This was written after sitting with a mother, as she tried to explain how she feels living through another day of her daughter’s addiction, and was first shared in December 2007. I am posting it again, because there have been several people that have recently shared stories of addiction that they are facing in their families. This is an issue that touches far too many lives. Dedicated to every family out there who is loving their child through this struggle… ~carrie Forever When you love, with this kind of love, you love forever. Through all of it… the unexpected, the uneventful, the unimaginable, the unseen. Through the surprises, through the years, it continues to grow. When you think you can’t grow any more, or you can’t give anymore, somehow (miraculously) you do. Ripping you apart to make room for a bigger heart, it takes everything you have, and when that is still not enough… you find more, scraping it up from places inside you you never knew you had. It isn’t always (ever) the image you were hoping for, but it’s yours. All of it, is yours. When you love, you love forever, through all of it… the uncensored, the unedited, the unplanned. Surviving more than you ever thought you could bear. Holding on through countless moments when you feel like you could just fold under the weight of it. You can’t believe that you found a way to breathe through another day. But, somehow you do it. Quietly, miraculously, and imperfectly, but you do it. Nobody outside of this gets it, because how do you say all this? How do you begin to explain to someone that doesn’t understand the “how’s” or the “why’s” of your world? If they aren’t living it, then they often just don’t get it. You’re tired and you don’t have the energy to make them understand. So, you don’t. But, if you had a chance to reach them, and if you had the chance to help them understand it all, what you’d say is so simple… When you love like this, you love forever, and you love through it all. That’s just how it is. ~