A brilliant post on what it is like to grow up as an adult child of addiction. In my own life Mum was an adult grandchild and I identify with many of these traits.. I hope this post is helpful to some readers..
The following article is by author Joni Edelman. Her writing does much to normalize the experiences, internal world, and often outcomes of adult children of alcoholics.
There are many adults among us — many of whom you might not recognize — with intimate knowledge of what it’s like to grow up with an addicted parent. Sadly, there are also many people who love those adults and don’t know what it is like to have become an adult who was once a child raised amongst chaos. For many of us, our entire childhood was swathed in dysfunction. As development goes, the severe dysfunction of our childhood probably resulted in severely delayed or stunted emotional growth.
Being the child of an addict is complicated, and we can’t always verbalize how so. Even if we’ve had enough therapy to buy our psychiatrist a boat, we still may not even know we are dysfunctional…
View original post 1,048 more words
Emerging From The Dark Night 