Carrie Link

COMEBACK

This is the book I'm reading right now, a memoir by Claire and Mia Fontaine, mother and daughter, and their journey into hell and back as Mia goes deep into drugs and Claire yanks her out and puts her into an intensive year-long program in the Czech Republic.

It's riveting. As my daughter is on the cusp of becoming 14, this topic is of particular interest to me. What I am finding to be fascinating is the approach the program takes with the kids, military-like obedience, discipline, accountability and an in-your-face self-awareness process.

And what is double extra intriguing to me is that the same in-your-face self-awareness process is used on the parents. Some of the things they beat into the parents are:

THERE ARE NO ACCIDENTS - results never lie. Your results will always tell you what your real intentions are, or were, consciously or not.

What are you pretending to not know? You always KNOW.

Silence is the biggest power play there is.

They go on and on about SLBs, Self Limiting Behaviors, to both the kids and parents. And, like they say, results never lie. They get results. Dramatic results. They know that if the kids do all the hard work to "reform" and come home to the same dynamics, they will be sabotaged, so they make the parents change too. Imagine that? One guess who has the harder time changing.

I "took off" to find myself last summer, "left" my daughter and "just took off," and got a lot of heat about it. A. Lot. I maintained it was largely FOR her I was doing it. If I didn't discover myself, I was leaving her the legacy of figuring out MY mother, me, AND her, at least, and that just didn't seem like a fair load to dump on your first born. Society didn't agree with me, and society let me hear it. My daughter though? She was pretty cool with it.

With the help of a few key friends and the process of memoir writing, I got in my own face to discover my SLBs. I'm sure I missed a few, but I got the biggies. When I came home I was keenly aware of my SLBs, and have worked hard (some would say to the exclusion of all else) to eradicate them.

My daughter and me? Our story is far from over, but I do believe well begun is half done, and I look towards the rest of her teenage years with hope and eager anticipation. I know who I am. I know why I tend to do what I tend to do, and I try hard to catch myself doing it. If my mother had done this for herself, I would have had a huge head start. That's OK, she did the best she could, I know that for sure. But I know better, and am trying to do better. I hope that by the time my daughter is a mother she will know "best," and show "best" to her daughter.

Good, better, best.

Things are moving in the right direction.