Kelly, in recovery from addiction, apologizes to her son Donovan for years of abandonment. Donovan describes feeling less loved than his brother and the pain of not seeing a family photo for years. Kelly admits she still parents out of guilt and fears losing visitation during court-ordered supervision.
Chapters
You and your brother saved my life. You continue to save my life every single day. When I wanna give up at 10 years, because it doesn't matter how long you've been sober, there are times that it feels too heavy, you two are the reason that I haven't. So I'm proud of you. I'm proud of you for being who you are and being here today to try to help other people through this.
You know, Kelly, one of the things that Donathan said that was is interesting. He feels as if like your addiction caused him now to feel abandonment. What goes through your mind? What do you have to say to your son?
I wanna fix it.
Donovan, do you believe your mom when she says that it wasn't your fault, that she loved you?
Yeah, I've always known she loved me. I'm proud of her. And that picture, I haven't seen that picture in years.
Yeah.
And you can really see the difference.
Donovan, you also said that you feel sort of like your mom was a better mom for your brother Eric?
I've always felt it and I think she kind of known that. Like we always get into arguments, I always say, "You done that for him," or, "Why do you love him more?" And you were sober from the time he started remembering. You were like just starting to get sober around the time he was the age I was when I remember everything. I just wish it would've been a little different. Maybe I would've seen it from his point of view maybe.
Kelly, how do you show up for your son now?
I still parent him out of guilt because of everything that we went through when he was a child. Like, he doesn't wanna upset me, I don't wanna upset him. Let me again reiterate, like, we are super close.
I can see that.
We are so close that it's—
If I can be honest with you, I see a family full of love, but I also see a family, which I think most families of addiction go through, and I say this candidly from my own family, is that even though you love them, even though you're there, there's always this underlining issue that unless addressed, it's just gonna fester. There's things right now with Eric I can even tell that's like, he's still emotional through all this that one day these things are gonna pop up with you. And I don't think you're a bad mother. I wanna let you know. 'Cause I see your love, but here's your opportunity to start that healing.
When Eric was around, it was easier. For one, I had to clean up because of the court and I was fearful that they would come and I'd lose visitations with him, which I eventually did. But it was never your fault. I'm so grateful for you. And I'm so sorry for all of the hurt that I caused you. I know that you don't like talking about this 'cause you wanna protect me, but I'm comfortable enough with the things that I did to talk about them. I didn't even know why I was abandoning you. I didn't know why I wasn't taking you to school and doing what's best for you. I wanted to stop, I felt terrible, I couldn't stop.
