Before my mom dies, I wanted to write this
Part I: loose thoughts & tight feelings
I had been living abroad since 2020, and I finally made my way back home in late 2023. I returned to a family that, for the vast majority of my life, I had never known.
My mom had been sober for a reasonably long period, and I came back to a mom who felt like a mom. And it was amazing while it lasted.
Since I was 11 years old, my mom has suffered from addiction. I was born in deep, rural Appalachia— just like she was. I would think that most people are aware of the high poverty and addiction levels alongside the low opportunity and education that have become legendary, especially in West Virginia. Just in case you don’t, however, I’ll sum it up for you.
It’s a place where beauty and brutality coexist.
The mountains are breathtaking, but so is the grief. Generations have grown up with very little: limited access, limited opportunity, and limited hope. Jobs disappeared, schools deteriorated, and the healthcare system never really showed up to begin with. What’s left is a cycle that’s hard to break, where poverty feeds trauma, and trauma feeds addiction.
OxyContin tore through these hills like a machete. Entire towns got hollowed out. Grandparents started raising grandkids while their children slipped into the haze of pills, meth, and fentanyl. Some never came back. Others came back different. Everyone here knows someone lost to it. Most of us know several. I’ve been heavily affected— sometimes, it seems like every other person I know has struggled with addiction personally. My high school graduating class dropped like flies.
But it's not just addiction. It’s a profound exhaustion. A kind of weariness that sits in the bones, both spiritual and economic. It’s the slow violence of being forgotten, decade after decade, by those in charge. The story of this region didn’t end when the coal ran out. It just stopped being told.
And yet, people here still wake up every day and keep going. There's a stubbornness, a grit. A kind of beauty in the resilience. But it doesn't erase the cost, and I don’t know if it’ll ever be paid in full.
I was in middle school when ‘pill mills’ started becoming a thing. When it all began, I was glad my mom routinely went to the doctor and seemed to be taking care of herself. She suffered from severe migraines, and as a child, the lights would often be kept off and the house, silent. She also battled with depression, which may have been a result of the headaches or vice versa. Either way, she could never quite find the help she desperately needed, and she tried for many years before our healthcare system became a death sentence.
The way I remember it is that my mom hit a turning point, emerging from the dark, dense fog in which she had formerly lived. She was suddenly living again, enjoying herself, and she was often the life of the party. It was a version of her I hadn’t seen for years, and it felt great to see her happy. After my father left, my mom dated on and off, but nothing really stuck. However, she met my soon-to-be stepdad during this time and remarried. This was also the same year she first overdosed. It was a pattern of escalating highs and devastating lows.
As if she were sprinting toward the light that had eluded her her whole life, but could never quite reach it, for slipping on the shadows still desperate for her attention.
I remember coming home from school one day and being told that my mom was in a bad accident. The car was totaled, and no one could believe she survived that crash. This became an incredible talent of hers— surviving the unsurvivable, and many times walking out unscathed. But that’s how high she was in the accidents. Her body was like Silly Putty, which afforded her the upper hand. Many people die in crashes due to the rigidity of their bodies bracing for impact.
My mom was essentially a rag doll.
I genuinely don’t know how she got so lucky never to hurt or kill another person. That’s one thing I don’t think she would’ve survived because underneath the addiction, she was detrimentally compassionate, loving, and kind.
That’s how it began, and this went on for many years— the overdoses, the crashes, coming home from middle school and having to break a window into my own house because I could see my mom through the window, passed out on a plate of food. It only escalated from there, and I can’t tell you how many times she’s overdosed because it’s been too many for anyone to track.
My mom must have a very special relationship with the universe because she’s spent hundreds of lives throughout my own.
In 2015, she died, however.
I was living in Florida by then, and I got a call at work that I’ll never forget. My mom went into cardiac arrest while she was swimming and drowned. I bet you’re thinking, okay, how do you come back from this?
Well.
I have two sisters; one is ten years younger than me, and the other is sixteen years younger. They were still living at home. By some miraculous coincidence, they were home when this happened, and the older of the two happened to look out the window to see our mom floating face down in the above-ground pool. She yelled for my other sister, and they called 911, tried to fish my mom out of the pool, and eventually ran to get help from a nearby neighbor who was a nurse.
She was eventually flown by helicopter to a larger city, dying many times on the ride and after her arrival, but was ultimately revived. After a week of being in critical care and riding the fine line between life and death, she was stable.
Almost immediately after I got the call, I flew up to West Virginia. My youngest sister and I slept at the hospital all week while she clung to life support. Every couple of hours, we would write prayers on slivers of paper and drop them into prayer boxes around the hospital.
She made it through that experience, but it left her with many health problems. Most importantly, a fraction of her heart function. She came out of it with a suitcase of prescription medications and a slew of follow-up tests and appointments.
After about the sixth month mark, addiction got the best of her, like it always did.
My mom abused several types of medications and would often combine them. Sometimes, if not all the time, she would drink on top of it. Her abuse was so heavy that sometimes she would pass out, and I would count the medicine in her pill bottles and calculate from the time the pharmacy filled them. It was surreal. I remember one time in particular, counting over 40 pills missing from several bottles within 24 hours of them being filled.
Everything I’ve told you so far is simply context for now.
That’s what I’m really here to talk about— because we were so close to something that felt like a happy ending. Or at least one that we could’ve found peace in.
But that’s just not who she is, and if anyone knows that, it’s me.
My name is Shaina, and I am a writer, builder, and connoisseur of clouds. I tell stories of reinvention, consciousness, and learning out loud.
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© Shaina Pauley 2025 | All rights reserved
That was such a raw and honest piece. Thank you.
Thank you for this Shaina. Loving someone who struggles with addiction is so difficult and your story is so well told.