Hope Resurrected, What a Difference One Year Can Make

A year ago on March 27, 2014, I began this blog in tears. I did not believe my son would survive his heroin addiction. It had been going on for over 15 years and the past six months had been especially hard. One overdose on my bathroom floor. Two more several months later. He was alone and lost on the streets. He’d given up hope and so had I. Almost. This blog was my way to hold onto a slim thread of hope and to work through the rage and despair.

A year later, on March 27, 2015, my son married the love of his life and became the father to her 4-year-old son. The matching dates are coincidental. But how eloquently it underscores the progress he’s made in 12 months and the resurrected hope we share.

The journey toward this day has not been smooth, as recorded in these posts over the past 12 months. And the journey ahead will be just as difficult. Next week he will celebrate 11 months of recovery. The week after he will graduate from the court-appointed program he began a year ago, his probation will end, and he will be a free man. He plans to continue in the Methadone program that has been such a great help to him. Without it, I do not think this would have been possible.

But it wasn’t just the Methadone. It was being–finally, at long last–so sick and tired of being sick and tired that the drug life had no more appeal for him. It was finding a good AA sponsor who got him off to a good start. It was meeting a beautiful woman who fell in love with him, and sticking with each other through the bad days and the good. And it was having a mother who dug in hard and refused to give up on him, even when I thought it was a hopeless effort.

I hope this is a message of hope to all the mothers out there trying to help sons and daughters lost to addiction.

Still, the journey is not over. The way ahead for my son and his new family is almost unbelievably hard. That they have the strength and heart to walk that path together humbles me. Neither have been able to find steady work. He still lives in a shed. She lives in a homeless shelter having been timed-out from a program that helps single moms and kids.. They spend time together in motels and at our home. She’s finally been approved for Section 8 housing and has two months to find a landlord that will accept her. If that falls through there’s a program in the Bay Area that helps struggling families, so they will go there. He’s found out that under a new California law he can get his non-violent, drug-related felonies removed, and that will open up new employment and housing opportunities.

I don’t know how this story will end, but they feel stronger together than they do on their own. She has never had any substance-abuse problems, but her life has been extremely difficult and she has mental health issues that have never been addressed. Still, she is kind and smart and sweet, a wonderful mother and crazy in love with my son. They are determined to build a safe and stable and happy life together.

They married alone at City Hall. But they plan a wedding celebration next year on their first anniversary. We’ll find out then what one year will bring them. If it’s anything like this past year, we will be abounding in blessings.

We have so much to celebrate this Easter–the resurrection of hope, the blooming of love, and the promise of a new life.