Mrs. Naman, we need you to come to the high school\u2014immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The phone call was from the secretary at my 15-year-old daughter Natalie\u2019s school.<\/p>\n
I have three children, one older than Natalie, one younger. I had never been summoned to a school office before. And certainly not for anything like this. It just wasn\u2019t possible!<\/p>\n
I called my husband, Peter, a surgeon at the hospital in our Pittsburgh suburb. \u201cMeet me at Natalie\u2019s school,\u201d I said. \u201cThey said she was caught with substances. What does that mean?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNot good,\u201d said Peter. \u201cI\u2019ll be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Natalie was in the principal\u2019s office, surrounded by school officials and three police officers.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t process everything they were saying. \u201cPossession\u2026heroin<\/a>\u2026backpack\u2026zero tolerance\u2026suspension\u2026charges.\u201d<\/p>\n On the principal\u2019s desk were small packets of white powder, a spoon and syringes.<\/p>\n This couldn\u2019t be happening. There had to have been some mistake. We were a loving, happy family from a nice neighborhood. Peter was a respected doctor. I had dreamed of becoming a mom my whole life, and I had worked hard at it. Natalie was a wonderful child. Bright. Creative. Game for anything. Practically perfect.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you sure?\u201d I asked the circle of stern faces. \u201cNatalie is a good girl. I never saw any sign of this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cParents often don\u2019t,\u201d one of the police officers said matter-of-factly.<\/p>\n On the way home, Natalie insisted it was all a mistake. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t mine, Mom,\u201d she said. \u201cSomeone asked me to hold it for them. I don\u2019t have a drug problem. You\u2019ve got to believe me!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf she\u2019s injecting heroin, that\u2019s serious,\u201d Peter said later that night. We\u2019d stayed up talking to Natalie; now it was just the two of us. \u201cHeroin affects the brain in unique ways. It is very addictive, especially for adolescents.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe told us it wasn\u2019t even hers,\u201d I said. \u201cShouldn\u2019t we give her the benefit of the doubt?\u201d<\/p>\n I remembered occasionally finding little packets in Natalie\u2019s room like the ones I\u2019d seen on the principal\u2019s desk. I\u2019d had no idea what they were and left them alone. I suppose I hadn\u2019t wanted to know<\/a>. I\u2019d put them out of my mind.\u201c<\/p>\n Natalie needs to go into treatment immediately,\u201d Peter said.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s not some junkie,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat will her friends think? Everyone will know! She\u2019ll be an outcast.\u201d<\/p>\n Peter shook his head. \u201cWe need to intervene as soon as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Reluctantly, I agreed to enroll Natalie in an outpatient treatment program<\/a>, the least disruptive option. I certainly wasn\u2019t going to send her away to some facility. There would be so many questions.<\/p>\n And I insisted that Peter and I tell only our parents, no one else in our extended family or circle of friends. Other families at school would find out through the rumor mill, but there was no need to tarnish Natalie\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n I went to bed shaken but determined to turn this situation around. I also felt something I hadn\u2019t experienced before. Anger toward God<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cHow could you let this happen?\u201d I demanded. \u201cI did everything right.\u201d<\/p>\n I had worked so hard to be a perfect mom<\/a>. I\u2019d been a teacher before the kids were born, but I\u2019d quit to raise them. My dream was the kind of family you see in Hallmark movies. I\u2019d planned so carefully, so perfectly. This couldn\u2019t be happening. Not to us.<\/p>\n October? Time to pick pumpkins and decorate Halloween cookies as a family. Christmas Eve? Arrive at church early to get front-row seats. I made meat loaf<\/a> from scratch, baked, always brought treats for school parties. I covered all the bases. Heroin wasn\u2019t part of the plan.<\/p>\n What I couldn\u2019t accept was how all of those positive experiences had led Natalie to\u2026drugs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s my fault,\u201d Peter said. \u201cI should have been home more.\u201d His hospital schedule was demanding.<\/p>\n \u201cI was the one who was home with her,\u201d I said. \u201cWhich is worse?\u201d<\/p>\n For a while, it seemed as if my instinct to keep things quiet and give Natalie a chance to do better was working. The school wanted to turn her suspension into an expulsion, but we convinced the administration to allow Natalie to become a full-time online student.<\/p>\n She was charged with drug possession, convicted and sentenced to probation with treatment, which she was already doing.<\/p>\n Natalie seemed relieved to be out from under the social pressure of in-person school. A boy asked her to a dance. We let her go and even invited other families to gather at our house before chaperoning the kids. Some of the moms seemed standoffish or awkward, but others were nice. How many people knew about Natalie? Inside I cringed. Shouldn\u2019t this be a private matter?<\/p>\n I tried not to notice at first that Natalie\u2019s grades were slipping. (She was just struggling with remote learning<\/a>, I told myself.) Or that she was staying up later and leaving the house with people I didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Then I found a syringe in Natalie\u2019s room. I confronted her, and she insisted she had no idea how it got there. I wanted so badly to believe her, but Peter warned me that things were getting worse.<\/p>\n Soon the signs were unmistakable, even to me. Natalie began nodding off during meals. Disappearing for an entire day or night. She began to look haggard.<\/p>\n I worked harder and harder. We took her to psychiatrists and counselors. I relented and agreed to send to her to an inpatient treatment program. I was desperate, desperate to turn all this around, to get back to the way I thought things were.<\/p>\n I tried to reason Natalie out of using. Begged. Cried. Issued ultimatums. I scoured her room for drug paraphernalia. Stayed up all night waiting for her to come home.<\/p>\n By this point, I\u2019d given up on God. One Sunday, our priest said in a sermon that sometimes God comes alongside us in suffering<\/a> but doesn\u2019t immediately solve the problem.<\/p>\n Well, he should, <\/em>I thought bitterly.<\/p>\n I felt as if we were in this alone. \u201cWhere do you even get drugs?\u201d I asked Natalie one day as we drove to the store. I couldn\u2019t imagine drugs being sold in a town like ours.<\/p>\n \u201cYou mean walking distance or driving distance?\u201d Natalie responded. I looked at her in shock.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s everywhere, Mom. So many kids my age take drugs. Families here have tons of money, and parents have no idea what\u2019s going on.\u201d We passed a house, and her face darkened.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cThe guy in that house will sell you any drug you want,\u201d she said. \u201cSee why it\u2019s so hard to quit<\/a>?\u201d<\/p>\n After yet another relapse, Natalie began telling me, \u201cI just want to close my eyes and never wake up.\u201d<\/p>\n One Saturday morning, I peeked into her room and saw her motionless on her bed. Her skin was purple.<\/p>\n \u201cPeter!\u201d I shrieked. Natalie had overdosed. Peter rushed in with a container of Narcan, and Natalie revived. I staggered out of my daughter\u2019s room and collapsed in the hallway.<\/p>\n I began to cry. I couldn\u2019t stop. I lay on the floor unable to move. Just like Natalie, I wanted to close my eyes and never wake up.<\/p>\n That thought frightened me. I sat up. \u201cI have to go out,\u201d I told Peter. Natalie was stable and under his observation. I drove straight to our church. The sanctuary was open but unlit. I walked to a pew and got on my knees.<\/p>\n A sensation of utter weakness and imperfection engulfed me. I was broken. Natalie was broken. Our family was broken, and I couldn\u2019t fix or even hide the problem.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t do this on my own,\u201d I said to God. \u201cPlease give me your strength<\/a> and wisdom.\u201d<\/p>\n I didn\u2019t hear an answer. But on the drive back home, I began to feel more clearheaded. I had been trying to do the impossible: fix someone else\u2019s addiction. I had gone against everything the professionals told us. I\u2019d downplayed the severity of the problem. Denied, denied, denied.<\/a> Kept things quiet. Tried to force Natalie to get better.<\/p>\n I had turned away from the one thing I needed most: trust.<\/p>\n I had not trusted God<\/a>\u2014my biggest denial of all. I had not trusted our friends or extended family enough to be honest with them or ask for help.<\/p>\n And I hadn\u2019t trusted Natalie. She was an adolescent and needed guidance and love. But if she was going to get better, the change would have to start with her. I couldn\u2019t will her into recovery. I wasn\u2019t in control.<\/p>\n I wish I could say I returned from the church transformed into exactly the mom Natalie needed me to be. That\u2019s not how it works. I\u2019d simply taken the first step on a long journey. That meant trusting my daughter to God<\/a>.<\/p>\n It took another overdose and more than a year of relapses before Natalie finally decided, on her own, that she\u2019d had enough and wanted to get better.<\/p>\n Along the way, I gradually figured out how to help her. I attended support groups and talked to a therapist. I worked on setting aside my drive for perfection<\/a> that made it so hard for me to let Natalie make her own decisions. I stopped denying that we weren\u2019t the perfect family.<\/p>\n How long had I burdened Natalie with my outsize expectations? Probably her whole life.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t fix this for you,\u201d I told her. \u201cBut I love you, and I\u2019ll be at your side when you\u2019re ready to try.\u201d<\/p>\n By the grace of God, Natalie is two and a half years clean now. She decided to enter a treatment program<\/a>, and she is determined to remain sober. This year, she started taking community college classes.<\/p>\n Our family remains a work in progress, but I have hope. Why? Maybe it\u2019s moments like a recent afternoon when Natalie and I were on our way home from running errands.<\/p>\n \u201cOne more stop,\u201d I announced as I pulled into the church parking lot. We had parked in this exact spot at church many times over the years of my daughter\u2019s addiction. I had always invited Natalie to come inside. Mostly she stayed in the car and played on her cell phone. I knew better than to ask this time. \u201cJust going inside to pray for a few minutes,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll be right back.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWait,\u201d Natalie said. \u201cI\u2019ll come.\u201d<\/p>\n I did my best to hide my elation.<\/p>\n The sanctuary was open but unlit, just as it had been on that day she\u2019d overdosed. We knelt side by side. I wondered what she prayed for, but I didn\u2019t ask.<\/p>\n Together we lit two candles<\/a> near the entrance and watched their soft glow.<\/p>\n \u201cI prayed for you,\u201d Natalie said as we headed back outside. She reached out to take my hand.<\/p>\n \u201cMe too,\u201d I said, giving her hand a squeeze.<\/p>\n We approached the car.<\/p>\n \u201cHe hears us<\/a>,\u201d Natalie said.<\/p>\n \u201cHe does,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n