Italian
Renata speaks softly, but every word carries a world within it. In her eyes you can read the weariness of someone who has fought silent battles, but also the pride of someone who has chosen not to give up. It’s the story of a mother who watched her son slip into alcoholism, and who today speaks not only of pain, but also of rebirth.
“I don’t know how I managed to hold on,” she confesses. “But I do know that without Al-Anon, I wouldn’t be here talking about it. There I found a place where I could finally breathe, where I didn’t have to pretend to be okay.”
She first joined the group five and a half years ago. At the beginning, she attended the meetings with suspicion: she listened, observed, without saying a word. Then she began to recognize herself in the stories of others. “At first I thought: the problem is only my son’s. Then I realized that I too was a prisoner. I was living his illness as if it were mine. I hadn’t noticed that I was forgetting to live.”
The turning point came with the work on the program’s tools and the help of her sponsor. “I started to take inventory of my life. I dug into the past, faced the wounds of my childhood, the silences, the misunderstandings. I realized that for years I had been a doormat, that I thought only of saving others. But me? I was no longer there.”
While Renata was confronting herself, her son was trying to break free from alcohol. Two rehab communities, hospital stays, attempts at recovery, relapses. “Each time I hoped it was the last, that he would make it. Then everything would start all over again. I was exhausting myself trying to save him, but it was useless. Until one day I understood that I had to say enough.”
That word—enough—was the hardest act of her life. “I closed the door of my house on him. I told him: you’re not coming back home. It was like tearing my heart out, but I knew that if I kept protecting him, he would never learn to walk on his own.”
With time, and with the help of skilled social workers, her son began living in a small apartment. “He was faced with his responsibilities. I had taken away his crutches. I couldn’t live his life for him. He had to do it himself.”
Today, Renata doesn’t hide the truth: “My son hasn’t stopped drinking. But I am no longer the same woman I was. I no longer live only for him. I’ve understood that my happiness doesn’t depend on his choices. I have one life, and I don’t want to waste it.”
The change has touched the whole family. Her daughter and son-in-law started attending Al-Anon, and even her granddaughters found a place in Alateen. “When I saw them enter the group for the first time, without me pushing them, I was moved to tears. I realized that my change was causing something to blossom in others too.”
Even her husband, though not always participating, has felt the reflection of this transformation. “There’s no need to force anyone. I bring home the serenity I receive from the group, and he feels it. The difference is in the atmosphere: before we lived crushed by the problem, now we breathe different air.”
Today Renata speaks with a new, almost radiant strength. “Every time I go to Al-Anon I bring home a gift. It’s like a breath of fresh air. I never leave without having learned something. And what I receive I cannot keep only for myself: it’s impossible not to share this joy.”
Then her message becomes direct, almost like an embrace for those suffering today what she suffered yesterday:
“Don’t give in. Don’t think that the alcoholic’s life is your life. We family members can be reborn, even if the other doesn’t stop drinking. I understood this thanks to Al-Anon. And that’s where my rebirth began.”
Thank you, Renata.
