How do you survive when your child is battling addiction?
When the person you love most is losing their fight, the fear, guilt, and helplessness can feel unbearable. You may find yourself asking the same questions over and over: What did I do wrong? How do I fix this? How do I keep going?
Still Standing After All the Tears is a deeply honest and powerful story of one mother’s journey through the heartbreak of a child’s addiction—and the fight to reclaim her own life in the middle of the chaos.
Valerie Silveira shares the raw reality of watching her daughter Jamie spiral into addiction at just fifteen years old, surviving a near-fatal shooting, and facing years of uncertainty, fear, and emotional exhaustion as Jamie battled what Valerie calls the addiction Beast.
But this book isn’t only Valerie’s story.
It’s for every parent, family member, or loved one who feels like they are drowning while trying to save someone else.
Through personal experience and practical guidance, Valerie introduces the 9 Weapons of Hope®, the powerful mindset tools that helped her survive the darkest seasons of her life and begin rebuilding her strength.
The 9 Weapons of Hope® include:
• Decide to Stand Up & Fight
• Get On Your Spiritual Armor
• Put on Your Oxygen Mask
• Build Your Circle of Strength
• Change Your Attitude
• Adjust Your Focus
• Stop Being a Control Freak
• Stand On Your Story
• Make Meaning From the Madness
These tools help readers:
• break free from guilt and shame
• stop being consumed by someone else’s addiction
• rebuild emotional strength and boundaries
• find hope even in the middle of crisis
If you are the parent or loved one of someone struggling with addiction, you may recognize yourself in these pages:
• exhausted from constant fear and worry
• blaming yourself for what’s happening
• trying to hold your family together
• wondering if healing is even possible
This book offers something many families desperately need: permission to stop drowning and start standing again.
“This book did more for me than all the hours of counseling ever did.” —Nancy
Note from the Author:
This book was written before my daughter Jamie was murdered, during the years I walked beside her addiction. The insights shared reflect the mindset and emotions I experienced during that time. I’ve chosen to preserve that perspective because it represents the beginning of my healing journey and continues to help others facing similar battles.
Workbooks also available.
Learn more at ValerieSilveira.com
In 2004, Valerie Silveira’s 18-year-old daughter was shot by her ex-boyfriend. Over the next decade, Jordan’s life spun further out of control and, as a result, Valerie’s plunged into darkness. She would face the heartbreaking reality that her daughter is a heroin addict, and the painful truth that she is powerless to save Jordan from her Drug Addiction Beast.
Are you living with a Beast? They come in all shapes and sizes. Some arrive because of an alcoholic or addict in the family, abuse, abandonment, an accident or illness, loss, perfectionism, or something else. Many are a combination of two or more. A Beast is that situation, person, attitude, or circumstance that has left you lost, defeated, frustrated, angry, hopeless and helpless, or living in paralyzing fear. Our Beasts remind us of the past, keep us from living in the present, and fearful of the future.
Beginning three years prior to the shooting, Valerie stepped onto what she calls the Roller Coaster from Hell. Her Codependent Enabler Beast rode it with her, but it would take Valerie nearly thirteen years to acknowledge the Beast that was slowly taking over her life.
With a heart shattered into a million pieces, a broken family, health issues, financial hardship and depression, Valerie was giving up the hope of ever being happy again. Still Standing After All the Tears takes you on a journey through the agony and hopelessness of losing a child over and over again to drug addiction. Valerie shares her very painful and journey to battle her own two-headed Codependency Enabler Beast. This book will give hope to anyone living with any kind of Beast - that you too have what it takes to stand up and fight.
She discovered the Nine Actions to Battle Your Beast that are helping countless others to stand up and fight; to put the pieces back together after all hell breaks loose. Nine Actions to Battle Your Beast
1. Decide to Stand Up & Fight
2. Get On Your Spiritual Armor
3. Put On Your Oxygen Mask
4. Build Your Circle of Strength
5. Change Your Attitude
6. Adjust Your Focus
7. Stop Being a Control Freak
8. Stand On Your Story
9. Make Meaning From the Madness
Valerie has an incredibly relatable style and her sense of humor shows through the pain. This book is important not only for families of addicts or domestic abuse victims, but also for anyone struggling to move through or past a serious life situation. The Nine Actions to Battle Your Beast are the very actions that Valerie still uses today and that are helping others to stand up and reclaim their lives.
If you are a mother of an addict or have a family member or loved one who is an addict, this book is for you. If your Beast has nothing to do with addiction, this book is still for you. No matter what Beast you have been living with, the Nine Actions to Battle Your Beast could mean the difference between living and really living.
Update: In August 2016, Jamie (whom I called Jordan in the book) was murdered. This time the Beast didn't knock on the door. It was more like a home invasion. He had me down on the mat, barely able to breathe. I really had to put these Actions to the test, and learn to stand again, with a hole in my heart.
That is exactly what I did. I now carry my daughter's spirit with me as we go out into the world to make a difference.
