Helen Lapakko

Can You See Me? Helen Lapakko

Can You See Me? is a fast paced and gritty story of a child born into a family dealing with alcoholism and mental illness. Alcoholism is not just about the addict-this is a story about collateral damage, young innocent lives affected by parental addiction, abandonment, and neglect. It is a child's journey as she tries to make sense of the dysfunctional world around her. The child learns very early on to keep the secrets. She feels a sense of responsibility and thinks she causes the bad things to happen. She grows up without a sense of herself and gets lost in her parents' illness. Years later when her parents go through treatment they get help but she doesn't. There wasn't a place for her pain, until one day she attends at two-day workshop on alcoholism and she sees for the first time how her parents' alcoholism and her father's mental illness has affected her life and who she is. She learns to fight for herself after years of feeling invisible and feeling defective. Separated from her family, she is free to find herself. She begins to live for herself creating, writing, and performing. She eventually finds love.