Editor’s Note: This column is a follow up to a three part series on teen drug use in Maple Valley that wrapped up in the March 25 issue of the Reporter.

Growing up, my mom and I were never really able to connect.

As I worked on the “Under the Influence” series about teen drug and alcohol use in Maple Valley I spent quite a bit of time talking about my mom, who has been in recovery my whole life, as well as reflecting on my childhood.

It makes total sense that my mom and I struggled in our relationship as she battled a number of addictions and worked the 12 steps of the Alcoholics Anonymous program.

Only in the past 10 years or so have I really begun to understand why my mother is this way. The series I just finished really underscored my own understanding of her addiction. It brought a greater clarity to it for me.

I want to clarify that the purpose of this is not to throw my mom under the bus. My intent with the series — which was not my idea, but the brainchild Erin Weaver of Communities That Care, I just took it and ran with it — was to educate. I wanted tooffer information to parents and kids that live here about the reality of drug and alcohol use as well as abuse among teens here.

But I also learned a lot about myself, about my mom, about our relationship and how her addictions impact it as well as what that means for a relationship between my daughter and my mother.

I will never, ever forget going to a New Year’s Eve party when I was 14, a freshman at Interlake High School, and seeing someone pull out a sheet of paper with tiny designs on it. This looked familiar. I asked what it was and received the response, “LSD.” Oh. I left immediately.

That was the last time I went to a party while I was in high school. I recognized LSD because I recall watching my mom do it when I was about 4 years old.

My mom quit drinking before I was born. She joined AA. And that’s where she met my father, who had 21 years of sobriety when he died in 1986, when I was 7 years old. I was in second grade.

She smoked pot, well I guess they call it weed these days, until I was 10 years old. I recall going with her a few times when we lived in a low income apartment complex in Bellevue — I know, mutually exclusive terms, right? — when she purchased pot from a dealer.

And I remember when she decided to stop. Just quit cold turkey. I was relieved. I did not like my mom when she was stoned.

My mother also has a penchant for pain pills. If it hurts, medicate, but not any old over the counter stuff will do.

The last time I spoke with Monica Robbins, a prevention and intervention specialist who works with the Tahoma School District, she talked about how much time she spends just working with teens on how to get through the day and what they can do to cope with the stress in their lives.

From that piece of our conversation I realized two things: my mom had learned to cope by self-medicating with alcohol, food, weed, pain pills, and so on. She was on her long journey to recovery by the time she was 25. The other thing I learned was that I developed coping skills that helped me get through the trauma of losing my dad at a young age and deal with growing up with an addict. I became an obsessive reader then an obsessive writer.

Honestly, I am concerned she may never develop healthy coping skills. Old habits die hard, especially habits you’ve formed over more than four decades, but in the past six months my mom has tried to cope better more often than not.

Actually, it has even gotten better since she was diagnosed with clinical depression in 2003. I was 25 years old and for the first time I understood why my mother and I never got along. She never learned how to cope with pain and she was hurting a lot.

Now I don’t allow myself to excuse the things she did when I was a kid. It made me angry. It hurt me. It frustrated me. She’s never allowed herself to live the life she deserves nor was she able to give me the kind of childhood every kid deserves.

On the other hand, her bad choices infleunced mine.

Rather than drop out of school — my mom persuaded my older sister to drop out of high school at the end of her junior year — I decided as a sophomore that even if she was too high or angry or hurt to care about it, I would graduate from high school. Then I would go to college. It was my only way out of that vicious cycle.

I chose not to drink. I chose not to try drugs. After going to countless AA meetings growing up and watching my mom get high daily, I knew I never wanted to be like that, I never wanted to end up in one of those meetings telling my rock bottom story to a group of people I may or may not know.

When I was a freshman at Gonzaga University, I had a roommate who drank and made a variety of other choices I considered unwise, and I do admit I drank at a party once while there but my boyfriend who I later married convinced me it was a bad idea to start before I turned 21. He was right.

My roommate was shocked when I told her I’d never smoked pot or been drunk.

In fact, people often say they’re going to take me out and get me drunk. I have a personal goal in life to never get drunk.

I have been high once, too, when I was on a morphine drip after back surgery. Growing up the way I did made me a control freak and I can tell you I did not enjoy it. There is nothing worse for me than feeling out of control.

I mention this because when I interviewed a young man I’ve called David about his addiction and the road to recovery, he asked me, “Have you ever used?”

I was honest with him. I told him I drink on occasion. I think I forgot to tell him about the morphine drip. I did tell him I expected him to succeed in whatever he chose to do with his life because he didn’t want to end up like my mother. I believe he agreed.

For me, making the choices I have and essentially doing the opposite of what my mom has done has led me to a beautiful, happy life. It’s not perfect, but, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

What I have now, what I have accomplished in spite of the environment I grew up in, defies the odds. I would not be here were it not for a handful of educators at the middle and high school level who tried to guide me through my angry teen years where I shut most people out.

And I guess, in some ways, I would not have made these choices were it not for my mother and her addictions. I would never choose this life for myself or inflict it on my child but it has made me who I am for better or worse.

What’s amazing now is that though my mom and I may never connect in the way other more functional parents do with their children, we have found a way to have a relationship, and that’s through my daughter.

These days my mom is sober and mostly clean. It’s a requirement if she wants to spend time with Lyla. She is motivated to do so because of my daughter. I try to not let that bother me but if that is what it takes then I will have to be happy with it as a moral victory.

My daughter and I share a deep bond which is all the more satisfying for me because of my relationship with my mom growing up. I hope we will always have the connection as she grows up because she deserves everything I never had as a kid.

For now, I appreciate the greater understanding I have of the relationship I have with my mom, even though it can’t fix the past perhaps in the future my mom will find at least some way to connect even if it is through my daughter.

Reach Kris Hill at khill@maplevalleyreporter.com or 425-432-1209 ext. 5054.

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