10 Characteristics for People That Were Raised From Addiction

Do you have a parent that struggles or struggled with addiction? Here are 10 characteristics that make us pretty strong and resilient people. Don't forget your strength. Be proud of who you are.

1. We love harder than anyone in the world. If we've learned to love our family while they struggle with addiction we learn to love even when someone cannot return that love back. We're resilient.

2. We don’t take things for granted. We know how quickly good memories can be taken away and how short lived they can be. We have the ability to celebrate the smallest wins.

3. We know that life isn’t fair. We get that if life were fair our parents would be sober and things wouldn't be so complicated. We've had to adapt to unfairness and appreciate the things that go right that much more.

4. We understand the concept of losing someone more than once. Unlike a bad relationship we keep going back to, we stick by our family and watch them come in and out of our lives. Sometimes literally we watch our loved ones die and come back. We've eternalized death, something most people never learn to do.

5. We push people away. We're hesitant to get close to people. We're not used to things going right so when things too good to be true we back away and get reserved.

6. We are loyal. Our loyalty is unwavering when we are able to love our family struggling with addiction. Whether that be from a distance or not, we stick by the ones we love and we take pride in having the ability to do that for others too.

7. We know pain and suffering. Our experiences show us how complicated life can be. We learned that things are not black and white and that good people can make bad decisions and do bad things. The grey areas cause us pain and suffering and we know the feelings very well.

8. We’ve seen things most people never see. Most people will never understand or fathom the things that we see growing up around addiction. We've seen desperation and disease infiltrate the people we love and the memories haunt us.

9. We live deliberately. We stick up for what is right because we know the consequences of not.

10. We seek to be healers in some way or another. We all deal with our pain in our own ways. We want to heal others because we weren't able to heal our parents.

What other characteristics do you identify with after seeing your parents struggle with addiction?