tragedy changed me. before things had gone south with our oldest daughter, i was a different person. i used to laugh so easily, and always found a reason to smile. i was definitely an extrovert and had loved being social. i loved trying new things and was always up for an adventure. i had loved scrapbooking and making homemade cards.

then we walked through years of hell with our oldest daughter. years into our struggles with her, depression became a very real part of my life. i tried to ignore it. to pretend like everything was ok. but eventually, i had become a spectator in my own life. i wasn’t participating in my life, i was merely watching my life go by. when it got to the point where my husband had to coax me out of bed in the mornings, i finally agreed to see my doctor. having watched my mom deal with clinical depression for years, i was terrified of what might happen if I didn’t seek help. thankfully, i had an amazing doctor who found the right medication for me, and after being on it for a couple of months, i eventually began to feel like myself once again. almost.

you see, the medication didn’t take the depression away. it took the edge off and helped me be able to get up in the morning. i began participating in my life once again, and was able to be present in my children’s lives.

but i was different. the trauma of losing my daughter to mental illness had left its mark. over time, i began to realize that i had become an introvert. i began to enjoy staying home over socializing. i still spent time with friends, but crowds were no longer my thing. laughing didn’t come as easy as before. it was as if i had become someone else.

like a part of me was broken and would never be the same.

13 years ago, our family went through a serious trauma. our oldest daughter walked out, and never looked back. there was some mental illness involved, but mostly just a rebellious girl who hated any form of authority. i never knew the meaning of the word “narcissist” until she left and i had had time to reflect back on the past 7 years of our lives. the behavior started when she hit junior high. the rebellious attitude. the adamant refusal to listen to anything my husband or i said. but the worst part was when she began emotionally abusing my younger kids. it was subtle at first. her claiming to love them, yet insisting they do exactly what she says. if they didn’t, she’d withhold affection from them and treat them bad.

when she started high school, the behavior became so much worse. we would constantly catch her in lies, and she would deny any negative behavior. by the time we’d reached her senior year of high school, our home was a living hell. she manipulated each and everyone member of our family. we were beside ourselves. we saw no way out. i felt like i was “the other woman” in my own home, because she would try to over rule any and all things i would say to my younger kids. it really was a hopeless situation. it reached a point where my younger kids were afraid to “disobey” her because behind our backs she would threaten to hurt them if they did. sadly, my husband and i weren’t aware of this until after the fact.

one afternoon, halfway through her senior year, she informed us she was leaving. she packed a bag, and had a girl we’d never met come pick her up. and she left.

that day was the first day of a long, long journey to finally having peace in our home. the year following her departure was filled with her jumping from one home to the next. her choosing homelessness at times over accepting the help that was being offered to her. she manipulated every new “friend” she’d met, until she finally had no one. we allowed her to come back home at one point when she’d found herself homeless with nowhere to go. she stayed with us for three months. those were, by far, the longest three months of my life.

having been out of the house for so many months, she had clearly developed an attitude of “I will do whatever I want, whenever I want, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” her behavior towards my younger kids was unbelievable. we couldn’t leave her alone with them. EVER. we couldn’t leave her alone in our house, because she thought nothing of inviting her scary and untrustworthy “friends” into our home. it got to a point where she would cry “wolf” and claim to have overdosed on her meds. only for us to find out that she hadn’t. we spent thousands of dollars trying to get her the mental help she needed. and no matter what we did, she’d lie and manipulate us time and time again. it finally reached a point where her psychiatrist insisted that she admit herself to the psychiatric ward, or she would do it for her. the psychiatrist herself had caught my daughter lying and had experienced her manipulation firsthand.

it was at this point that my husband and i realized that she could no longer live in our home. we had tried everything to help her and to make it work having her home, but we finally realized that we couldn’t help someone who didn’t want help. even her doctors suggested that she’d need to learn the hard way. we also had to consider the fact that we had four young children at home who needed our love and protection. it wasn’t fair to continue to let our oldest daughter destroy our family. thankfully, the hospital staff understood our situation and agreed to help get our daughter into a transitional living program, and encouraged us that we were doing the right thing. walking out of that hospital knowing that she’d never be coming home with us again was both devastating to me as well as a relief.

the hospital staff lived up to their promises and got her into a transitional living program. but it didn’t last. she refused to follow the rules. no surprise there.

letting go of my daughter and moving forward with my life was so hard. i felt so much guilt as as a mom. i felt like such a failure. that is, until our younger kids finally opened up and told us all the hateful threats she’d made towards them. and they shared how scared they were to come to us, even though they had wanted to. it was then that i realized we’d made the right decision not letting her come home.

within months of her leaving, we saw a dramatic change in our younger kids. they began to laugh and play together, and they started cuddling with my husband and i more than they ever had before. our home became a safe haven for all of us.

sadly, it took hard decisions and devastation circumstances for our family to finally have peace.