Growing up with an alcoholic parent leaves marks that are hard to name: the unpredictability, the careful walking on eggshells, the sense that you must never make things worse. You may have left home years ago, yet something still guides your steps — a need to control, to over-explain, to brace yourself before answering the phone. This book is for the adult child who has spent a lifetime trying to make sense of it. It does not assume you should reconcile, and it does not assume you should stay away. It describes what childhood in an alcoholic household actually does — the habits, the roles, the beliefs you absorbed — and helps you see which of them are still running your life today. Written without diagnosis or blame, it walks through contact decisions, estrangement, grief, and the practical realities of family occasions, and names the kinds of services that can help if things become unsafe. Whatever you decide, and however often you change your mind, you get to choose your own way forward. Part of The Estrangement Library.
About the author
Marielle Ashcroft Bevington writes for The Estrangement Library.
