Because I was. Let me tell you a little bit about me. I grew up in an alcoholic home. My father was a raging, mean alcoholic and my mother was emotionally unavailable and focused on serving and pleasing my father. I knew from the day I was born that my 'job' in the family was to keep the family together no matter what. I became my father's punching bag and my mother's best friend. 

To cope with the stress of dealing with my father's drinking, anger and rage and any mother's unavailability and the consistent influx of siblings, I found alcohol at the early age of 8 years old (accidentally). But I realized that if I drank some I could handle anything my father dished out and didn't need my mother to, well, be a mother. As I got older I found other drugs, food, sex and eventually work to survive in the world I was living in. And every time I added another substance, more of little Cindy disappeared until, eventually, there was no Inner Child - no feelings, no memories, no hope, no dreams. I relied entirely on substances - people, places and things - to support me and give me a reason to live. Until they didn't. And that's when I found recovery. My journey in recovery led me to finding my wonderful, powerful, sweet little girl. Once I found her, I realized she was who I had been looking for my whole life. She completed me.

Because of her, I now have an Inner Family - parent, adult and child - that works in sync with each other and makes the kind of decisions that healthy families intuitively know how to make. What a gift!