ABOUT THE EPISODE:

If you’re parenting a young person struggling with substance and someone tells you that you need recovery too, it can land sideways since you're not the one using. You're just trying to hold everything together while your kid gets better. And you're already doing so much: the books, therapy, podcasts, late-night Googling.

Janice asked that question anyway. A member of The Stream and mom of two adult kids now in recovery, she used to be the one everyone called to get things done not for a hug. When she Googled what drugs her son was using, she chose to get educated instead of feeling sorry for herself. That education pointed straight back at her.

We talk about the two biggest shifts she had to make (one starts before you say a word), the small non-negotiable practices she keeps no matter what's happening with her kids, and a standoff over the air conditioning that taught her more than she expected plus the question she asks herself when her own recovery feels like walking away from her child.

It felt like the right way to close out Recovery Month, with the parent who so often gets left out of the conversation. If you've poured everything into your child's recovery and nothing into your own, this one's for you.

YOU'LL LEARN:

• What "doing the work" meant for Janice, after months of research
• The two biggest shifts she had to make and why one starts before a word is spoken
• The small, unglamorous practices she keeps non-negotiable, no matter what
• What a standoff over the air conditioning taught her about the rope she kept picking up
• The question she asks when her own recovery feels like abandoning her child

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change, by Jeffrey Foote, Carrie Wilkens, and Nicole Kosanke
• Co-Dependency Isn't What You Think, with Rawly Glass, LCSW: Hopestream podcast episode 324
• Hopestream Community free two-week trial of The Stream: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/try
• Free e-book: Worried Sick by Brenda Zane: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/worried

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

You’ve heard some version of it: Leave me alone! I know what I am doing! You don't understand me!” Ciara Fanlo said all of that to her mother, but what her mom didn’t know was that those statements were hiding a plea…please help me.

Ciara was a sensitive kid in San Francisco, the kind who felt everything the world hurled at her at full volume before she had language or coping skills for it. Her parents divorced and she started self-harming by age ten, before she’d ever seen anyone else do it. She just knew she needed to displace the emotional pain she felt.

By high school she had been through therapists, medications, and a residential program. She came home on a contract and broke every rule on it in one afternoon, which ended with a wrecked car, police, and her mother angrier than she had ever seen. On the drive home they passed a church, and her mom pulled into the parking lot.

That stop at the church led to a life-changing wilderness therapy experience where she spent three months getting to know and love herself. One night in the wild of Colorado she looked up at the moon and felt something she had never felt in her life, and it changed what she thought was possible. Today she mentors teen girls through her practice, Homing Instinct.

This is a recovery story, and it is also the closest thing to a translation I can hand you. Ciara says out loud what our kids cannot, including one line about hope that will especially resonate if your child currently feels out of control and beyond reach.

If your child is pushing you away with both hands, this one is for you.

YOU'LL LEARN

• The second message running underneath every angry "leave me alone," and why parents almost never hear it
• What Ciara wanted an adult to say to her to felt heard vs. diagnosed
• How she unraveled a home contract in a single afternoon, and her mom’s reaction
• Why her mom got the worst of her, and why that was never about her mom

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Homing Instinct: https://www.hominginstinct.org/
• Work with Ciara, start here for parents: https://www.hominginstinct.org/mentorship
• Peer support groups: https://www.hominginstinct.org/peer-support-groups
• Ciara's essays: https://www.hominginstinct.org/blog
• Homing Instinct parent support group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hominginstinct
• Ciara on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ciarafanlo
• The Stream, free two-week trial: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/try
• Worried Sick free ebook: https://hopestreamcommunity.org/worried

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

You might already know what needs to change - or at least that something definitely needs to change in the dynamic with your child. Underneath the crisis calls, the covered debts, the conversations you soften before you have them, there’s a quiet voice telling you, “this has to stop.” But how?

Brook McKenzie says that voice is right, and then says the harder part. You must go first.

Brook is a Licensed Chemical Dependency Counselor, the CEO of Burning Tree Programs, and a person in long-term recovery. He’s also the author of the field guide parents truly need, “You’re Waiting On You: Why Real Recovery Starts With You - Not Them.”

Brook didn’t find recovery until his thirties, and he’s clear about why. His parents loved him fiercely and did what most of us do. They softened the truth, absorbed the consequences, and kept the peace. He describes what that felt like from the inside, and it’s not what you might expect.

The moms in The Stream talked about Brook’s book for months before I finally read it, in an hour and a half, and emailed him that same day.

What lands here is that Brook does not perform sympathy. He highlights that the things that feel hardest are usually the effective ones, and the things that feel like relief are usually what keeps everyone stuck. He has his own word for what parents are doing when they rescue, and spoiler alert, it is not enabling. He also has an answer to the question that is in the back of every parent’s head, the one that starts with "but what if they die?"

I asked about the sixteen year old you still have to house and feed, and what belongs on the list of what you will and will not do. He answered both without flinching.

If you have been waiting for your child to be ready and change, this one might sting, and then it will help.

YOU'LL LEARN

• Why Brook doesn’t use the word enabling, and the word he uses instead
• The two things he says sit underneath every ineffective parenting decision, without exception
• What he says to parents who tell him they will not put their child on the street
• The one change in how you talk to your child that he has watched work in months, sometimes weeks
• What you’re really telling your child when you fix their problems, clean up their mess and make decisions for them
• The specific thing he wants you to bring to your next therapy session

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Brook McKenzie’s website
• Get the book, “You’re Waiting On You, Why Real Recovery Starts With YOU, Not Them”
• Burning Tree Ranch website

This podcast is part of a nonprofit called Hopestream Community
Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms
Find us on Instagram here
Watch the podcast on YouTube here
Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol

Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.