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.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

You‘ve probably watched your child make a decision so obviously terrible you could not understand how it made sense to them. Darren Hobbs can tell you exactly how it looked, because he made that decision. He had done treatment. He had a sponsor, a home group, a year chip. Then he took some cash he made, drove back to his old dealer, and fully believed he could be the sober cocaine dealer in a small college town.

His story starts at 14, with a Vicodin prescription after surgery and the discovery that with substances in him, everything was better, easier and more fun. It runs through years of drinking and cocaine, wrecked cars, stolen money, and parents who kept trying to love him out of it. It ends, or maybe begins, on the floor of a Nashville bar with undercover detectives on top of him, staring at 20 years in prison.

What changed him was not the arrest. It was a phone call from his mother, and one sentence she said that I know broke her heart - and drove his recovery.

Darren is a Certified Intervention Professional, founder of The Firm Addiction Consulting in Nashville, and a cast member on A&E's Intervention. He has taken hundreds of families through interventions, and he is blunt about what parents do that keeps their kids stuck. He also told me the most extraordinary story of divine timing I have heard on this show. If you watch on YouTube, you will see the goosebumps on both of us.

This is the first of four recovery stories this month, and I started here because Darren says out loud the things our kids cannot.

If you are watching your child choose the things that will hurt them and cannot make sense of it, this one is for you.

YOU'LL LEARN

• What Darren told himself the day he decided he could sell cocaine and stay sober
• The one sentence his mother said on the phone that did what years of crime, jail and chaos never did
• Why he says parents are the ones who installed the buttons their kids know how to push
• The two things he sees in almost every family who calls him at crisis point
• The tool he calls an industry guarded secret for families who cannot get in a room together

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Firm Intervention and Addiction Consulting, Nashville, TN
• Darren on Instagram
• Die Sober Podcast, hosted by Darren Hobbs and Zach Livingston: https://www.thefirmaddictionconsulting.com/podcast
• 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:

This week's episode is a Summer Replay originally aired in 2023. 

You have rules. You have said them out loud, more than once. And somehow your kid is still doing exactly what they want, and you are the one lying awake wondering why nothing you say seems to land.

Before I knew the word boundaries, that was my whole life. I felt invisible in my own house. Like a doormat. Like the rules I set were something my son found funny. The anger built until I was short with everyone, and I once yanked the cord out of the wall and threw an Xbox across a room. I'm definitely not proud of that reaction and never thought I'd be that mom.

What changed things for me was learning that a boundary has nothing to do with controlling how someone else behaves. That distinction sounds small but it's not.

Cathy and I sat down for this one because we watch parents struggle with it constantly. Not with coming up with the boundary. The hard part is holding it, and there is one specific reason we see people fold, and it is probably not what you think.

We get honest about our own attempts, including the ones that went badly. Cathy shares the boundary she was too scared to enforce for a long time. I share the one that took therapy to get through; the day the moving pods were packed and my son was in a sleeping bag in an empty room.

Fair warning. When you start holding boundaries after years of not holding them, things usually get more uncomfortable before they get better. We talk about that too.

If you feel like you have lost your footing in your own home, start here.

YOU'LL LEARN

• The one reason we see parents abandon boundaries they have already set, and why willpower has nothing to do with it
• Why an ultimatum and a boundary can sound identical out loud and do opposite things
• The picket fence and the hula hoop, and which one you need for which kind of boundary
• The boundary Cathy was too afraid to enforce, and the conversation with her husband that finally made it possible
• What it actually cost me to hold the hardest boundary of my life, and who I needed around me to do it

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Setting and Holding Healthy Boundaries workshop
• Original episode: Ep. 174  
• Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms 
• Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol 

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:

This week's episode is a Summer Replay from 2025.

There is a version of August that has been living in your head since they were small. The car packed to the roof. The drive. Target for the bedding, the sweatshirt, the bumper sticker, the parent barbecue where everybody's kid looks fine. Except it is three weeks out and you are not picturing it anymore. You are watching them.

Cathy and I both know what it costs to send them anyway. The tuition is paid. The housing is paid. Somebody in the family belongs to that fraternity. And underneath all of it sits the thing almost nobody says out loud, which is that you are tired, and you need your house to be quiet again. We understand that. We have both wanted the break badly enough to talk ourselves past our own gut.

Cathy's son told her two weeks before he left that he did not think he wanted to go. They chalked it up to nerves. He was right, and what followed was not one crisis. It was months of them, and eventually two of her kids were struggling under the same roof at the same time.

So we get into what we would each do differently now. The paperwork almost no parent thinks about until they are standing in a hospital hallway being told nothing. What is already sitting on that campus that you could call and ask about before move-in day. Why deferring a year is not the punishment it feels like. And the grief, which is real, of a fall you do not get to have.

If your kid is leaving in a few weeks and something in you has not settled, listen before you load the car.

YOU'LL LEARN

• What Cathy's son said two weeks before move-in, and what she and her husband decided it meant
• The document most parents never think about until a hospital will not tell them anything
• What is already available on most campuses that almost nobody calls to ask for
• Why the money you think is locked in probably is not
• What Cathy and I both got instead of the college experience we wanted

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Success is Subjective podcast
• Treatment locator - AllKindsOfTherapy.com 
• Assoc. Of Recovery in Higher Education - Collegiate Recovery Programs
• Learn about The Stream, our private online community for moms 
• Download a free e-book, Worried Sick: A Compassionate Guide For Parents When Your Teen or Young Adult Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol 

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:

Your kid has been to a program. Maybe two. Maybe four. Each one handed back a diagnosis list a little longer than the last, and none of it ever explained why nothing is sticking.

My guest uses a comparison in this one that stopped me cold. If your child had stomach pain, no surgeon would just open them up and look around. They would scan first. And yet with our kids we tend to go straight to treatment, treatment, treatment, without asking who this person actually is underneath the substance use. He calls it treating the problem inside the person instead of the person with the problem, and once you hear it you cannot unhear it.

Dr. Graham Husick is a clinical psychologist in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and the director of clinical assessment at the Lakeside Independence Program, which works with severe and complex mental health cases. Part of his job is reading the evaluations other people wrote about kids like ours, and he can tell you precisely what keeps getting left out of them.

We get into why he includes IQ testing in every evaluation, what your child's preferred substance choice tells him that they could never say out loud, and why he will usually steer a family toward paying out of pocket rather than running a psych eval through insurance. He also names something I had never heard put into words: why a kid who is finally doing well will sometimes walk straight back into the thing that nearly took them out. I did not have any of this intelligence when my son was in it, and I have thought about that a lot since.

If your child has cycled through program after program and you still cannot answer the question "but what is actually going on with them," start here.

YOU'LL LEARN:

• Why Dr. Husick recommends not testing in active addiction, and the window he actually wants
• What a diagnosis list eight items long tells you, and what it can never tell you
• Why he includes IQ testing every time, even when nobody asked for it
• What the substance your child reaches for most says about what they may be needing
• The recommendation he sometimes has to put in writing that parents least want to read

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Dr. Husick’s website
• Lakeside Independence Program 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.

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

There is a version of a house where everyone moves quietly. You time your questions. You read the door slam before you read the room. You have gotten so good at it that you barely notice you are doing it anymore, and somewhere in there, one person's mood started running the whole place.

Cathy and I both lived there. I matched my son's emotional state toe to toe and had no skills to separate the two. Cathy handed so much authority over to her kids that her husband walked in the door every night and had to be the heavy, which put a wedge between them that added to their home’s dysfunction.

What we talk about in this episode is what pulled us out, and the term ‘emotional regulation’doesn’t adequately cover it. I made a decision while I was outlining this episode not to use that phrase, because I think it gets thrown around in a way that misses what you’re up against in the real world. Regulating is one thing. Planting your feet while a young person rages at you - and not picking up the rope - that takes something closer to durability. Stamina. Sturdiness.

Here is why we chose this topic: it is one of the most powerful things in this entire experience you are completely in charge of. You can’t control whether they show up for work, school or court. But this one is yours, and you can start on it today and feel something shift by the end of the week.

I also tell a story involving ten dollars and a vacuum, as a real world example of why emotional durability is crucial for your sanity and your child’s growth.

If you’re exhausted and need something to change this week, this is for you.

YOU'LL LEARN:

• Why I stopped using the phrase emotional regulation, and what Cathy and I use in its place
• The moment Cathy realized she had handed her parental authority over, and what it cost at home
• The ten dollar story with the vacuum that I still cringe about
• Where dysregulation shows up in your body first, and why that is the signal to work with
• Why the low stakes moments are where this can start growing in you

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Self coaching questions, Hopestream podcast Episode 333
• Self coaching questions, Hopestream podcast Episode 328
• Beyond Addiction: How Science and Kindness Help People Change
• Beyond Addiction Workbook
• Free e-book, Worried Sick: hopestreamcommunity.org/worried 
• Free two-week trial of The Stream: hopestreamcommunity.org/try 

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 have probably rehearsed the apology. I'm sorry I didn't catch this sooner. I'm sorry I wasn't a better parent. I'm sorry this is happening to you. If some version of that speech runs on a loop in your head, this quick solo episode is me asking you to put it down.

Real accountability matters. If there is something you actually did that caused harm, owning it is valid and important. But that is not the same as taking responsibility for your kid's choices, their biology, a disease you didn't cause, or life's timing. Most of the guilt I hear from parents lives in that second category, and it is quietly stealing the energy you need for what's sitting right in front of you.

In this episode I talk about why so much of what we call guilt is actually something else wearing a disguise, and I give you a litmus test that tells you in one question whether you're making a real apology or doing something else entirely.

I also take you back to one of the heaviest seasons of my own life, when my son was transported to wilderness therapy at 16 and I spent months buried under a mountain of shame. What I was doing during that time, and what I wasn't doing, taught me the difference between guilt that sharpens how you show up and guilt that just corrodes. I close with a short pen and paper exercise that might leave you staring at a nearly empty page, in the best possible way.

There is no award for the most guilt-ridden parent on the planet. If there were, I would have already won it. Consider this your permission slip.

YOU'LL LEARN:

• Why "I'm sorry I didn't catch it sooner" is not the apology you think it is
• The difference between real accountability and misdirected responsibility, and why collapsing the two keeps you stuck
• The two emotions parents often carry that get mistaken for guilt
• A one-question litmus test that separates a real apology from self punishment
• A five minute writing exercise that shows you how much of your self blame is actually yours

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Free e-book, Worried Sick
• Try The Stream free for two weeks
• Anger Solo - Podcast Episode 335 

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's an emotion most of us are carrying that we don't talk about, because we're pretty sure we're not allowed to feel it. Anger. Anger at where our kid's choices have led our family. Anger at what they're doing to themselves. And underneath it, a heavy layer of guilt for feeling any of it at all.

In this solo episode, I'm getting honest about it, starting with a distinction that changes everything: anger at your child is not the same as anger at the situation. One of them usually isn't anger at all. It's grief wearing a really convincing mask, and it needs a completely different response.

There's a cultural script that says good parents don't get angry at a struggling kid. We're supposed to be endlessly patient, compassionate, calm. I have yet to meet one person who pulls that off all the time. So the anger goes underground, and it leaks out sideways: sarcasm, silence, blowups over nothing, or shame that quietly eats at you while you look perfectly fine on the outside.

I'm also telling you my McDonald's parking lot story, the day my anger completely took the wheel and I said things to my son I never meant. I'm not exempt from any of this. Nobody is.

Then I'll walk you through a different way to see anger entirely, one that turns it from something that owns you into something that informs you, plus real things you can do with it starting today.

If you've been carrying anger and beating yourself up for feeling it, come listen. You are so.not.alone.

YOU'LL LEARN

• The one distinction that determines whether your anger needs a boundary or something much softer
• Where buried anger actually goes, and who ends up paying the price for it
• A reframe that turns anger from a character flaw into useful information
• What happened in a McDonald's parking lot that taught me how emotional reactivity can wreck a moment (or longer)
• How to tell the difference between releasing your anger and just avoiding it

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• The Dance of Anger, Harriet Lerner
• Hopestream Resources
• Episode 174

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:

This episode is long overdue, and I know many of you have been waiting for it. Over the past two to three years, the conversations in our community have shifted. It used to be all about opiates and fentanyl. Now a huge number of our moms are watching their kids change right in front of them because of high-potency THC products, and it is happening fast. So I brought together three people with very different vantage points on THC-induced psychosis and what it is doing to developing brains.

First you'll hear from Lynne, a battle-tested mom from The Stream who is living this right now with her son. She shares what the early signs looked like in her home, what she wishes she had known, and the one shift that changed her conversations with him.

Then I sat down with Dr. David Rowe, Director of Neuropsychology at United Assessment. He explains what psychosis actually looks like (it is rarely what you see in the movies), when it becomes a medical emergency, and how a solid psychological evaluation can finally answer the question every parent asks: what is driving the bus?

Finally, Stefan Bate, co-CEO of Jaywalker Lodge, returns to the show. He has spent almost two decades in this field, and what he is seeing in treatment today stopped me in my tracks. The product your kid is using is not the marijuana you remember. Not even close.

This is a heavy topic, but you will leave with real information and real hope, because recovery is possible. My guests see it happen every day.

If you have ever looked at your child and wondered, what am I actually seeing right now, this episode is for you.

YOU'LL LEARN

• Why “it’s just weed” no longer means what it did a generation ago
• The subtle signs of psychosis that are easy to explain away as something else
• What a psychological evaluation can reveal, and the sobriety myth that stops families from getting one
• The reason THC-related psychosis is catching even seasoned treatment providers off guard
• A reframe that could change how urgently you respond to your child’s use

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Dave Rowe, Ph.D., United Assessment website
• Stefan Bate, Jaywalker Lodge website
• Download our THC Guide For Parents
• Free e-book, Worried Sick
• Try The Stream free for two weeks
• Hopestream episode 259 with Stefan Bate on recovery captial

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.