Acceptance is the Roots of a Tree
Grounding Yourself in Love Through the Storm of Addiction.
by: Donna Marston- Founder of Sharing With Out Shame
When your child is in active addiction, the pain is unbdarable. You want to stop it, fix it, control it, to make it go away. I know that feeling too well. I lived in it for years, trying to hold everything together while quietly falling apart.
What I’ve learned, and what I wish I knew back then, is this: when we meet our child’s addiction with judgment, blame, or shame, we’re not helping them or ourselves. We’re adding more pain to an already heartbreaking situation.
What if instead of looking at your child like someone who is broken, you saw them like a tree?
A tree doesn’t stop being a tree when it’s been damaged. The limbs may be cracked, the bark may be scarred, but the roots are still there. The life is still there. Your child may be tangled in addiction, but underneath it all, they’re still your child. They are not their addiction.
“Acceptance doesn’t mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there’s got to be a way through it.” — Michael J. Fox
Acceptance doesn’t mean you give up. It means you stop trying to force things and start meeting reality with love instead of fear.
Acceptance is not giving up.
It’s not saying, “This is okay.”
It’s saying, “This is what’s happening, and I choose to meet it with love instead of fear.”
When I was stuck in fear, I couldn’t see clearly. I tried to control everything, and in doing so, I lost myself. When I began to truly understand acceptance, I stopped trying to fix my son, and started focusing on healing myself.
I stood beside his tree. I rooted myself in my own values. I let go of what wasn’t mine to carry.
“When we talk about addiction, we talk about the chaos. We should also talk about the courage.” — Brené Brown
There’s courage in choosing to love without enabling. There’s courage in choosing to accept what you can’t change. And there’s courage in saying, “I trust your journey, even if I don’t understand it.”
Acceptance is choosing to stand beside your child rather than standing in front of them trying to control their every move.
It’s loving them through the storm, not trying to stop the rain.
It’s knowing that their journey is theirs to walk, and yours is to heal, grow, and stay grounded in your own truth.