Healing Wounds: Exploring the hyphen in son-father relations as an adult child of an alcoholic

In this autoethnography I explore the impact of my father’s alcohol dependency on my relationship with him and implications for my own recovery from alcohol-related harm. Sketching, layering and poetic interludes help to move around the hyphenated space of son-father relations showing the wounds associated with his alcohol ab/use. The writing shows how I internalised and embodied other family members’ shame, compounding my detachment and father hunger. It also shows how “energy of the wound” fuelled positive adaptations, learning to be “with” my adult-child-of-an-alcoholic-ness. I hope the writing helps both writer and readers make things better by offering new vistas on hardship, loss, adapting and healing. Connecting with clinical audiences, potential implications for effective counselling are discussed.