She's Got Baggage....

As far as she knew, no one could tell.

She never considered that the dysfunction in her family was anything more than an inconvenience—something she had managed to escape unscathed.Her brothers were both addicts. At every family gathering or during late-night, soul-searching conversations with friends, she was asked the same questions: “What happened to them? Why didn’t you fall down that rabbit hole? You’ve had to be so strong!”

She, too, bought into that story—for a very long time—chalking it up to their bad choices and bad genes.

But along came therapy.

Turns out, she’s got baggage…

Meet Lola—my baggage handler. She’s the part of me that took charge to make sure I looked like a fully functioning adult on the outside, she did so well she even fooled me. Lola’s suitcase is filled with clever strategies: people-pleasing to avoid conflict, distractions to dodge discomfort, and even stirring up drama just to feel something familiar.

I grew up in a family that appeared perfectly lovely—and to be fair, there were many lovely parts about my family. There was also addiction, the kind no one talked about. It simply existed, quietly embedded in the fabric of our lives as it slowly took hold of all of us in some form of fashion.

As we grew up and both of my brothers began struggling with substance abuse, the bar for being the “golden child” was set remarkably low. I thought I was winning at life. What I didn’t realize was that I had simply adopted a different set of coping mechanisms—ones that were harder to spot but no less destructive.

Did you grow up thinking you were “fine”—only to realize later you were just managing life really well but not really living it?