What's Love Got to Do with It?

by Jenny Molloy

  We shouldn’t blame the parents. To paraphrase Philip Larkin’s poem your Mum and Dad fuck you up, but they, in turn, were fucked up. The adopters who have spoken frankly for this book have shown one way that the cycle can be broken. As hard as the option of adoption is for all concerned, it is sometimes totally the right thing for child and parent; making the child safe and providing a way for the parent to heal.

  Another way to break the cycle is through talking. Talking about the past to professional therapists – as well as to people who have lived through similar experiences. This changes the way a person thinks, and this changes brain chemistry. Their brains may have never had a chance in childhood but we have a chance to heal throughout our lives.

  Finally, we shouldn’t automatically despise drug addicts. It’s hard not to because they are not pleasant to deal with. They’re not good with reasoned argument (they might nod along and agree, and then do what they wanted anyway) and their brains are hardwired with the expectation that they will be treated harshly by anyone in authority. They tend to show hostility to those with power over them. They are confused by the drugs, consuming cocaine for the emptiness and heroin for the pain. But, behind all that, they are human, and they were children who needed help and didn’t get it.

  And – as I’ve said before – as adults, they need our love more than ever.

  Sharon is one of the most important people in my life. I first met Sharon when she was a trainee social worker briefly assigned to me when I was coming up to eighteen years old. We became friends and we stayed in touch via the phone and the occasional visit for much of my adult life. Even when I was ‘on the run’ I still checked in with Sharon when I needed to hear a friendly voice, although I hid the turmoil I was going through from her. During the writing of this book we met up to talk about our relationship and I wanted to include a short piece of the transcript here because I think it really hits the nail on the head about the importance of having someone to talk to. Without her, I might not have made it. And Sharon’s still helping me today, more than twenty years later.

  Sharon: When I first met you, I was amazed at how bright, bubbly and perceptive you were. You were ballsy, asking lots of questions, you even asked for a picture of me. My first thought was: ‘What’s this young person on?’ I felt a real connection with you. Parts of you reminded me of me, and there was something in you that made me wish I could be like that. You’d just ask questions and questions and questions. There was something in you that made me trust you, it was like an automatic instinct.

  When you were pregnant and said you were getting married, I felt a bit disappointed that you were going to do that. This wasn’t a feeling that was related to the way I saw you professionally, as a social worker, I thought you were brighter than I was in school and hoped you’d become a solicitor. I really didn’t understand why you were getting married. My first thought about the foster placement was that something wasn’t right about it. Certain things stick with me, like that the foster carer was not someone I ever felt an affinity with and you were telling me little bits but seemed to be fine. And then when you left the foster home and made this big allegation . . . I’d only ever been in one room and hadn’t seen the rest of the house. This woman had managed to hide things. If I had thought that something was really wrong I would have done something about it.

  Hope: I decided not to go back into foster care and contacted social services. When they refused to do anything more for me because I was nearly eighteen, and I refused point-blank to accept that, they gave me one more placement with another foster carer but I could only stay until my eighteenth birthday. That’s when I decided to get pregnant. That was the only reason I got pregnant, because they were throwing me out of care.

  Sharon: As your social worker and now, over years of knowing you, my perception at the time was that you told me what you wanted me to know. I might have had a feeling – deep down – about you, but I didn’t know what you were going through. I never knew things were drastically wrong with you; you have a way of making yourself look happy when inside you’re feeling awful. I saw you as a resilient person but I didn’t understand your decisions. I never realised you got pregnant so you wouldn’t get kicked out of care. It’s a social worker’s responsibility to drag those things out of you and I feel bad about that now.

  When you had both your children, that’s when I knew you weren’t really coping and then we had a lot of telephone conversations through the years. I thought you had support. You said you asked for support and then I made sure that someone was coming to see you.

  When you asked me when I was going to see you, I felt a responsibility to come. I wanted to see you in your house but I felt there wasn’t much I could do. You were telling me things but not the most important things – that you were still this little girl who walked into the police station asking for help all those years ago. In fact, we had a laugh when I visited, you were a ball of sunshine, bursting with energy, although you did say you thought you needed to be a young person, but had found yourself in an adult role as a mother. I know you needed to be out there being young. What I didn’t know was how important I was to you. I thought it was important we spoke, but I never analysed it. From what you told me, I thought you had a certain level of support and I thought that was enough, but I suppose I questioned myself over the years – whether it was right for me to be in a friendship with you. You were resilient but I could see your vulnerability.

  Hope: What kept me resilient was the love and care of other people in my life. I got angry with them when I felt they were making the wrong decisions; they weren’t horrible people. I needed and wanted people in my life and the love outweighed all of the strife. You gave me so much. Do you think I broke professional boundaries?

  Sharon: We’d already gone past that. It was no longer to do with social work. It just happens that we met each other through social work. That’s why I didn’t feel too overwhelmed because I had made that choice. I had a good feeling about you. You trust people first and then see if that trust is borne out through actions. Often it’s the other way around. Both of us trusted our feelings.

  Hope: When we first met, I thought you were so cool. I had gone from a ‘typical’ social worker – white, middle class, bead necklaces, glasses hanging around her neck and a leather satchel – to you. You were just a few years older than me and beautiful. I did see you as an authority figure but not in a scary or alienating way. I put on a mask and said I was going to get married when I had to leave care because I needed to show the world that I was a responsible woman. I’ve talked a lot in this book about love and a bit about the power of physical touch, but just having a social worker to stay in touch with on the phone can make all the difference. It did to me.

  Sharon: That’s true; it may be nothing more than being available on the other end of the phone and making sure the person has the contacts they need. While it helps if you can ring someone you know, even then you can only get a sense of how that person is. You’ll never really know how they are feeling. You can be alone even if you have people around you. The actor Robin Williams once said that people think that being lonely is the worst thing ever. It’s not; it’s being with someone and being lonely. Your way of coping with that was drinking. I agree that touch is also very important. When I was living alone, a woman across the road there opened up a massage parlour and I used to go over there so I could have a massage. It’s not just about releasing stressed muscles, it’s the healing touch.

  Hope: You can also touch somebody through tone and expression, even on the phone if your tone is right, if you can identify.

  Sharon: If you had been a different person, then the contact we had might not have happened. But it felt good to me, because you had so much positive energy. It was very important for you to have contacts like me and I understood that, and there was no risk for me that I could see. There could have been if you’d become mentally ill and told people that we’d crossed professional boundaries. And if y
ou said something that suggested you were going to hurt yourself or someone else, then I’d have had to ring social services. Each county needs a service that has support workers to help young people when they leave care. Incidents might still occur, but there’d be a lot less of them.

  Hope: I didn’t drink when I was pregnant with either of my babies. It wasn’t out of concern for their health; I would love to say that. The midwife told me to drink some Guinness as that’s supposed to be full of iron [this isn’t true, it’s got a microscopic amount of iron] and I couldn’t keep it down. My body just rejected it. I always drank to get drunk. When I got my files and I was with Dan and had the children and my home, that was when it hit me really hard and I totally embraced alcohol to get through the emotions that came flooding back. I needed to blank it all out. That’s when the alcoholism progressed. I was clinically depressed. The outreach worker would come around and the kids would let her in. I’d be lying on the sofa, not saying anything. She got me to the doctor. That is why I am so hot on what I need to do to stay in recovery. When depression strikes I withdraw and don’t talk to people and I believe the thoughts that tell me I’m a piece of shit. So many people in recovery suffer from clinical depression. I believe I was born with the ability to bounce back, and I’m lucky that the people in my life have nurtured this ability to the point where I won’t allow the depression to take over without doing something about it.

  Sharon: There are days, aren’t there? When we feel so alone, looking at a grey, sad world.

  Hope: But as long as there’s love . . .

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First off, thank you to my beautiful agent, Rebecca Winfield; my goodness, girl, you’ve got your work cut out with me! I cannot fail to share my absolute gratitude to my loyal editor, Kerri Sharp, and publicists Helen and Sam, who, as always, have taken my disorganisation in their stride.

  My thanks as always have to go to my family – I know you ‘lose’ me while I’m writing these books, but thank you so much for understanding why I feel compelled to deliver these stories.

  Lastly, my thanks to all of the contributors who have so kindly agreed to share their stories. While I have changed details to protect them, the facts remain true.

  I hope I have remained true to your histories as I promised I would.

  Finally, for those interested in the psychology of addiction, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Gabor Mate (M.D) (Random House Canada, 2013) is probably the definitive scientific account and was most helpful to me when writing the chapter entitled ‘The Love Addiction’.