Lilian Williams stands in the living room of the Oxford House in Southeast Portland where she lives with eight women who are struggling to maintain sobriety. Her mother is in the crowd. The center of attention, Williams is scared of what her audience will think as she launches into a piece of slam poetry.

The poem is about a mother so reliant on drugs that she couldn’t take care of her daughter. It’s about a dark basement, missing spoons and marks in the crook of an elbow. Many women in the audience cry as they hear a story they know all too well.

As Williams, a Grant High School freshman, describes how she suffered through her mother’s neglect, addiction and recovery, she brings herself to tears.

She’s always shared a deep connection with her mother, Laura Dunn. Somehow, the rollercoaster that is her mother’s life didn’t tear them apart. In her poem, Williams tells their story of unconditional love.

The thread of the poem was the basement of her old green house in The Dalles, where her relationship with her mom was tested.

The basement that left you oblivious to anything that was going on upstairs. …

I love you mom, even when you were in the basement.

***

Lilian Williams was born on Oct. 12, 1998, in The Dalles. She lived in a small apartment with her older sister, Natalie, and her mother.

Williams remembers her dad had a temper. During family dinners at her grandparents’, when she and her sister couldn’t deal with him, they would escape to a trailer that was on the property.

Her parents divorced in 2001, and her mom remarried in 2004. At the time, the stepdad was everything Dunn was looking for in a man, Williams recalls. He had a stable job and wanted to settle down. But he wasn’t a perfect fit.

“He was responsible and he wasn’t very abusive,” Williams says. “He was just very detached and passive aggressive. You know when you meet certain people and you just don’t like them? That’s how it was for me.”

When the stepdad got angry, he would often take it out on Williams, she says, because of her similarities with her mother. Sometimes, Williams snapped back, swearing at him in her worst rage.

But one day in May 2012, everything turned much worse. As Williams was sitting in the living room of her house, the stepdad came home and told Williams that her mother was in jail.

Dunn had been diverting prescription pills through her work as a registered nurse, keeping them for her own use. She had been cheating the system by getting refills under her patients’ names when they didn’t really need them.

Williams recalls being in shock. “She never seemed like the kind of person that would go to jail,” she says, pointing out that she had caught her mother smoking on the back porch before, but she never expected this.

Though Dunn was bailed out the next day, the mark on her record put the family in a difficult situation. Dunn couldn’t find employment anywhere in The Dalles area. “I used to wake up to do things a normal mom does,” Dunn recalls. “But then I would wake up with nothing to do. Everything to motivate me was gone.”

As Dunn struggled to find work, she and Williams didn’t talk much about her arrest or unemployment. In June, the family moved into a little green home in The Dalles. Less than two weeks later, Dunn and the stepdad divorced.

Her drug problems weren’t over. Dunn started using narcotics and painkillers frequently. Then a boyfriend introduced her to methamphetamine and heroin.

Life was getting more difficult for Williams, too. She had always had lots of friends, but eighth grade was a whole new experience. Her friends turned against her and she felt targeted. After one semester, she transferred schools.

But Williams was not so wrapped up in her situation at school that she didn’t notice what was going on at home. When Williams ventured into her mother’s room, she would see drug paraphernalia scattered everywhere.

Dunn started using heroin every day. As she ramped up the drugs, her parenting plummeted. “I lost all concern for everything,” she says. “I wasn’t present in my daughters’ lives and I had gave up all ethics and morals I had as a good mother.”

It quickly became clear to Williams why her mother was so unresponsive. “I knew why the spoons were missing,” she recalls. “I knew why she had cotton balls and Q-tips in her bedroom.”

Williams watched TV shows like CSI that would often show situations involving drug trafficking. She had seen informative shows that displayed the effects of using heroin and meth. Still, “I didn’t want to believe it,” she says.

But the situation became obvious one spring day when her mother came to pick her up from school. In the car, Dunn put her arms on the steering wheel, and Williams saw the brutal truth marked in the creases of her mother’s arms. Dunn, quickly realizing her daughter’s awareness, tried to drive with one arm over the other.

“I knew why she had cotton balls and Q-tips in her bedroom.” -Lilian Williams

Williams didn’t confront her mother because she still didn’t want to accept her mother’s problems. She rarely talked to anyone else about them, except to her closest friends.

Dunn stopped picking her daughter up from school and asked a friend to do it. Sometimes, Williams had to walk home even though it took up to two hours.

Once, Williams came home to find her mom passed out in a chair. She shook her mother violently, but to no avail. Her mother was drugged up and unresponsive.

Dunn repeated things without realizing it, like she had dementia. On days like these, Williams walked to the docks and sat there with a few friends, swishing her feet in the cold water of the Columbia River.

But she never talked to an adult about it. “I was scared they were going to take me away from my mom,” she says. “I didn’t want to lose her.”

Slowly but surely, Williams realized she had lost her mom after all. “She wasn’t there to go to my dance recitals, drive me to the pool or even go to parent-teacher conferences,” she says. “Me and my sister would have to cook our own dinners. We were missing the stuff a normal mom would do.”

Williams never saw her mom actually using drugs but she vividly remembers her mom’s room in the basement. There was a wooden coffee table with lighters, ashes and tinfoil. Spray-painted graffiti decorated the walls and a crossbow brought over by one of her friends acted as an unintentional coat hanger.

One floor above was Williams’ room, a sanctuary where she could unload. Her walls were decorated with motivational quotes and murals. When she could not deal with her mother, she would listen to music or write in her room, and everything going on in the basement would go away.

Despite her situation at home, Williams quickly made friends at her new school. But she held back from sharing her troubles. “I didn’t want them to think negative thoughts,” she says now.

On a sunny day in June last year, Williams and the rest of the eighth grade class were signing yearbooks in the central hall, hugging and exchanging phone numbers. While her group of friends was collectively crying, Williams’ aunt showed up. “You’re coming with me,” her aunt said.

Williams immediately knew what was happening. Her mother was in trouble again. Big trouble. Dunn had been arrested for possession of heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana, and she was charged with misdemeanor for child neglect.

Williams and her sister had an hour to pack. She scoured her room, grabbing all the clothes, belongings and family photos that could fit into a limited space.

When Dunn would return home several days later, the house would be trashed. The furniture, kitchen tools and Wii were all gone, stolen by drug users she’d been associated with.

Williams had been to her aunt’s house before, but didn’t know her very well. “It was strange to think I would be living there,” she says.

But the worst part was the no-contact order that prevented Dunn from communicating with her children. Williams’ relationship with her mother was put on hold.

Over the summer, Dunn failed to recover. She made trips to Portland every day – not to see her daughter, but to get more drugs. She used methamphetamines almost daily.

“I was 100 percent neglectful,” she says. “The pain regarding my shame was overwhelming. My choices were a direct cause of the pain my children were having. The only way to get away from it was to get high again.”

Every week or two, Dunn would get caught violating her probation and would subsequently return to jail. After several violations over the summer, Dunn got an epiphany while driving to meet her probation officer.

“My children were gone and I hadn’t spoken to them in months,” Dunn recalls. “All I wanted was to be loved unconditionally. As I pulled up to the probation officer, it hit me like a ton of bricks.”

Eighty miles away in Portland, Williams was suffering without the presence of her mother. “I’ve always looked up to her and I felt bad that there was no way I could help her,” she remembers.

Dunn was released from jail a final time and moved to a treatment facility in Pendleton. In August, she moved to a facility in Portland. She still had the no-contact order in place.

On the morning of Oct. 12, 2013, Williams’ 15th birthday, Dunn was still in the treatment facility. “I bawled all morning,” recalls Dunn. “Lily had never woken up on a birthday without me there and because of my actions, I couldn’t be there.”

The aunt dropped off a package for Dunn from Williams. Inside the package were pictures, candies and a letter about her life in recent months, in which Williams emphasized her desire to resume living with her mother.

“I was so scared,” Dunn says. “She had every reason in the world to hate me. I expected to cry in sadness but instead they were tears of joy and relief. She loved me just as much as I loved her.”

“I didn’t want to lose her.” -Lilian Williams

She left the facility and moved into the Oxford House later that month. Authorities later dropped the no-contact order and Williams could see her mom again. It took a while, but Dunn eventually was able to take custody of Williams. Her sister stayed with the aunt.

Dunn wondered if she could take care of her daughter while struggling with sobriety. But she immediately knew she wouldn’t turn down the chance. “I was surprised how easy it was,” Dunn recalls. “I anticipated it to be awkward, but it was really comfortable.”

In the Oxford House, Dunn shares rent with the other residents, who are all recovering addicts. She and Williams share a room on the second floor.

“I really like it. A lot of the people are really funny,” says Williams. “Where they come from and their addictions are very interesting, and they’re basically my family.”

Clare Hansen, a resident of the home, feels the same about Williams. “I consider her a little sister,” says Hansen. “We talk about the things she struggles with and I try to guide her, but we also laugh a lot. We’re girls, we do our nails, talk about school, talk about boys. We have a really good time.”

Williams’ mother has been sober since she moved into the facility. In the beginning, Dunn would often think about returning to using drugs. She always asked herself, “What’s the matter with you?” and moved on. Now, sobriety is much easier. She keeps her kids in mind and that helps her stave off temptation.

“My love for you,” Dunn says to Williams today, “if anything, I think it grew stronger through that time.”

But life won’t go back to normal soon. Because of her past, Dunn has a hard time finding a job. She is banned from working in the medical field for the next three years, and few other places will hire her. They’re living on food stamps, but they’re just glad to be together.

“I have my daughter and that’s all I need,” says Dunn. “We have all that stuff: a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and I’m working towards getting it all back.”

Williams has gone through a lot but doesn’t show it at school.

Dylan Leeman, her English and Writer’s Workshop teacher, often sees kids who are burdened at home and notes that Williams is a special case. “Relatives of addicts are often jaded and bitter, but Lilian is always positive,” he says. “You can tell she copes using optimism.”

Williams does have a bright outlook, but hides a little bit of worry underneath. “A lot of my roommates and my mom have talked about how the addict behavior and addict tendencies can also run in the family,” she says. “Seeing what my mom’s gone through, I don’t want to put myself through that. If I’m older and I do end up having a family, like a husband and kids, I don’t want to have to put them through what I’ve been through.” ♦

To read a first-person account of Lilian Williams’ relationship with her mom, click here.