When Love Isn’t Enough
A Parent’s Journey from Heartbreak to Healing
By Donna Marston
No one really talks about how much it hurts to love someone who’s in active addiction. As parents, we talk about treatment, relapse, recovery, and boundaries but not the silent grief that settles in our hearts. The kind of ache that makes us hold our breath every time the phone rings, wondering if this is the call that will break us.
It hurts to grieve for them when they’re still alive. That’s a kind of pain only a parent in this situation can truly understand. We look into their eyes, searching for the child we raised, the one we laughed with, the one who filled our hearts and all we can see is the shadow that addiction leaves behind. We don’t know how to love them through it, so we try to love them out of it.
We believe, deep down, that if we just love them enough, they’ll choose recovery. But here’s the truth I learned the hard way: love alone isn’t enough to save someone from addiction. It’s a harsh and heartbreaking lesson, but one that ultimately led me toward my own healing.
When my son was in active addiction, I didn’t realize that my kind of love had turned into unhealthy helping rescuing, fixing, and enabling. I thought I was saving him, but really, I was losing myself. It took me a long time to understand that I needed my own recovery program, one that focused on my healing, not his.
I had to learn to calm my own nervous system, to stop living in a constant state of fear and hypervigilance. I had to nurture the wounded part of me, the inner child who believed love meant self-sacrifice. Over time, I learned that I could love my son and still let go.
My healing didn’t start the day my son found his recovery, it started the day I decided to work on myself. I found peace not by changing him, but by changing how I loved, how I responded, and how I cared for my own heart.
To every parent walking this path: you can love your child and still honor yourself. That’s where healing begins, for both of you.
Through Sharing Without Shame, I now help other parents find their way out of fear, guilt, and exhaustion and into compassion, balance, and hope. Healing is possible, not just for our children, but for us, too.