Kerri and Pete—a Story about Love and Recovery
A Mad River Romance real-life, true love story
Mention to friends and strangers alike that you’re writing romance novels, and occasionally they’ll volunteer their own love story. The romantic tales Judy and I tell come from our imaginations, but the love stories people share with us are true and often more incredible than anything Judy and I could conjure.
The story below is the first of what we hope will be a series of real-life, true love stories. Like all good romances, this one has a happily ever after, but Pete and Kerri’s journey was a bumpy one. While their story is as much about addiction as it is about love, it serves to remind us that romance comes in many forms and that sometimes the most romantic stories of all are those that are the hardest won.
Do you have a real-life, true love story you’d like to share with the Mad River Romance community? Please send us an email. We’d love to interview you. Your story may inspire others to believe in their own happily ever after.
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Kerri and Pete were married on a brilliant summer day at the family church in Connecticut surrounded by loving family and dear friends. Guests enjoyed food and dancing, laughter and toasts, and Kerri remembers none of it.
What had been weekend recreational drinking was already turning into something darker, fueled by something deep inside Kerri over which she was quickly losing control.
She and Pete settled into their busy lives as newlyweds and, once their son Cameron was born, set about adjusting to the juggling routine familiar to all working parents.
Alcoholism Grabs Hold in Earnest
Pete and Kerri’s daughter Madison was born a few years later. Madison was a beautiful, healthy baby, perfect in every way—but this new addition to the family disrupted their routine and interfered with the close bond Kerri had developed with three-year-old Cameron. “I had all these post-partum feelings, and I felt horrible about having them, and I didn’t know how to handle them,” Kerri says. “That’s when the drinking really took off.”
While Kerri managed to hold things together at the insurance company where she worked, things were deteriorating rapidly at home. Drinking was her coping mechanism and, to maintain her habit, she had to hide it. That meant getting cash back every time she grocery shopped so there would be no digital record of her alcohol purchases. It meant secreting handles of vodka around the house—in the bathroom cabinets, underneath piles of laundry—and then having to remember where she’d stashed the bottles. “I drank at night, in secret. I thought nobody knew, but they did. Cameron would say, ‘Dad, Mom did it again.’ Things got progressively worse. I wasn’t drinking daily, but when I did drink, it was to the point of blackout.”
Kerri began seeing a therapist, and she and Pete started marriage counseling—the first of three counselors they’d work with over the years.
The therapist addressed Kerri’s drinking head-on and urged her to attend an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting. Pete went with her. But the AA lessons didn’t stick. Not yet. “I made sure to tell everybody that I was an alcoholic, basically as a safeguard against drinking in public,” Kerri said. “How could I drink socially, when I’d told everyone I was an alcoholic? But I continued to drink at night, in secret.”
A Cushy Stint in Rehab
Things got so bad that Kerri had no choice but to go to rehab. She checked into the exclusive Mountainside Treatment Center in New Canaan, CT on her 34th birthday. If you have to go to rehab, Mountainside is not a bad place to be. There were hikes, acupuncture, nutritious meals, yoga, and intense group and individual therapy sessions. Kerri was there for 30 days—the standard stay. Once back home, things were good—for a while. But then her brother died at age 30, and while Kerri doesn’t use that as an excuse, she once again found herself with emotions she was ill-equipped to handle. She’d relapse and then beat herself up for two weeks before relapsing again. Through it all, Pete stood by her, advising her to forgive herself and move on.
But there was no moving on. Even after a second stint at Mountainside, Pete and Kerri’s home life continued to deteriorate. Everyone told Pete to take the kids and leave.
When Pete could no longer deny that Kerri was a danger to the kids, he threw her out of the house. Kerri’s response was to buy a handle of vodka and drink the whole thing. Her sister-in-law’s sister and a neighbor, an EMT, found her outside on the ground, passed out. They rushed her to Bristol Hospital, where she was told she had a blood alcohol level of .48—a number that the ER doctor said would have been fatal to a 250-pound man.
Rehab in Extremis
Even with this major wake-up call, when Kerri was well aware that she could have died, she couldn’t stop drinking. She wanted to—desperately—but couldn’t. In 2015, she went to rehab again but this time it was no spa-like experience. Instead of acupuncture and organic meals, it was Kerri standing on a plastic chair under harsh fluorescent lights and getting yelled at by 80 recovering addicts. She was there for 63 days—every day of which was hard work.
“Pete wrote me letters the whole time I was there,” Kerri says. “And then, as I completed the program and was preparing to leave, Pete flew down from Connecticut to surprise me. We flew home together, and we were both so hopeful. And once again, things were great until they weren’t. The spiral started up again—I’d drink to blackout and then beat myself up for two weeks and then drink again.”
A Life-Changing Day
Two important events happened in September of 2018. Kerri takes over the story from here.
“One night, apparently, I’d left the house, black-out drunk, to buy more booze. I say “apparently” because I have no memory of doing this. But here’s what I do remember. The next morning, as Pete was getting Madison ready for school, he discovered a bottle of booze in her backpack. Madison was six-years-old. I said, ‘Wait a second, that’s not mine.’ I had vague memories of drinking the night before and burying the bottle in the kitchen garbage. I was in complete denial that the bottle in Madison’s backpack was mine. I got defensive and went and pulled my bottle out of the garbage, as if this somehow proved my point.”
“I had no idea where that second bottle had come from, or how it made its way into Madison’s backpack. I went to the car to see if there were any clues to what had occurred the night before and found cash crumpled up all over the seats. That only added to the mystery. Was Madison in the car with me when I went out? Did I leave her home alone? Which scenario was worse? Pete and Cameron were away at baseball, I remember that, but I have no clue who was looking after Madison that night. The kid—my family—deserved better, but I felt powerless to change.”
“I found myself at church that night, on a rainy Thursday. I wasn't sure why I was there. I just knew that I was done with the status quo. A woman I had never met before greeted me. She took one look at my face and asked if I was OK. I proceeded to tell her that I was an alcoholic and I’d relapsed, that the kids had seen everything, and that I’d been fired from my job of
eight years.”
“When the woman said she’d pray for me, I rolled my eyes. But from that night forward, I never had the desire for another drink. The urge was gone. Was it divine intervention? Was it me finally having arrived at the end of my rope? Was it that all the lessons from three separate rehab stints and countless AA meetings were finally cementing in my brain? I can't say for sure.”
Divorce as a Turning Point
“As my sobriety continued, I somehow got it into my head that Pete and I had to get divorced. I felt like if I stayed in the relationship, I’d start to drink again. I just felt that Pete wouldn’t change. I handled everything about the divorce—I did the paperwork and paid the court fees. Since this was during Covid, we met with a judge over the internet. When the judge asked Pete: ‘Is this what you want?’ Pete said, ‘I don’t even know what I’m doing. But, whatever.’ He was so upset. He said I bulldozed out of there. I’d made up my mind and I was gone. I moved out and bought a condo.”
“Slowly, with time on my own, I started to see things in a different way. And I realized that Pete was the way he was because he’d had to put up with me, getting the bills paid, doing everything. He didn’t want me to have any responsibilities because he couldn’t trust me. He never knew who he would be coming home to.”
“I'd never lived on my own before and the time to myself allowed me to figure out who I was, and to prove to myself that I could be independent. I started a yoga program. I continued going to church. At the same time, Pete started going to therapy. We stayed in touch, of course. Pete was the first person I’d text if I heard a good joke or just wanted to share something about my day. We had joint custody of the kids, so we saw each other a lot. Slowly, with both of us going to therapy, and gaining trust in my sobriety with each passing day, we became different people. Or maybe we came back to the people we always were.”
A New Beginning
“The tipping point in our relationship came last year when we took a family vacation to Old Saybrook, CT. We were together as a family in a new way. It was like a weight had been lifted from all of us. Pete and I started talking like we never had before and doing things we’d never done before. I knew Pete had changed when he agreed to go to the trampoline park with me and the kids. He not only went with us, he jumped with us. I couldn’t believe it. Who was this man?”
“And then we took the kids to Disney World in February. And again, it was great fun for all of us to be together as a family, without Pete or the kids having to worry about me.”
“I was rehired at the insurance company in August. On my first day back, my boss said, ‘Welcome home.’ I do feel like I’ve come home, in more ways than one. I’ve sold the condo and I’m living back home with Pete and the kids. My relationship with Pete has evolved into this great partnership and relationship. Pete says that he never stopped loving me. And I never stopped loving him. But we didn’t say the words to each other. As disruptive as the divorce was, it was a kind of forcing mechanism. I needed time alone to figure out what was going on with me, and Pete needed to do the same. I think we're both keenly aware of what we almost lost and that makes us even closer. And it brought us to where we are today—back together as a family.”
“I'm sure we will remarry at some point. When we do, it will be a small ceremony. But this time I will definitely remember it! Until then, I bought myself a ring that I wear on my ring finger. It’s a Celtic Cross. I was drawn to the twists and turns in the design because it mirrors the twists and turns of our relationship.”
“I've since told that woman at church that she was my guardian angel, but Pete was the one who saved me. Pete never left me even after he kicked me out, even after I insisted on getting a divorce. He was always there for me. It really was Pete who saved my life.”
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If you or someone you care about struggles with alcohol, help is available. Please reach out to:
