Twenty-one- Republished

Into the Wilderness: Story 3, Mom

Week 3 was the hardest.

That’s 21 days. It takes 21 days, the saying goes, to form a habit. Up to 21 days for butterflies to grow in their chrysalis. Twenty-one days for the average house fly to live its entire life. It took 21 days for Catina to start opening up.

I always said it was my Mom-tuition that led me to put Catina in wilderness. In many ways, she seemed a typical teenager. She went to school, though getting her out of bed was daily morning agony. She took singing and piano lessons. She saw a therapist. But something was off, and I knew it.

Signs.

I found a pen-looking device on the kitchen counter, which research told me was a vape. Who put it there? No one. When Chuck and I returned from a long-overdue honeymoon, the liquor cabinet was, well, different. The bottles didn’t seem quite as full. Wasn’t there a bottle of Ketel One? We couldn’t remember. It had been some time since we’d had a cocktail. I found a small ceramic tube in her room. I didn’t know until she was in wilderness that it was a “bat,” a one-hit pot pipe.

Her computer went missing. We ripped her room apart and didn’t find it. She said she was working out at the gym but wasn’t there. She skipped one class, then another. She disappeared from choral practice on Monday night. She was never hungry. She guarded her phone as if it were a nuclear device.

Teens experiment. They push. They test. That’s what they do. But something was wrong. I knew it.

I did what all parents do. I asked a lot of questions. I didn’t get answers. I grounded her from going out or seeing her friends. I monitored devices and confiscated them regularly. I administered a random drug test- on her 15th birthday (a story for another post).

She got more and more furious with my every move, each interaction ending in battle. She stayed in her room, never ate dinner, never spoke, or when spoken to, grunted an answer. Her grades plummeted. Her clothes were constantly ripped, expensive shirts cut off, leggings torn.

It was the collective impact of all this. We had had previous issues- self-harm, an incident with the law. But each time, she pulled it together, and everything returned to that comfortable justification of teenage “normal.”

And that’s what happened barely two months before wilderness. Suddenly, her grades improved. She sang in a recital. She went to junior prom with a nice, young man (we thought) who was on honor role and the school volleyball team. She looked beautiful in her flowing, princess-cut gown. Proud mama, I posted all of the pictures on Facebook.

But I had already hired an educational consultant who had recommended wilderness. I had already selected a program. Filled out the application. Made the travel arrangements.

I almost canceled the whole thing.

I am glad I didn’t.

In week 3, everything started to tumble out of Catina. Smoking. Alcohol. Pot. Bullying. Assault. It was like pulling the thread of a sweater. One tug and the yarn slipped backward through the loops and pooled in a messy pile. It wasn’t going to be easy to cast those yarns back into place. It couldn’t be redone.

And that is another gift of the woods. With so little distraction, the teens release the guard and talk. They document it all- every drug, every alcoholic drink, every action they have never told anyone. It’s a dreadful inventory that is a sucker punch for the parent. With every letter and session with her therapist and then our own, we entered a dazed state: How could we have known so little?

Because teens are great deceptors. Catina, she will say herself, was very good at making steady eye contact and with measured voice and smile, lying.

For all the winnings in the world, I would never go back to week 3. But now, I see it was necessary. It all had to come out. It couldn’t fester in her like the molded strawberry that ruins the whole pack. I cried for the entire month of July 2018. I worked- I’m good at compartmentalizing- but I would take breaks every few hours to sob, great heaving wails that made my dogs rush to my side. Then I’d wipe my eyes and get on another video conferencing call.

What got me through was the support system wilderness programs give the parents. And it is the best support system I’ve ever encountered. Catina’s therapist, with whom we met weekly, helped us understand what she was going through, explained the issues and patterns emerging, charted out recovery plans and next steps. Our own therapist then turned us back to ourselves, helping us see our own place in all this, gently tugging the family dynamic apart and replacing it with insight. I am deeply grateful for these experts- Emily and Liz, thank you.

We all know that ugliness festers in the dark. What we fear often becomes what runs us. What we hide eats away at our soul. Secrets gnaw at our edges like a hungry caterpillar on a leaf. Wilderness brings it all out. Into the sunshine. And that’s why it works.