Parents & Carers
Parents in Recovery put the information in this section together. Many themselves, have struggled to get to meetings and have not always felt welcome when they have attended with their children. If this has been your experience, we assure you that the love and support is there and you are not alone.
As the NA fellowship continues to grow, many more parents are coming to meetings. As our awareness of the recovering addict’s changing needs is growing, the number of crèches and child friendly meetings is growing with it.
Addiction is a family illness. Many of us have parents who were affected by addiction and through our own disease our children have also suffered. We can often struggle with feelings of remorse, guilt and shame and have difficulty in coping with the responsibility of being a parent.
It is often hard to let go of old relationships; some of our partners are still using and we struggle to maintain a balance between needing help with our kids and protecting ourselves, and our children in recovery.
As a parent or carer, we do have particular needs that other recovering addicts don’t have. This can often make us feel different and separate from our fellow addicts. We need to be extra vigilant and look out for the similarities and not the differences. We need to work hard to avoid isolation, acknowledge our special needs and seek out others who understand our problems. Many of us struggle to put our recovery first, whilst meeting the needs of our family. Sometimes the best decision we can make is to stay home and put our children to bed.
However, our disease is cunning, baffling and powerful and any justifiable excuse to not do what we need to do for our recovery can be dangerous.
If you are a parent or carer in recovery – Welcome. Recovery is progressive too and just as our disease has affected ourselves and our families we assure you that our recovery does too. It gets better.
Our Aims:
- To support every meeting in its primary purpose to carry the message to the addict, including parents and carers, who without help cannot attend meetings regularly.
- To provide support and information to meetings wishing to provide crèche facilities (for example crèche worker contacts, insurance queries etc).
- To raise fellowship-wide awareness for the particular needs of parents in recovery.
- To provide support wherever possible to parents with or without their children.
- To ensure that the NA Website & The Helpline, have up to date and easily accessible lists of all meetings that welcome children or provide crèche facilities.
- To provide a contact person for any parent in need of help or advice.