, but you’re in control of how much more they carry into adulthood.

Please take that responsibility seriously. I live with a husband whose “healthier” parent did not do that. If you’ve been reading any of our story for any length of time, you know how destructive and hard it will be to handle this later.

It’s not too late for your kids.

If you’re an adult now, it’s not too late for you either. I pray you see that this week. No one is too far gone.

I’m using Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D as an inspiration for these posts. I’m just skimming the surface of this topic. Her book and others, plus Al-Anon and therapy can all be used to heal. But if this topic is brand new to you, I’d highly recommend you start with her book. It’s an easy and accessible first step to a subject that can be–at times–really overwhelming.

And finally, before we get started: my hope, as always, rests in Jesus. He is the Ultimate Healer. While a lot of people use that term in a way that implies God can heal anything He wants (and I believe He can), I understand it normally means He’s given us tools, people, and communities to aid our healing. We are not helpless creatures with no where to turn. We have the Bible, wise counselors, the Holy Spirit, and medical professionals who have gifts and talents from God who can lead us through recovery. Prayer is powerful so don’t forget that either. All of God’s generous resources are at our disposal so don’t count any of them out. All of them together are, possibly, what God wants your miracle to be.

Let’s get started.

What does an adult child of an alcoholic look like? According to Geringer Woititz and others in her field, adult children of alcoholics:
-guess at what normal behavior is
-have difficulty following a project through from beginning to end
-lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth
-judge themselves without mercy
-have difficulty having fun
-take themselves very seriously
-have difficulty with intimate relationships
-over-react to changes over which they have no control
-constantly seek approval and affirmation
-usually feel that they are different from other people
-are either super responsible or super irresponsible
-are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved
-are impulsive

Here’s a funny and not funny story about the book I’m referencing. Chris asked me to order it for him at the beginning of his sobriety work.

He read half of it.

He was marking up parts he related to, questions other adult children of alcoholics were sharing, and then just stopped. He was reading a book explaining why he often can’t follow through with things and then quit it.

*insert a confusing laugh-cry combo here*

Self-awareness means you have to address the issue. It’s why so many of us don’t want to know more about ourselves, our wounds, our tendencies and scars. Because it would make us accountable for them.

Accountability is hard.

If you’re friends with, married to, or in a family with adult children of alcoholics, this information will be eye-opening and connect a lot of dots. But it’s not to be used as a weapon to hurt someone who is already hurting. We don’t learn and read and grow to hurt others. If that’s your motive, you can skip this series, please.

When I met my husband, I mistook his actions for confidence instead of low self-esteem. I saw his indifference as attractive instead of the reality that he didn’t know how to care for himself or others well. You don’t know how to do something you didn’t learn; you don’t know how to do something no one modeled for you.

Healthy child development includes parental warmth, clearly defined boundaries, and respectful treatment (p. xxiii). Alcoholic households don’t have those things. The alcoholic parent is too consumed with self and the other parent spends the majority of his/her time caring for the alcoholic. There is little left for the kids in the house. Healthy child development involves not giving children adult problems. Adult children of alcoholics (ACOAs) are given very adult problems very early in life. There are no carefree days. Innocence is lost early.

The loss of innocence changes everything.

Every single thing.

Children learn identity from the people around them. If the people around them are damaged, selfish, manipulative, addicted, and unreliable, they too will become these things.

If we tell our children to be kind yet we are never kind, they don’t learn kindness, they learn how to be mean. It’s the same way with an alcoholic parent. It doesn’t matter how much the alcoholic parent says don’t be like me or the other parent tries to overcompensate, it doesn’t get cancelled out. Children learn by modeling what they see. Children will model what they see no matter what words you use to tell them differently.

ACOAs grow up confused about love and identity. When we are young, we learn who we are by our parents and the house we grow up in. Eventually, we get to determine that on our own, but it starts in childhood with our families of origin. Children of alcoholics get warped messages about what love is, what relationships should look like, and what is acceptable within love and relationship. There’s a level of drama and chaos that comes with an alcoholic household that is hard to shake.

It feels normal and “safe” and reliable. That sets up future relationships to be dangerous.

ACOCs hear their parents lie all the time. They lie when they show up to family functions to cover for the alcoholic. They lie to bosses on the phone when someone can’t come to work. They lie to friends who try to come over. They lie to themselves and each other other. Lies take up a lot of space in an alcoholic home.

Communication is a big part of parenting, especially as kids get older. Talking through problems and worries, parents help kids practice thinking things through, anticipating consequences, and weighing risk. When a two year old heads toward a flight of stairs, a parent runs to grab him because his brain isn’t developed enough to understand cause and effect. Teenagers, hopefully, are starting to put cause and effect together. We don’t run to catch our kids every time they fall at this age, but we do talk about possible outcomes, or if things went south, what to learn from the mistake.

Children of alcoholics don’t get that. More than likely, the parent doesn’t have the maturity to have those conversations, but they also don’t have the time. They’re too busy putting out fires they keep lighting or living in the isolation of their addiction.

So kids grow up without the skills other kids are getting.

Strike one: growing up in a chaotic household.

Strike two: not having the skills and maturity other kids their age have.

Strike three comes in the form of a high likelihood of repeating the patterns they witnessed as a child, either turning into an alcoholic themselves, marrying an alcoholic, or–the grand slam for ACOAs–both.

*The information I’m sharing didn’t originate with me. I’m a constant consumer of information, never satisfied with one or two books on a subject. But a lot of the research I’m sharing comes from Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D. Don’t let the ugly cover throw you off, this book is a wealth of information. ((I’ve also read parts of Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome: A Step By Step Guide to Discovery and Recovery by Wayne Kritsberg and it has good stuff in it too. I’ll share a more complete list of resources later this week.))

*Today is the overview; I’ll share more tomorrow about how these characteristics have played out in our marriage, how we’re beginning to address them, and what Chris is doing to recover from a really ugly start.

*You don’t have to be married to an ACOA to benefit from this series. Once I started studying this, I realized a lot of my close friends were also adult children of alcoholics. Understanding their stories better makes me a more compassionate friend.

*Finally, Woititz points out in her introduction that many characteristics of ACOAs can be found in adults who grew up in similar dysfunctional households. Sin is sin and if you grew up around violence or untreated mental illness or another addiction, you might also see yourself in parts of this series.