I know I'm not the only one who had a crappy childhood so in this video I want
to share with you my journey of trying to forgive my alcoholic mom what is up
everybody this is Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the problem but
focus on the solution and if you're new to my channel my channel is all about
mental health and I do my best to try to help you to improve your mental health
so if you're into that kind of stuff make sure you subscribe and ring that
notification bell so I have a ton of new subscribers there have been a lot of
topics that have come up lately and I think this video will summarize a lot of
what people have been asking what people need help with and all of that and a lot
of you are gonna get to know me a little bit better but there's there's a lot
going on so I've made some videos about how your childhood can affect who you
become as an adult using that as a reason but not as an excuse to of the
big things that are important to me and my mental health are forgiveness and
empathy and these are things that took me a very long time to figure out and
it's it's really hard to tell people who are just meeting me that I used to be
the angriest person that you would ever meet I was just constantly and
perpetually angry and a lot of that had to do with
my depression my anxiety my childhood and everything but anyways let me let me
share with you this story it's gonna be kind of long but if you are somebody who
had a bad childhood a rough childhood I hope this video gives you some hope I
hope it helps you heal I hope it gives you some suggestions
so anyways I'm the child of an alcoholic mom all right spoiler alert for those of
you who don't know my mom was just in a video I did like yesterday I think she's
coming up on 13 years sober alright so I just want to get that out of the way
anyways growing up my parents divorced when I was about four years old we lived
in Fresno California they got divorced not long after
I moved in with my dad and he was my primary parent and I would go visit my
mom in the holidays something that just came to mind is that for many many many
years and even to this day I'm not sure but for many years the way I had that
story in my head was I was living with my mom she sent me to go visit my dad
and then she just didn't want me back and I just stayed with my dad so if you
if you imagine that as a five-year-old child like that's something that gets
printed in your brain and something that's come up in my videos recently is
trust issues so like it's important to go through this process and realize like
where these things are coming from so anyways it wasn't long after that
when my mom started drinking heavily so I would go and visit her during the
holiday so we're talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas and she not
too long after they're no longer together that's a whole different story
but yeah I just remember going down there and every time I would go to visit
she was just insanely drunk and my mom was the type of drunk where she was
homicidal or suicidal like she was threatening to stab or kill somebody
else she's this feisty little Sicilian woman or there were times when I was
like seven eight years old and I remember my mom like locking herself in
the bathroom threatening to kill herself and like that's rough that's rough as a
child I remember you know Thanksgivings or Christmas Eve I just remember my mom
getting blackout drunk like these are supposed to be this family time of the
year and my stepdad having to carry my mom's unconscious drunk self to the car
as we drive home and I remember just sitting in the back of the car just
thinking about how much I just hated my life and I hated everything I always was
just like why can't I just have a normal childhood and there were periods of my
life as I got older when I became like I don't know middle school high school age
there were times but I just I just didn't want to visit my mom anymore
I just didn't want to go out there I just didn't understand why she couldn't
love me or why she couldn't stop drinking because of me like doesn't she
care about me enough to just quit I just wouldn't go visit her I remember
somewhere around high school there was like a year or two where I just went
with even talking to her like I just had so
much anger and resentment towards her like I did not understand why this woman
could not quit for me you know because alcohol I swore that I was never gonna
drink or use drugs and at the end of my senior year that's when I got drunk for
the first time because of a breakup I just didn't want to feel anything I
never knew how to handle my emotions I was always anxious or depressed or angry
and the first time I drank I was I oh okay like this gets rid of everything
and that's what started my addiction so I have a ton of other videos like I just
want to kind of give you like a a brief little history of what my life was like
before I started drinking I think it's important to understand two things
statistically children of alcoholics or addicts well let me put it this way
people who have alcohol as their caregiver they have an 80% chance of
becoming an alcoholic or an addict because of their environment there's
also a 50% genetic factor in there so I do a course like at the treatment
centers I work at and like I go through the risk factors and like you can add
all these things up and like I was screwed from the get-go of becoming an
alcoholic or an addict but I do want you to have a little empathy for those of
you who don't struggle with addiction or anything like I just want you to know
again it's a reason but not an excuse a lot of the people who have addictions
had some kind of really bad childhood so there's a story that I don't tell
often and those of you who understand or know about 12-step programs that make
sense to you but when I was in like in deep into my alcoholism was when my mom
got sober and she she wanted to come visit me in Las Vegas I lived in a
little two-bedroom apartment with my roommate and my mom wanted to come visit
me which I thought was weird I'm like okay and her being sober just didn't
really click for me right so she came and visited me and she stayed in a hotel
and she came by the apartment and like she came in and there was just alcohol
bottles everywhere and beer cats everywhere and
her heart must have been breaking you know seeing where I was at and the
morning that she was leaving to go back to California she asked if we can have
breakfast so of course I'm like okay let's go to this this bar across the
street from my house is here in Las Vegas of 24 hours and they have cooks 24
hours so we winter like six or seven in the morning and we go there you know
because of the omelets are really good and like I was I was drunk I was already
drunk and she apologized to me she apologized to me for everything she's
done and you know whatever cuz to me that's something that she always said
she always said that like she would be drunk when I was a kid and apologized to
me so I'm just like whatever later on I found out she was doing her ninth step
with me all right she was making it amends with me and that's really
interesting you know someone making their ninth step to their son who is
getting drunk at like 7:00 in the morning at a bar really weird stuff so
when my son was born a few years later my mom was still sober and she came out
to visit I'm like I don't know I just remember there was this change in her
right she had this kind of glow she kind of had this happiness and peace and
serenity it was like it was like this mom that I hadn't met before but I still
had all of my issues with her like you don't just let go of 20 years of your
life and pretty much hating your mom right so years after that after my life
spiraled out of control my mom's actually the person who saved my life
I'm gonna be linking a bunch of videos in the info card or I've talked a little
bit more in depth about certain sections of my story I also wrote a book like
shameless plug but I wrote a book it's like five dollars on Amazon only get in
the description it's pretty much my story of addiction and recovery so if
you want all the deets like go ahead and check out the book or go to my website
and you can get a free copy anyway back to the story so my mom ended up saving
my life and I got sober and I was so mad at her I remember when they had an
intervention I was just screaming and cussing at her just this is your fault
it's your fault I'm the way I am and I called her all sorts of names that you
should never call anybody you know especially your own mother right and all
and you know she'd help me get sober and I went into sober living for a few
months and then I ended up moving with my mom I was just so angry I was
constantly fighting with her constantly I just had so much anger and I remember
calling people and calling my sponsor and just being like I don't know why I'm
so angry right like all the time so now we're gonna get to this kind of healing
process so one of the things that I learned is just to let go all right and
forgiveness is a huge part of that something I always teach my clients and
it's because it was a huge lesson to me like forgiveness I think I think in our
brains and part of it's our ego we feel that forgiveness is letting the person
off the hook for every terrible thing they've done
I don't think of that battle like that forgiveness is letting me off the hook
it's letting me and myself the sooner I can forgive somebody whether it's my
mother or the person who cut me off on the freeway
the sooner I forgive them and let go I can move on with the rest of my day or
the rest of my life even so that's something that I learned now one thing
that broke my heart so my son was three years old when I got sober and this is
where empathy comes in and I saw I saw people in my mom's life that were just
treating her like garbage right like you know we all get so wrapped up in our own
stuff and I've had so much anger towards my mom but I remember to see people talk
smack to my mom and my mom was seven years sober at this time and people were
still people were still giving her crap about what she did in addition I'm
sitting there like wow like I want people to forgive me for all the
terrible stuff I did in my addiction why why can't I do that for my own mom so
that kind of helped me like empathize with her maybe I sympathize with her you
know but like I knew that I didn't want to be treated like that so that was part
of it which really kind of like I was like you know what maybe I need to start
calming down a little bit now here's the most transformative part
I learned through the program that I work to get sober to to write things
down break things down look at my fears and everything basically what I found
was like okay so look at me why did that happen because of my childhood right I
blame my mom well I have to look at my mom's past okay and this is this is
something I would ask all of you if you have problems with your parents like
look at their past look at their childhood can you empathize so I already
asked my mom like a couple weeks ago when I was starting to plan to make this
video I was like do you care do you care if I'm completely open but so let me put
myself in my mom's shoes real quick so my mom grew up in a time where there was
still a lot of racism okay the 50s the 60s and all that and those of you who
don't know surprise I am half African American yep that's
right my father is black so my mom she as long as I can remember my mom is just
attracted to African American men you know and yes I know all the jokes that
come along with that but my mom is attracted african-american men but
anyways back to the serious note imagine a young white woman growing up in an
area where this stuff isn't really accepted and my mom is only dating black
men my mom got bullied picked on beat up my mom has to fake front teeth right my
mom wasn't just getting whupped on like my mom was a scrapper so she fought she
beats her butt too but like my mom was beaten for who she was attracted to like
that stuff is insane to me right my mom was beaten by people at her school they
called her an n-word lover and all this like this is what my mom dealt with in
her toddler then going home my mom is Cecilia my grandpa is Cecilia like
grandpa is way more accepting now but back then you know it wasn't okay for my
mom that they American men my my mom was beat by my by
my grandpa right I remember my mom telling me stories they were like beat
with a hose my mom would like step up to my grandpa Wayne Knight he was gonna hit
her twin sister or her other siblings like my mom was getting in between that
so like I'm sitting there and I have to look at this like look at the childhood
my mom had right then later on I mentioned this a long time ago in a
video but I'm actually supposed to have a brother who's a year older than me
okay but my mom her and my father's first child he died just a few days
after he was born all right so like after that my mom had a lot of trauma
and panic attacks and so much stuff going on so like when you start to
compound all of this stuff that happens through my mom's life like I look at
them like no wonder why she turned to alcohol like no wonder you know what I
mean and again it's a reason but it's not an excuse but my mom did what so
many people can't do which is get sober and then she helps save my life so like
this is what helped me heal and process this stuff is that I realize like you
know not everything is about me like yes I can sit there and think about my rough
childhood this and this and this but when I can step back and say okay well
her childhood was rough and maybe that's what turned her into the person that she
became that helped me forgive her and today and you know I'm not even gonna
jump to today I will say this I lived with my mom for a while before I moved
back to Las Vegas and I remember this and I just think there's an important
part of the story I remember everything was going great for me I moved back to
Las Vegas I got a job I got a beautiful girlfriend who I felt was way out of my
league I had money in my pocket I was seeing my
son again just all sorts of stuff and my days were going great but then my mom
would call and my day would go to crap I started to notice this pattern right
like my day is going great any time my mom calls me it goes to crap right and I
was like over a year sober my mom was sober eight years at this time
I ended up telling my mom I said mom listen I love you okay but right now I
need to work on some things before me and you can talk I said I need to take a
break so I didn't talk to my mom for a few months why while I worked on myself
all right now me and my mom have an amazing relationship so the reason I
shared that as part of this story is sometimes you have to take a break and
feel like sometimes like I don't think I ever had the proper distance from her to
fully heal like it was a struggle to forgive like all the stuff I was talking
about with her childhood I get made sense but it was hard because she was
constantly in my face but when I was able to just cut her out and just have
my own kind of like space to process and deal with this then it got better today
my mom and I are like best friends she calls me for advice I call her for
advice she's a psychologist she has a PhD in psychology she specializes in
addiction I mentioned this the other day our dream is to someday open a treatment
center together and help people like my mom and I just all relationships amazing
today and that's why I want to give you some hope but like that hope it's like
we a lot of times we expect the other person to do all the other work we want
the other person to grovel and apologize and forgive like it's my mom's coming up
with 13 years sober I'm six years sober there are still people who hold my mom's
addiction over her head right like I had to step back and realize like I have to
put some work into this I have to put some effort into this like they cannot
do all the work there's only so many times a person can say sorry you know
what I mean but I actually get to go and visit my mom this weekend as well as my
father and a bunch of other friends and everything like that
but I really hope this video helped any of you out who had a rough childhood if
you have anybody in your life that you're struggling with forgiving again I
will repeat this one last time forgiveness is not letting the other
person off the hook for what they did forgiveness is letting yourself off the
hook so you can go to sleep at night so you can move on with your day all right
but anyways this video is way long I expect if any of you have any
experiences that you want to share or maybe if you want to leave comments
about how you're struggling to forgive people maybe I can do a follow-up video
about this make sure you leave comments down below all right but that's all I
got for you if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and if you're
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again for watching I'll see you next