The Christian Adult Child

For now, I am choosing to be anonymous.

It was only through the protection of anonymity in Adult Children of Alcoholics meetings and personal counseling that I have found my voice.

It feels safer for me, that may change in the future, but for now I am happy with this choice.

In the spirit of being more than what has happened to me, here are some fun things. Much of this has come to the surface, now that my inner child has found a safe place, within me, and my new safe environment to emerge.

• I have an amazing rescue dog that looks like a cow
• I am a self-professed coffee, tea and chocolate connoisseur
• I am getting my PhD in engineering & social sciences
• I used to be a morning person, now I’m not, and that bothers me….!

About my past, my mother was an alcoholic and she is not in recovery, though she didn’t drink during my childhood. Being in recovery, from the perspective of ACA is that she is attending meetings and working the 12 steps. Her parents were alcoholics. My father was an alcoholic for the first 26 years of my life and has other substance issues now. His parents were alcoholics.

In the wake of chaos, unpredictability, I (understandably) developed habits of my own. I found validation and felt seen in the intellectual space, I became a workaholic. To combat the confusion and lack of choice in my external environment, I controlled what I could….what I ate. My unhealthy relating at the time, in all aspects of my life, led me to disordered eating. I am still working through that. As a para-alcoholic (someone with all the same behaviors as an alcoholic without drinking (isolation, denial, avoidance)), I am a recovering people-pleaser, codependent and perfectionist.

Most people are shocked that I have been through what I have because I “seem so happy”. This is a symptom of developing faces for the world as an ACA.

Though the “start” of my healing journey is hard to pinpoint, and I may not need to have a date, things really started happening for me in a coffee shop last summer (Summer 2021). After my morning devotion, I felt a prompting to write down all the things I believed are true about the world. So I did. I looked at it and started to get teary-eyed. In what I wrote, I saw no space for the things part of my heart desired. I desire to have a lifelong partner, vibrant friendships, hobbies and live a purposeful life. These things couldn’t grow in the soil of what I believed. I closed my eyes and asked God to comfort me, the following was impressed upon my spirit.

My healing is a landscape that the Lord will guide me through. I don’t have to navigate myself. He will. My part is to offer my willingness and yes.

I’ve been blessed to travel quite a bit in my life. When I’ve gone to new cities, I’ve seen it’s common to get a tour guide (I’m too curious to let someone do the revealing for me). When you pay for a tour, you just let someone else guide you.

I got this perspective to view my healing like I was visiting a new place. I believe Jesus is that Good Shepard and that he would guide me through places and nourish me along the way. I loved Him, but I didn’t trust Him fully (a theme in my recovery).

Since this sort of ‘beginning’, I have seen a Christian counselor once and sometimes twice a week. I have been speaking with her for a year and half now. How time flies! My Pastor recommended her to me and I’m so grateful I didn’t have to search because I really needed her help then and there.

This website is a homage to my journey and a committed dedication to one of my passions….writing.

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.

Psalm 34:18