I’VE read all the sad letters and thoughtful responses on your website, and I’m still left with some hard questions. I have the same damn story: Grew up with an alcoholic mom; still dealing with her alcoholism, while trying to live my own life.

I’ve been living in Nepal for the past 10 years, on and off, while she lives in Louisiana. Just lost her job; because of alcoholism, actually. She recently disowned me when I married my husband. “You should have married an American,” she said. “I’ll never give you our house now.”

Basically, I have a hard time, at age 28, being honest with her about my life. I’m painfully aware of the sick cycle we go through on a monthly basis, and I’m ready to start creating boundaries so I don’t have to endure this again.

I actually do want to be her friend; she’s incredible when sober. I actually do want to be her daughter, despite years of being the adult. But how?

When she makes awful things happen in my life, the next day they are expected to be forgotten. Most likely, she doesn’t remember.

What I crave more than anything is for someone to say to me, ‘Michelle, learn to talk to your mom like this and this; set up boundaries like this and this; don’t let her do this and this.’

Then I’d try it; stick with it; and, hopefully, have some kind of working relationship with my mom, where I don’t feel guilty, and deal with the effects of having an alcoholic parent on my own. Hah!
Michelle

Michelle,
When lawyers say they have a prima facie case, they mean the merits of the case are so obvious, they can be presumed true. In a similar way, people can always assume a child with an alcoholic parent is the victim of alcoholic child abuse.

A child comes into the world fully ready to bond with a parent, and in an alcoholic, they get an adult whose behaviour forces them on a maladaptive path.

At the same time the child is growing a social brain and laying down the emotional and neurological tracks which will guide them for life, they are forced to cope with an adult incapable of fulfilling the basic role of a parent.

Like every alcoholic, your mother displays alcoholic vanity; an exalted view of herself, divorced from reality. Like every alcoholic, your mother reverses the roles of parent and child, and forces you to be the adult in the relationship.

Like every child of an alcoholic, you cling to the few good memories of your parent as “an incredible person.” What you are calling “incredible” from her is ordinary behaviour from a good parent on a Wednesday afternoon.

One of the most misleading terms in the field of alcoholism is “functional alcoholic.” The term is an oxymoron. All alcoholics are dysfunctional; they differ only in the range and sphere of their dysfunction, and in the particular people they damage.

You are still in the same relationship with her you were when you were little; you are still trying to climb a greased pole. Even in a remote country, you cannot stop her abuse.

If you had been beaten, sexually assaulted as a child, or locked in a closet for a year, you might understand this better. You are missing something you never had, and you want it from someone who can never give it to you.

We are saddened by that, but you must move forward; fill your life with good things; and put things in place of what you never had.

Well-intentioned but ignorant people will want you to continue placing yourself in the way of her abuse until her actual death. We don’t want that for you. We want you to see yourself for who you are: The adult victim of child abuse.
Wayne & Tamara