95: Growing Up With Parents Struggling With Addiction and Dissociative Identity Disorder

Suzzette grew up in a family where addiction, mental illness, violence, and instability existed alongside a lot of love. Her father struggled with heroin addiction, her mother battled cancer and dissociative identity disorder, and much of what was happening inside their home became normal to her simply because it was all she knew. As a teenager, things reached a breaking point when her father and older brother were arrested, her mother disappeared, and Suzzette and her younger brother were left behind in a home that had been taken over by strangers.

Years later, after losing her father, mother, and eventually her older brother, Suzzette began therapy and started looking back at her childhood with a completely different understanding. She had to untangle the complicated reality of loving her family deeply while also recognizing the ways their choices shaped her anxiety, relationships, coping mechanisms, and sense of what was normal. She opens up about the guilt she still carries over believing her father instead of her mother, the grief of losing so much of her family, and what it has taken to unlearn the patterns she grew up believing were normal.

Suzzette’s Links:

https://www.instagram.com/suzzettewrites

https://msha.ke/suzzettewrites

https://substack.com/@suzzettewrites

Resources:

Crisis Text Line

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Beyond the Monsters Socials:

https://www.instagram.com/beyondthemonsters

https://linktr.ee/BeyondtheMonsters