 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 going to get to know me a little bit better but 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. Two 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 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 going to 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 alright spoiler alert for those of you who don't know my mom was just in a video I did yesterday I think she's coming up on 13 years sober alright so I just want to get that out of the way but 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 on 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 holidays so we're talking about Thanksgiving and Christmas and she met my stepdad 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 Thanksgiving's 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 like as I got older when I became like I don't know middle school high school age there were times where 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 and I got I would get fed up with it and I just wouldn't go visit her I remember somewhere around high school there was like a year or two where I just went without 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 and I got I got older and because my mom was an alcoholic 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 and you know I thought I was gonna marry this girl and all sorts of stuff and I just didn't want to feel anything I I never knew how to handle my emotions I was always anxious or depressed or angry and the first time I drank I was like 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 and real quick I'm gonna pause right there 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 addicts or alcoholics 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 like I often 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 it'll 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 and 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 like I remember she said at a hotel here in Vegas not far from our apartment and she came by the apartment and like she came in and there was just alcohol bottles everywhere and beer cans 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 uh this bar across the street from my house because here in Las Vegas they're 24 hours and they have cooks 24 hours so we went 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 my mom sat down and she apologized to me she apologized to me for everything she's done and you know my childhood and her being an alcoholic and everything and I'm just like whatever because 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 um later on I found out she was doing her ninth step with me all right she was making an amends with me and that's really interesting you know someone making their ninth step to their son who is getting drunk at like seven 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 and 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 um 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 where 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 I'll link it in the description it it's pretty much my story of addiction and recovery so if you want all the deeds like go ahead and check out the book or go to my website and you can get a free copy anyways back to the story so my mom ended up um saving my life and I got sober and I was so mad at her um 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 this and you know she helped me get sober and I went into sober living for a few months and then I ended up moving with my mom and 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 about it 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 had so much anger towards my mom but I remember just seeing 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 her 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 I 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 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 and basically what I what I found was like okay so look at me I mean I was an alcoholic a drug addict and stuff why did that happen because of my childhood right and I blame my mom well I had 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 and honest she's like I don't give a crap right so my mom's awesome 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 of the jokes that come along with that but my mom is attracted to 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 two fake front teeth right and just so you know like my mom ain't no punk like my mom wasn't just getting whooped out like my mom was a scrapper so she fought she beat some 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 inward lover and all this like this is what my mom dealt with in her childhood then going home my mom is Sicilian my grandpa is Sicilian my grandpa is way more accepting now but back then you know it wasn't okay for my mom to date African American men my my mom was beat by my by my grandpa like I remember my mom telling me stories they were like beat with a hose my mom would like step up to my grandpa when like 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 um 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 happened through my mom's life like I look at I'm 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 helped save my life so like this is what helped me heal and process this stuff is that I realized 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 this is 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 um 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 and I started to notice this pattern right like my day's going great anytime 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 and 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 share that as part of this story is sometimes you have to take a break and heal 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 like it 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 um she calls me for advice I call her for advice she's a psychologist she has a phd in psychology um 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 our relationship is amazing today and that's why I want to give you some hope but like that hope is like we a lot of times we expect the other person to do all the all the work we want the other person to grovel and apologize and forgive like it's my mom's coming up on 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 uh 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 longer than I expected 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 new I'm always making videos to try to help you out with your mental health make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell and a huge thank you to everybody supporting the channel over on patreon you help me do something I love which is help others with their mental and emotional well-being and look there's some new names on the patreon list if you would like to become a patreon supporter just click or tap on that link right there you can do it for as little as a dollar a month all right that's all I got for you thanks again for watching I'll see you next time