You find the vape pen, or the pills, or the empty bottle at the bottom of the laundry basket. You take it, because that was the boundary. Within minutes your house goes from zero to two hundred: threats, slammed doors, a kid you barely recognize. Every instinct says respond right now, and if you are like Cathy and me, you do. Then you spend the next day trying to undo everything you said.

This episode is the practical companion to the self-coaching questions I shared in episode 328. Cathy and I walk through what we are calling Stream Vignettes, composite scenarios pulled from years of coaching calls, community posts, and our own homes. The confiscation that explodes. The natural consequence you have to sit through with your heart in your throat. The suicide threat that arrives attached to a demand for money. The family vacation you keep hoping will fix things.

For each one, we get into the questions that slow you down before you react, starting with the one we ask first every single time. We also cover what these questions are not for, which is a conversation I clearly needed about fifteen years ago.

What stayed with me most is something we kept circling back to: there is no expiration date on your response. Nothing requires you to handle the worst moment of your week at three in the morning. Cathy and I both have stories about what happens when you try.

If your home has a moment like this coming, and most of ours do, keep this one where you can find it.

YOU'LL LEARN:

• The question Cathy and I ask first in every single scenario, before anything else
• What your child's explosion over a confiscated substance is actually telling you
• The advice therapists gave us about suicide threats, even when you’re pretty sure it’s a negotiation tactic
• Who you are really rescuing when you cannot let a natural consequence play out
• Why there is no expiration date on your response, and what to say while you figure it out

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Hopestream podcast ep. 328 - 10 Self-Coaching Questions - Part 1
• Rawly Glass on Hopestream podcast 324 - consequences don’t work

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.

Trigger Warning: this episode discusses loss of a child due to substance use. Please decide if this is the right time to listen.

A few weeks before this episode was recorded, one of the moms in our community lost her son. He had been through treatment, through sober living and had the most supportive family. His parents had done everything possible, with grace and with love, and he still lost his battle with addiction. Cathy and I went back and forth about whether to talk about it - because we never want to add to the fear that already lives in your chest every single day.

But we’re asking you to do hard things, and that means we have to do the same. This is the reality of what our kids are facing. High-potency THC is not the weed of twenty years ago, and we are talking to parents every week whose kids are in crisis from it, not from fentanyl, not from meth, but from what many still consider the ‘safe one’.

We also talk about something we haven’t directly addressed on this show: vicarious trauma in our kids. The bullying on their phones where we can’t see it. The friend who overdosed in front of them. The violence at school they never mention. These are often the invisible fire under the behaviors that make no sense to you.

One thing stayed with me after we finished recording: the idea of speaking to your child as if every word might be the last they ever hear from you. Not in a morbid way, but as a filter. As a way back to what matters most.

If you have been putting something off because it feels too hard, or not quite urgent enough yet, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• Why Cathy and I almost did not share what happened, and what changed our minds
• What high-potency THC is doing to adolescent brains and why parents shouldn’t dismiss it as ‘safer’ than other substances
• The invisible traumas your kid may be carrying that explain the behaviors you can’t make sense of
• How to not pick up the rope when every instinct tells you to
• What one parent said about speaking to your child that might change your next interaction with them

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Stages of Addiction: Hopestream podcast episode 322

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.

When Beth Hillman's son came home from wilderness treatment, the first crisis didn’t come from him. It came from her. Standing in the driveway, anxious and spiraling, she watched her teenage son look at her calmly and say, "Mom, look at me. I'm gonna be okay." Her first thought was not relief. It was, oh! I’m in big trouble.

Her son had come home with more access to his thinking brain than she had. He also came home to a mother who had not yet done her own work and was carrying expectations she could not even name. When he finally told her, "Mom, your expectations of how this is gonna go are going to wreck me," Beth had to get honest about what she was really asking of him.

Today Beth is a double certified life and parent coach, host of the Parenting Post-Wilderness podcast, and a familiar voice in our community, where she leads sessions and groups for parents in the fragile season after treatment.

In this conversation, we get real about the first 90 days after a child comes home, from both sides. Why kids may agree to everything just to get home, why pushback on a home plan might be the best sign you can get, and what your child is actually walking back into when they return to the house where the holes in the doors are. Beth names the piece most home plans are missing, and I think it will change how you prepare.

If your child is coming home from treatment soon, or is already home and wobbling, this episode was made for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• The driveway moment that convinced Beth she was the one in trouble
• Why kids check every box to get home, and why that is not manipulation
• What her son said about her expectations that stopped Beth cold
• The green flag most parents mistake for defiance
• The almost too simple practice Beth reached for when her brain went offline

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Beth’s website - www.bethhillmancoaching.com
• Beth’s podcast, Parenting Post Wilderness
• Beth on Hopestream podcast episode 279
• Information on PAWS (post-acute withdrawal syndrome)

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:

There are days in this journey when the weight of it all becomes almost too much to carry. You are still showing up, still trying, still breathing through a kind of pain most people around you will never fully understand. A few years ago, I sat down and wrote something for you, for the mom and the dad and the grandparent in the thick of it, and I tucked it away. Today I pulled it back out.

This piece first appeared on Insight Timer, and it became the most-listened-to content there. I dusted it off because I needed something creative, and because I believe these words may land with where you are today. The world I recorded it in and the community we are now are not so different, and what I felt then, I still feel now.

This is not an interview. There is no guest, no framework, no five-step plan. It is just me, speaking out loud the things I wanted every struggling parent to hear in a heavy moment.

In this episode I ask you to set down, just for a few minutes, the weight you have been carrying. Not forever. Not in denial. Just long enough to breathe, to remember who you are outside of this fight, and to hear something true: this is not your whole life. You are still in there. And you are stronger than this feels right now.

If you are exhausted and need someone to remind you that you are not alone, this one is for you.

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Free ebook Worried Sick
• Brenda’s content on Insight Timer

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.

When my son Enzo was using fentanyl and Xanax and blowing up every structure I tried to build around him, I kept asking the wrong question. What I wasn’t asking was what was happening inside him that he couldn’t put words to. He was a teenager with an unmedicated ADHD brain, getting more reinforcement and belonging from the drug world than anywhere else in his life, and he had no way to tell me that.

Enzo is back on the podcast today with something specific: the things kids who are actively struggling can’t necessarily say but really wish their parents understood. When I asked what he would have wanted me to know back then, Enzo told me about a kid he recently mentored who, when asked the same question, said the only thing he wanted his parents to know was, “I’m trying.” And Enzo realized that was exactly it. Not that the drugs were working. Not that his choices were okay. Just that from inside his brain, he was doing something that felt like trying.

Enzo is now the founder of Life Strategies Mentors, a mentoring program for young men navigating recovery and reintegration. He’s in his late-twenties, expanding his team, building a life that not long ago did not seem survivable.

This conversation covers a lot of ground, from the fish love parable that reframed how I think about parental expectations, to what ADHD does to the brain’s relationship with substances, to why kids sometimes listen to a near-stranger before they will listen to their own parents. That last one is not a failure of the relationship. It is biology. Knowing that changes something.

If you have been watching your kid and thinking they are not even trying, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• The fish love parable, and the question it forces you to ask about your own parenting
• Why “I’m trying” is the one thing a struggling kid most wishes their parents could hear
• What ADHD actually does to the brain’s relationship with substances, and why warnings don’t land
• The biology behind why kids listen to mentors before they listen to parents
• The one skill Enzo says made the biggest difference when he was finally ready to change

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Life Strategies Mentors website
• Fish Love story on YouTube
• Enzo on Hopestream podcast episodes #251 and #185
• ADHD Resources:
  • Dr. Gabor Mate’s book, “Scattered Minds”
  • Dr. Russell Barkley on YouTube
  • Dr. Ned Hallowell on Hopestream episode 99 (ADHD as a Superpower)

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:

There are moments in this journey when your coach isn't available, your therapist can't be reached, and the community is quiet. It's just you and whatever is unfolding in your relationship with your child,, and you need a way through. This episode has been sitting with me for over a year, and I'm glad it's finally here.

What I've seen, in my own experience and in watching parents in our community, is that the biggest shifts come from asking yourself the right question and having the honesty to sit with what comes up. That's what CRAFT and the Invitation to Change have taught me, and it's what I tried to distill into these ten questions.

These aren't soft prompts. Some are uncomfortable, which means they're working. They ask you to look at your own role in the family system, your behaviors, your responses, your beliefs, because that is the lever you actually control.

I walk through all ten, share why each one matters, and give you the context to use them.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• The question I put first, and why it's the hardest one
• What the hot stove analogy reveals about your child's behavior
• How most parents accidentally reinforce what they most want to stop
• The difference between self-care and self-preservation
• What it means to be addicted to your child's addiction

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Episode 263 on Natural Consequences
• Episode 17 on Natural Consequences
• Tara Brach on Radical Acceptance
• Episode 276 on acceptance
• Episode 321 on taking care of yourself
• Episode 324 with Rawly Glass on codependency
• Helping Families Help - find a CRAFT trained therapist

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:

Dr. Wes Robins sent me a text a few weeks ago, and I stopped what I was doing and read it twice. It was a piece he had written at his kitchen table while his daughters worked on an art project beside him, and it was one of the most honest and beautiful things I have read in all the years I have been doing this work. It started with four words: you are not broken. And it kept going from there.

Wes has been a guest on this show before, and I have always admired how he shows up. No pretense, no pedestal. Just a real human being who has done his own hard work and now walks alongside young people and families who are doing theirs. Since we last spoke, he made the gut-wrenching decision to close the treatment center he poured five and a half years into, and what he learned on the other side of that loss is something I think every parent who has ever watched someone they love struggle needs to hear.

He is back in private practice now, seeing clients out of a cool 60’s ranch house in Alpharetta, GA. He works with young people, with parents, and with families who are trying to figure out how to stay present through things that feel impossible to witness. He’s a Ph.D, but has officially taken on the designation of Soul Nurse, and once he explains it, you’ll understand exactly what that means.

This conversation goes places I did not expect. We talk about the piece Wes wrote for parents, and he reads it aloud, and I am not going to pretend I held it together. We get into the difference between empathy and presence, why watching your child suffer might be asking something of you that has nothing to do with them, and what it actually means to be the flight attendant when your kid is in turbulence.

If you have ever felt like you were failing simply by not being able to fix this, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• The wise words Dr. Wes wrote at his kitchen table that stopped me cold
• How to think about psychedelics and plant medicines when your child is asking (or using them)
• The difference between empathy and presence, and why it matters
• Why your child's struggle may be your greatest spiritual teacher
• What being the flight attendant actually looks like when you are terrified yourself

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Website
• Dr. Wes Robins Youtube Channel
• Dr. Wes LinkedIn Profile
• Email address: drwes@eternalstrength.com
• Psychology Today
• "When The Map Burns"

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:

Lacey Tezino grew up believing her biological mother was dead. That’s what her family told her in the ‘80s when she was adopted, and she carried that story until she was 19 years old. Hungover on just one more motherless-Mother’s Day, Lacey somehow found the nerve to call ‘information’ to see if that was true. Her mother picked up the phone. That call became a decade-long relationship that Lacey describes as beautiful, heartbreaking, and nothing she was prepared for.

The complications didn’t end with the reunion. Lacey’s mother had her own life, her own rhythm, and her own relationship with alcohol. So did Lacey. And when her mother received a stage four lung cancer diagnosis, the urgency it created forced them both into a kind of honesty they had never quite managed before. They sat through chemo appointments and asked the hard questions. They talked about what they’d each been holding. And Lacey has spent the years since wondering why it took running out of time to get there.

Lacey is the founder of Passport Journeys and the author of Therapy After Mom Died. She now works with mothers and daughters to help them heal together before a crisis forces their hand, matching them with therapists, building structured connections, and asking the eight questions that reveal exactly where a relationship has come apart.

This conversation goes somewhere I don’t hear talked about often enough: the way our kids watch us reach for a drink at the end of a hard day, and what they quietly absorb from that. Lacey tells the story of her own Friday night ritual, margaritas that offered tired parents decompression, the moment she realized her children were watching all of it, and what they might be learning.

If you have a daughter - or son - you love and a relationship that feels like it’s missing something you can’t quite name, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• What Lacey said when her mother, who she thought was dead, picked up the phone
• The unhealthy Friday night ritual she couldn’t unsee once she saw it
• The gap she keeps finding between what moms believe and what daughters feel
• Why, as a parent, you have to connect before you correct
• What it took for Lacey and her mother to finally be honest with each other

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Passport Journeys website
• Therapy After Mom Died - Lacey’s book

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.