The Sober Curator publishes
“The Lifecycle of Ghosts,” a personal essay

by Chelsea Pegues 

Cleaning Out My Childhood Home, I Ponder the Downfall of My Family.
Within five years, I lost my father to addiction and my mother to dementia

I grew up an only child, raised by an alcoholic father and a mother with PTSD and mental illness. As I pack up my mother’s house after moving her to a nursing home, I reflect on what it means to break the cycles of abuse while grieving two parents- one disappearing into the depths of dementia and one whose addiction took him too soon.