Whatever It Takes

She had to choose an instrument for band and all the girls in our small town picked flutes and clarinets but she took one look at the trumpet and it was big and brass and shiny and she said yeah that's it and she had to play it in the back with the boys and she was as loud as they were but this sense of audacious zest. It didn't always lead to admirable behavior. That's Amrie Wilton talking with pride about her precocious and independent daughter Sarah. Welcome to Stories from the Stage, produced by World Channel and WGBH Boston in partnership with MassMath. Each episode ordinary people stand up in front of a live studio audience and tell a story based on a theme. I'm Liz Chang and I am Patricia Alvarado Núñez and we help start stories from the stage. Every month we tape real stories of people from all walks of life. Some are funny, some are sad and Patricia some are very tough to work on yes, Liz. And Marie's story is every parent's nightmare. Oh yes. Starting from when my son was 14 my husband and I were so sure we knew exactly what he was up to even though he liked to test limits turns out we knew about half of what he was up to. I know my husband and I are very close to our neighbors and we want to believe that they are always safe, that they always make the right decisions and that they will never never get into trouble. I know it's naive. You're proud they're growing up and becoming adults but you're also frightened about all the dangers that are out there. So you try to teach them good judgment and offer some boundaries and then you just have to trust them and hope for the best. Unfortunately for some kids a wrong turn could be just around the corner. Here's Anne-Marie Welton an artist and preschool teacher with the rest of the story about her daughter Sarah. When the kindergarten bus pulled up we were ready. My daughter had her blonde hair and two little pigtails and she had on a brand new plaid dress and she grabbed the hand of our next door neighbor and she took a giant step up into the bus and with her back to me she loudly proclaimed we may never see our mothers again. And then the door is shut and I thought what and I watched her as she took her seat and her chin was defiantly raised and she was facing forward and all the other little kids had their noses and their faces pressed up against the glass and they were crying and they were waving. My daughter never looked back as that bus pulled away. I had to smile because she's daring she's dramatic and she's independent. These are difficult things to parent but they led to some real moments of pride. Like in middle school she had to choose an instrument for band and all the girls in our small town picked flutes and clarinets but she took one look at the trumpet and it was big and brass and shiny and she said yeah that's it and she had to play it in the back with the boys and she was as loud as they were but this sense of audacious zest it didn't always lead to admirable behavior. At around the age of 14 she started secretly drinking and by 15 the boys took a real interest in her and they started supplying her with pills older boys and it was Adderall and Suboxone and OxyContin and by 16 she was crushing and snorting these things and by 17 she was injecting heroin and I was desperate to savor. We had three different schools and three years we had family therapists individual therapists AA we had rehab we had detox we had DYS we had DCF we had probation officers and we had jail and I couldn't seem to bring her back to me and around age 18 she went missing for over a week and I thought this is it and one evening I got a text on my phone I flipped it over and it was a picture of my daughter it was her state ID and below it it said is this your daughter and my breath stopped and then the next line dot dot dot quickly came across and it said hurry someone overdosed in this building last night and it left an address and I flew down to New Bedford and I don't even remember driving there but I do know that someone else's life can pass before your eyes when I got there I went straight to the courthouse and I petitioned the judge to have her forcibly committed for drug treatment and the judge agreed and a warrant was issued for her arrest and I sat and I waited and I waited and I waited and the police didn't bring her in so with two hours remaining I jumped up I drove to the police station and I said I'm going to go get her myself and they advised me against it they said if you knock on the door of a drug den no one's going to answer and I said a fine knock and she hears my voice she will answer and I'm going so they accompanied me and we needed two cruisers not one because that's how bad the neighborhood was and when we pulled up everything was just grim it was gray the buildings the chain link fence the sidewalk the sky the trash the people morphed into these shadows and we ran around this building and we could not gain entrance things were boarded up there were staircases missing as we turned the last corner we were met by this really powerfully built woman and she took a look at me and she pointed to the third story and I nodded and wordlessly she turned her attention to this large brass key ring on her hip and she started flipping through the keys in a minute we'll hear what happens next and we did get to see her daughter that day but it was not an easy reunion she was impossibly thin and her beautiful blonde hair was stuck to the sides of her head and her pale skin was scratched and I just felt an incredible amount of sadness because she was asking for permission to put on her dirty flip flops my daughter asking for permission and as she bent over I could count the knobs on her spine and when she straightened up they put her in handcuffs and they let her down the flights of stair and I watched the officer in charge and he he very gently tucked her head into the back of the cruiser and it reminded me of when she was a little girl and she would tuck her little head into the corner of my body and we would read her favorite book after the police took her daughter and Marie just sat in her car I was just incredibly visibly shaken because I had done it it was done she was in a safe place so I realized I could release everything in my car and I was just sitting there sort of stunned and the woman who led us into the building actually crossed the street and she knocked on my window and it was sort of sort of scary I have to admit at first because she was a very unapproachable female and I thought oh no and she leaned into my car and she said you're a good mama Sita and I just said thank you for letting me in you know and she walked away and that's when I was just I went from being not to strut but just emotionally almost empty to being filled up again like I thought the world is so big and the world is can be so kind and yeah and then I drove to the courthouse and witnessed Sarah in handcuffs they bring them out in handcuffs and she was screaming and yelling and she was very thin it's hard I mean it's really hard after taping Ann Marie's story we had to know what happened to Sarah and what she remembered from that terrible day I remember being extremely angry I didn't want to get clean I had no intention of getting clean and I remember just being so so mad I don't really remember too much like the moments leading up to the police coming in but I was not in a good place at that time before I was in New Bedford I was in a psych ward and I left with this patient there she said you know if you leave with me I can give you a place to stay and I can provide you with drugs this and that and I I didn't even know this woman at the psych ward and I said okay let's go and I left things just spiraled really really out of control there I mean in that house there was no toilet paper there was no soap there was no towel was there was nothing like and if we had a dollar it was going to drugs it was just really really bad and I was in a really bad place but a lot of it is a fog because I was high most of the time I'm almost positive that time she went to Framingham she's been there twice she was sent there for treatment on her addiction and she received absolutely no treatment and when I went to see her I asked if they could at least even have members of the AA community come in and they didn't even do that they were not helping her find her next step so she had to call sober homes open up at like a yellow pages and start calling them in Boston while she's still suffering from the withdrawal of addiction while she's battling for access to a phone you don't have phone in your room within limited hours and then how does she get a call back when she leaves a message it's just it's crazy so she pulls this little piece of paper out of her green prison close and she says mom and we're sitting opposite each other I can't even touch her so we're sitting opposite each other in plastic chairs and she is not a criminal and we have guards watching us so she hands me this piece of paper which she had shoved down her pants with a list of sober homes and they came over and they forcibly removed it from her hand and she said it's just a list of sober homes so my mom can help me and they said you know you're not supposed to pass anything and I tried to argue with them please just let me have the list let me let me have a copy of the list and she was actually removed from us put in some sort of detention area for five or ten minutes and then escorted back out to sit down and face us without the paper so we could finish our hour visit there's a hundred million incidents like that a hundred million incidents I I don't know how anyone gets better actually I don't know how they do it the night and Marie was on stories from the stage we didn't get a happy ending but in talking to Sarah we learned that she is now ten months sober I live in Burlington for months I am a waitress at a bakery I live in a sober house where there's rules and structure and I live with a bunch of sober woman I go to 12-step meetings I work the steps of AA since moving to Burlington I found so many things that I love to do you'd ask me like two years ago what I liked doing I'd have no idea even in times where I was like had brief sobriety I had no idea what I like to do but since moving here like I found I love hiking and I love running running's been so so helpful to me I never used to run now I can run five ten miles and it's amazing it's done so much for like my mental health my well-being I do yoga I'm going to yoga class tonight I'm very excited I don't know I'm just being in nature there's just so many things I got my license finally I drive I never thought I'd get my license Sarah says that her key to continued sobriety is taking it one day at a time because I think I can get anxious and I can put high expectations about what I think my sobriety should look like and what I think my life should look like and if I don't make that I don't want to get frustrated with myself you know the fact that I'm sober the fact that like my families in my life and that they can sleep at night in the fact that I don't obsess over a drink or a drug today's a miracle it's it's honestly amazing so I don't want to just put all these expectations and not make them and then get discouraged I grew up myself in a very sheltered protective I just want to say leave it to be vera kind of beautiful childhood and early years so this sort of blindsided me and I think in many ways it's sort of broken my heart open it's open me up to the reality of other people's existence I think my world is larger I think my heart is bigger parenting and growing up are never straight lines you just never know what's gonna happen and Murray says her experience follows her into the classroom when she teaches art to preschoolers I can notice the child who is struggling a lot clearer I can see the ones with sensory issues and depression I can see the ones that are hard on themselves and I make a beeline towards them you know I tried to tell them it's gonna be okay I tell them it's okay to work with their mistakes I'm an art teacher we just paint over and we start again we don't throw the paper out Sarah continues to work the twelve steps including making amends she has walked into stores apologizing to strangers for the stealing clothes but when we ask about apologizing to her parents we were surprised by her answer you know how many times in my addiction have I said to my parents like this time it will be different I'm sorry you know that was like my whole using I would get clean for a month and I'd say I'm sorry this will never happen again you know please let me come home I won't ever use again please do this for me and I won't ever do that again it was me just constantly making all these promises and then inevitably like using again breaking their hearts and making them worry again and again again so like it was suggested to me by my sponsor to you know wait until I have some like a lot of not a lot of clean time but more clean time under my belt to make those direct amends to them so before making those direct amends what they call it is living amends so living amends to my family would be like me answering the phone when they call me not asking them for things me being financially responsible you know not asking them for money like working a job working hard being able to pay my own rent just doing all these things on my own just through action rather than words and me and Sarah celebrate every milestone and would like to offer some hopeful advice it's hard but I think fully loving them where they're out without making any excuses for their behavior you have to be firm but you can't be cruel they always loved me they never ever gave up on me and the fact that I could get better but they also had to love me from afar they couldn't enable my addiction when I was using they couldn't let me live in their home they couldn't give me money and you know back when they did that and they would kick me out and and do all these things I would be so mad you know it was all their fault and if only they would let me live at home I would be sober again and all of these excuses and I thought like them kicking me out and not giving me money meant that they didn't love me and like I know today that they loved me so much that they had to let go in order for me to hit a bottom and get better right because if they kept giving me money and kept letting me stay at home and enabling me I wouldn't have had any want to get sober I wouldn't have hit any bottoms so that would be my that would be my suggestion like love your children but just love them from afar and like be there for them when they want to get sober but try not to enable the addiction we are so grateful to Sarah Wilton and her mother Ann Marie for sharing their story with us it is really the best part of our jobs it absolutely is you can hear and see more stories at willchannel.org I'm Liz Chang and I am Patricia Alvarado Núñez thanks for listening