The Lost Years: Surviving a Mother and Daughter's Worst Nightmare [Paperback]

This riveting memoir of survival and transformation reveals the brutal details of the worst that can happen to an ordinary family and how they triumphed over adversity. It describes the true story of a daughter's decline into alcohol and drug addiction, prostitution and homelessness, and her mother's attempts to rescue her yet protect herself and her other children. Written as a dual narrative, mother and daughter give their first hand accounts of the years lost to addiction and despair, and the subsequent recovery and reconciliation. formation reveals all the brutal details of the worst that can happen to an ordinary family and how they triumphed over adversity.A child caught in the horror of alcohol and drug addition. A mother helplessly standing by unable to save her. The Lost Years is the real life story of just such a mother and child, each giving their first-hand accounts of the years lost to addiction and despair. Kristina, the second of four children, tells how she turns to alcohol for comfort when she is thirteen. She gives a brutally honest description of her descent into addiction, prostitution, burglary and violent rape until her near death on the floor of a homeless shelter completely alone at the age of twenty-one. Adding a heart-wrenching counterpart to the story, Kristina's mother, Connie, tells of her powerlessness to help her addicted daughter, the break-up of her unhappy marriage and how she comes to terms with her own co-dependency. She is also faced with the worst choice a mother has to make, to close the door on Kristina, sending her onto the streets in order to save herself and protect her other children. Then follows the remarkable story of Kristina's recovery as she lives through rehab, her mother's tough love and the years of acclimating herself to living a normal life.