By Nikki Blankenship
Audio Assist Version
For Kelsea Silvia, a treatment specialist at STAR Community Justice Center, the recovery community has always been her safe place, a place for her to turn even when she didn’t know what else to do.
Silvia grew up with two addicted parents. When she was almost five and about to start school, Silvia remembers her aunt coming to see her parents. She explained that the young Silvia needed a stable place to grow up. When she asked that Silvia’s parents allow their daughter to leave home and live with her, they agreed. That was the first time Silvia remembers her parents leaving her life. Both were in active addiction.
“They kinda just did their own thing,” Silvia explained looking back.
Living with her aunt, Silvia had everything she needed. Her aunt had never been a drug user, was pretty conservative and encouraged Silvia to do well in school and to be active in sports. Still, Silvia says life was difficult. She struggled with her own identity, trying to determine what kind of person she wanted to be, if she was more like her aunt or her parents, and what kind of people she wanted for friends.
“A lot of people didn’t want their kids to hang out with me,” Silvia stated.
Even though she was living a healthy childhood in a safe environment, people knew who her parents were and treated her differently as a result.
Though her aunt tried hard to give her some normalcy, Silvia says her parents were always in and out of her life. While she lived with her aunt, Silvia would still visit her parents and try to have a relationship with them. Then, when she was only 8-years-old, her mother went to prison.
“It was the second time that she disappeared for a while,” Silvia stated about her mom.
The second time turned into a third and fourth. Every time that Silvia thought things were going to get better, she was let down.
Eventually, Silvia’s mom got out of prison. That stay was not very long. When her mom got out, Silvia was excited for another chance at a relationship with her parents. Then, when she was 9, Silvia’s mom went back to prison after a meth lab explosion.
Having a relationship with her father had always been a little bit easier. Her aunt was her father’s sister, lessening the barrier between her and her father. However, the relationship with her mother was always a little more difficult. No matter how difficult the relationship, Silvia never stopped wanting it.
“My aunt was amazing. She did so much for me,” Silvia explained. “But, I never stopped wanting them (her parents), and their attention.”
Going into her sixth grade year, Silvia once again saw a chance at a life with her mom. Another prison sentence had passed, and her mom was home again. That year Silvia played softball, and her mom had been coming to some of her games. Silvia explained that her aunt had also been letting her go stay with her mom for a few hours at a time. Still only in middle school, Silvia thought her mom was doing better. After a game, she asked her aunt for permission to stay all night with her mom, but her aunt refused.
“I really wanted this,” Silvia stated.
She argued with her aunt until finally her aunt told her that if she went to stay all night with her mom, then she was not getting picked back up. That night, Silvia moved in with her mom for the first time since she was just a small child. Though Silvia says that she could see that there were some very serious issues, at first she was happy. She was bonding with her mom and felt like they were so alike.
“I thought she was really cool,” Silvia explained.
The 11-year-old had very little structure. She was left at home alone late at night, was allowed to have boys over and could bring her friends to her new party house, where she and her friends could do all the things they couldn’t do anywhere else.
“Even though I noticed what was going on wasn’t right, I loved it for a little bit,” Silvia commented.
The fun, however, soon wore off, and the situation became very scary. Silvia found out her mom was pregnant with her little brother and was shooting up heroin throughout the pregnancy. There were also always people in and out of her house.
“It was pretty much like a trap house,” Silvia recalled.
The young girl would fight with her mom, begging her to stop using drugs while pregnant. Silvia feared the drugs were going to hurt her unborn brother.
“I knew it was wrong,” she said, but her mom would tell her that she was just a child and didn’t understand -- something she heard a lot those days.
When it came time for her baby brother to be born, Silvia fought to be in the room during his delivery. She was worried he would be born addicted.
“It was such a traumatic experience,” Silvia remembered.
But, her baby brother was okay. Somehow, he was not born addicted to drugs. He was healthy. Still, that soon changed. Silvia’s mom was breastfeeding, which had always been very important to her. Newborn Bryce become colicky. When taken to his pediatrician, the doctor informed Silvia’s mother that the baby was becoming addicted through the breastmilk. She had to stop nursing the infant.
Silvia remembers taking care of her little brother a lot during the first year of his life. Her mom was staying out late at nights partying. The fun was certainly over now. Silvia no longer liked having her friends come over, embarrassed that her mom would come home high and nodding out or sick. And taking care of a newborn at only 11-years-old was a difficult responsibility.
After nearly a year of living with her mom, Silvia knew something had to change. One night, the middle schooler had been up taking care of her baby brother while he was sick. He only had a snotty nose, but the young Silvia was so scared. She feared he couldn’t breathe. Anxiously, she waited for her mother to come home. It got later and later, and Silvia was more and more scared for the infant. When her mom finally came home, an argument erupted. Silvia was stressed, tired and needed her mom to be a mom. Meanwhile, her mom just kept telling her she didn’t understand. That night Silvia decided she could no longer stay there. She took her baby brother up to her room and said goodbye to the little guy.
“That was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” Silvia commented. “I knew I had to leave him there, and I couldn’t stay.”
The next morning, Silvia got up for school. Before leaving, she tried to wake up her mom and tell her goodbye. Still high from the night before, her mom did not understand. She told her daughter that she would see her when she got home. As soon as Silvia got to school, she went to the office and called her dad. He was also in active addiction and living with his mom. He immediately picked her up from school. At her grandmother’s house, Silvia explained what she had been living through over the past year, and she pleaded for a place to stay and a chance for her baby brother. Her dad explained that there was no way she could move in with him, there was no room for her. He encouraged her to call her aunt.
Silvia had not spoken to her aunt the entire time that she lived with her mom. She felt guilty for the way she had left and worried about how her aunt would react to her call. Of course, her aunt let her come home. Still, the relationship was damaged. Anytime they would argue, Silvia said her aunt would worry that she would leave again. And, as a young adolescent, Silvia said she would want to leave sometimes. Angry, she would wish she could leave and live with her parents, but Silvia also knew that she could not.
“Having that structure was also hard. I wanted it, but I didn’t,” Silvia stated.
After Silvia returned to her aunt’s, she did not hear from her mom again for a while. Her mom didn’t even look for her when she did not come home from school. Within days of leaving, Silvia heard that her mom and her mother’s boyfriend had stolen checks and taken off to Florida with Silvia’s little brother. She remembers being very nervous, worrying about the baby she had spent so much time caring for. Then, out-of-the-blue, Silvia got a call at her aunt’s. Her mom called and acted like nothing had happened. She simply stated that she was in town if Silvia would like to visit her brother.
When Silvia saw her mom, she remembers her being very thin and looking sick.
“That was the worst I ever saw my mom,” she explained.
Soon after, Silvia’s mom took Bryce, only two at the time, and went into treatment at Stepping Stone in Portsmouth.
“That was my first experience with treatment,” Silvia explained.
Previously, she had not known recovery was even a possibility. She didn’t know there was anything that could be done for her or her parents.
“I didn’t even know there was an answer,” Silvia stated.
At first, she was hesitant. Silvia did not see her mom much during the first six months. Then, over time, she started going to see both her mom and Bryce. Immediately, she noticed a change. Silvia’s parents had used her entire life. She had never seen this side of her mom.
“When she got clean, it was like meeting someone for the first time,” Silvia said.
She started going with her mom to meetings and other events. Recovery became a way of life. Finally, Silvia felt like she knew who she was and where she belonged. She was still living with her aunt and trying to rebuild a life with her mom. Sometimes that even involved being secretive about time with her mother. Looking back, Silvia explained that she knew treatment was for her mom, but she also became very attached to the people and the programs.
“At that point, recovery for me was a safe place,” Silvia stated. “I would’ve rather gone to an NA dance than a high school dance.”
Though her relationship with her mom was finally growing into something healthy, her dad was still struggling with his drug habit. After she got her driver’s license, Silvia became an enabling daughter. She would pick up her dad and give him rides whenever he asked, even when he needed a ride to the hospital because he had MRSA (a bacterial infection that is more difficult to treat than staph) from intravenous drug use.
Seeing all that treatment had done for her mom, Silvia pushed recovery on her dad. She had two siblings on her dad’s side, a brother and sister. With her older brother also in active addiction, Silvia knew something had to be done. She took a photo of her with her sister and a poem to her dad for Christmas. At that time, she sat down with her father and explained that she loved him but that she was going to need to distance herself if he would not get help. He did. He went into recovery at New Beginnings in Piketon. He completed treatment and stayed sober. Silvia felt relief and hope. Both of her parents were clean. She went away to college in Cincinnati, was working and was engaged to be married. Then, during her first year of college, Silvia got a call while a work saying that her mom had relapsed. Once again, this was a new experience she did not understand. She didn’t know people relapsed. She thought her parents were healed. They were better. Her mom had been sober for several years and had been working as a drug counselor. And, she wasn’t just any counselor. Silvia’s mom was the person who dragged others to treatment and helped others rebuild their lives. All of the times that her mom had apologized for things that she had done during active addiction, Silvia had told her mom to do it for Bryce. Bryce was so young when his mom got sober, that he would not remember the traumatic times. But now, he was older. Silvia knew what a life he could expect.
“I was so disappointed in my mom,” Silvia stated.
Silvia even told her mom not to come to her wedding. After Silvia got married, things got harder. She was not happy in her marriage. When times were the most difficult, Silvia wished she was not so mad at her mom so that she could call her. Once again, she realized that she never stopped wanting and needing her parents.
Then, during December of 2017, Silvia was called to the hospital because her older brother had died at 35 of an overdose. She arrived at the hospital before even her dad. She really needed her mom now.
“The night my brother passed away, I called her from the hospital,” Silvia stated.
She told her mom that she needed her and begged her to do better and to get help, which her mom promised to do. Soon, her dad was using again as well. He had Silvia’s older brother when he was just a teenager himself. They had grown up together and used together. Silvia’s dad went back to using pain pills, but he would justify his drug use by saying he wasn’t using heroin or shooting up. Once again, Silvia had two parents in active addiction, and she was dealing with the loss of her brother.
Two weeks after her brother died, Silvia got a call while at work saying that her mom had overdosed and wrecked her car. On the way to the hospital, Silvia made up her mind that she would love her mom no matter what. She was again going to encourage treatment, but she would love her mom even if she refused recovery.
When Silvia arrived at the hospital, she was angry. She had just lost her brother, who had been her mom’s step-son for many years. When she tried to explain this to her mom, her mom responded by asking why he had to die and she had to live.
“That was the lowest I had ever seen her. That’s when I saw how sick she was. She was my best friend, and she never wanted to hurt me,” Silvia stated.
Her mom just struggled to love herself.
Silvia said she had to set boundaries with both of her parents. She would love them regardless but at a distance. She could not be the enabling daughter.
Silvia’s mom did go back to treatment. While there, Silvia would take Bryce to see her.
“We had the best eight months,” she explained.
Bryce was living with their grandmother, where he stayed even after his mom completed treatment. Silvia’s mom moved to Columbus and instantly got a job working in drug treatment again. She was also working a second job and living with Silvia’s father’s family as a way to escape the environment where her drug addiction had flourished.
“When we were together, I knew if something was wrong,” Silvia explained as she added that with the distance it was harder to know if her mom was using.
On Nov. 2, 2018, Silvia planned to visit her mom for her birthday, but her mom had to work late. Her late brother would have celebrated his birthday on Nov. 4, the first since he had died. The day after, Silvia’s mom called to check on her. Silvia explained that her mom was crying and exhausted. She was frustrated with fighting life and felt like it never went right, even when she was sober. Silvia tried to talk her mom into moving home where she had a support system, family and her recovery family. Silvia said that her mom agreed to move back with her next paycheck, but that day never came. The following morning, Silvia got another call at work, this time from her dad’s family in Columbus saying that her mom was gone. At first, Silvia thought her mom had just ran off again. That had happened so many times before. Not this time. This time she was really gone. Silvia then had the responsibility of going to tell her grandma and the rest of her family. As hard as it had been for 11-year-old Silvia to have to tell her newborn brother goodbye when she knew she had to leave him behind, telling him his mom was dead was worse.
“Nothing compared to having to pick him up from school and tell him that,” Silvia explained.
Bryce, then 11, had been through everything with his mom starting with Stepping Stones when he was just a baby. He didn’t understand.
“Did she not love me?” Silvia remembers him asking.
“I don’t want him to think that,” Silvia said. “Mom loved him. It wasn’t about her love for him. It was about her not loving herself.”
Silvia was only 22 and planning her mother’s funeral. She was comforted by at least knowing what her mother wanted. When her older brother had died, no one was prepared. No one had planned for him to die at such a young age. Fearing that would happen, when her mom was hospitalized Silvia had asked her mom what to do if this tragedy happened. Though her mom insisted she was not going to die, Silvia persisted until she was given some death wishes.
“I really wanted that little bit of security of knowing what she wanted,” Silvia stated.
387 people attended the funeral, nearly all of which were from the recovery community. Silvia explained that person after person would come up and explain that they would not be alive, in treatment or sober if not for her mom. Silvia heard stories of how her mom would go pick girls up off the streets and refuse to leave if they did not get in the car with her and go to treatment. For the first time, Silvia saw how much of an impact her mom had on the lives of others, despite the mistakes she had made and continued to make in her own life until her death.
Even after losing her mom, Silvia’s dad was not ready to get help. He was still excusing his behavior by saying he was only using pain pills. Then, he called Silvia at work, begging her to pick him up because his girlfriend had kicked him out and he was going to be homeless. He told Silvia he wanted her to take him to family in Adams County, family that was using. She told her dad she was coming, but was really unsure how to proceed.
“I knew that would be a disaster, and I was really tired at that point,” she explained.
Before picking him up, Silvia called a man who worked in treatment and had been a friend of her mom. He immediately agreed to meet her and go with her to pick up her dad. With her dad in the car, the two started talking to him about getting help. Silvia’s dad didn’t want help. He even asked what if he went but decided to leave. He didn’t leave though. He completed treatment and is currently in transitional living.
“He’s doing really well,” she explained as she added that even after hernia surgery, he took Tylenol instead of his pain pills.
Looking back, Silvia remembers her mom always saying that as long as a person has a breath in their lungs, there is hope. Through her mom, she says she has seen that even without a breath in their lungs, a person can bring hope, hope for all the people their lives, their story can impact.
Silvia explained that the best thing about living through all that she has is the people that she has met through the recovery community, people that have always been there for her in the hardest of times.
Now, Silvia dedicates her life to helping others through the trauma of addiction. In addition to working at STAR, Silvia is now part of the Recovery Council, made up of several members of the recovery community. Each year, she holds a recovery event in memory of her mom and also helps to chair Directly Affected -- a peer support group for children of addiction. She explained that she feels so strongly about this group because she could’ve benefited by having that support and connection with other kids when she was growing up feeling scared and isolated. Through her story, Silvia tries to continue to bring hope to others, like her mom had done during sobriety. More specifically, she fights to bring hope to the lives of others growing up in the same darkness she experienced, other children of addiction.
Scioto County’s Children of Addiction is a continuing series highlighting the struggles young people face everyday as they try to cope with trauma of growing up during the drug epidemic.
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