In November 2011, Nicholas celebrated his birthday with a visit from my much older stepsister, Carina. The conversation that followed changed everything. She called me afterward, alarmed at the state of our mother. The full story of my mother’s alcohol and drug abuse poured out in a torrent, and for the first time, I was not alone in carrying it. Carina was horrified, and together we began to strategize. Nicholas needed to be removed from that home environment – and I knew she was right. We met with Lindy Ackermann, the counsellor at SACS Junior School who had been seeing Nicholas for years. When we laid out everything, we finally…

My mom didn’t just fall apart after my brother’s suicide – she shattered. Quietly at first, in ways only I could see. Then loudly, in ways no one could ignore. The drinking started as a coping mechanism, then became a daily ritual. Cocaine followed, not as a thrill, but as a crutch to survive the days she didn’t want to be alive for. What came after 2006 was a long, painful blur: alcohol, drugs, paranoia, aggression, suicide threats, boyfriends who hurt her, rehabs, overdoses, and me trying to steady a sinking ship. She burned through her inheritance from Ossi as though it were on fire. I’d sit with her at…

25 June 2006 Every year, on this date, I find myself waking, without fail, around 2 or 3am, thinking about Ryan. My body just knows. My mind drifts to that morning that changed all of our lives forever. What had he been doing in those final hours? Was he awake the whole night? Waiting? Or had he set an alarm, quietly deciding that today would be the day? Did he plan it, or was it a sudden, impulsive moment of pain too heavy to carry? Why then? Why at a time when things finally seemed to be looking up for him? When, for once, none of us saw it coming?…

My brother asked our mother for help a few months after I was admitted to Kenilworth Clinic. He claimed it was the first time he had tried heroin—on the very same day I was admitted. Now, he was caught in the grip of addiction. We naively believed that one round of rehab would fix everything. That he’d recover, we’d return to normal life, and the chaos would fade. But we were so terribly wrong.

When children grow up in environments where emotional safety is inconsistent or conditional, they learn to disconnect from their inner truth. Trauma doesn’t always come in the form of overt violence. Sometimes, it’s the slow, daily erosion of self-worth.