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Hope, Disappointment, and Learning to Stay: Parenting Through Addiction’s In-Between · Parenting Through The Hard

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Welcome to Parenting through the Hard, a podcast for parents navigating
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the messy, unpredictable. Seasons of raising teens and supporting adult
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children. I'm Angie, your host and friend who knows exactly
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how heavy and lonely this road can be.
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My goal is to create a space. Where we can talk about
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what's real, honest conversations about the challenges of parenting
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that are rooted in hope and and anchored in love. Whether you're in crisis,
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unsure about the. Future, or just trying to make it. Through the day,
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there's space for you here. Together, we'll explore what it means
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to. Keep showing up, finding strength, staying grounded,
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and holding on to hope one step at a time.
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Hey, friend. Welcome back to Parenting through the Hard. Before we
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begin, I want to thank Terese for her donation that helped
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sponsor today's episode. Therese, thank you for supporting this
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work and for helping to create a steady,
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healing space for parents of teens and adult children.
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A place where we can find language for what we're living, stay grounded
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in our own lane, and walk through hard and
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unresolved seasons together. If you've ever thought about
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sponsoring an episode yourself, hang tight and I'll
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share more about how you can do that at the end of today's episode.
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With that said, I'm your host, Angie, and today's
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conversation is for the parent who is living
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in the middle of something unresolved.
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Not at the beginning, when everything feels raw, not at
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the breakthrough, when it finally feels like it's behind you,
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but in that long,
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tender in between it. If you've
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walked or are walking beside a child who is struggling with addiction
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or even just brushing up against it, this space,
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these next 20 or so minutes, are for
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you. As I sit down to
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record this message today, I can feel a part of me wanting to
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stay a little vague. Not because this doesn't matter,
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and not because I'm trying to avoid the hard parts, but because
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witnessing addiction or substance abuse in
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someone you love is scary. And it
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brings up fear and uncertainty, and it
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brings up an instinct to protect the people we love and sometimes
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to protect ourselves, too. So if
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this conversation comes across as a little careful
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today, that's intentional.
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I'm sharing what feels safe and
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true while still honoring how
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tender this terrain is for me right now.
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And if you notice yourself holding back in
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your own story, I just want you to know that that
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makes sense to me. There are seasons
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for some of us when, as parents, we start to
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feel something shift with our kids. It's time
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when we move from this place of wondering
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about something to knowing, from thinking maybe
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this is just a phase that they're going through, or maybe this is something
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they're just experimenting with to. I think this might actually
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be a problem for them.
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And that realization doesn't come gently.
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It lands with weight, with so many
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questions, with a kind of clarity we
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both want and don't want. At the same time,
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we start to wonder things like, you know, how regularly
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is this part of their day? How long has this been going
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on? What are they? What are they running from?
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What do I do now? And maybe the hardest
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question of all, what if they don't want to change? What if
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they aren't ready to change? And on the heels of that
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question, a moment of urgency
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usually kicks in. I think as moms, once we identify
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a problem in our child's life, even when they're adults,
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we immediately want to help. We want
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a clear next step. We want a professional to call, a program
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to trust, a path forward that feels solid
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and certain. And so we start searching.
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We search late at night. We implore
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the help of AI. Nowadays, we make phone calls that seem
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to lead nowhere. We read and we hear words like,
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they have to want it. There's nothing you can do
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unless only they can write the next chapter.
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As parents, I think it's in this moment that
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our prayers change,
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our conversations change, our sleep
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changes, our sense of safety changes, and we start
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to enter a season of watchfulness.
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We're paying closer attention sometimes.
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We're measuring our words. We're wondering what to
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say and what to hold back. And it's exhausting
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because the stakes feel so high and
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there are no answers that actually bring resolution.
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We want to move things forward. We want to protect them.
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We want to stop what feels like a slow unraveling
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while slowly coming to terms with the truth
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that readiness is something that can't be rushed.
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And I think that this is the beginning of the in between,
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the place where awareness has arrived, but resolution has hasn't
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yet. And this stage for parents who have
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a child that's struggling with substance use is hard in
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ways that don't always get named. It's hard
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because you can see the problem, but you can't see the path forward yet.
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It's hard because you're holding onto urgency
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and restraint at the same time.
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Honestly, I think that we could probably do, I don't know,
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at least a dozen podcast episodes just on this part
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of the journey. The exhausting process of trying to understand
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substance abuse, of the waiting, of the not knowing,
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of the way that it quietly reshapes
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your Family's rhythms and your own inner world.
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But today I actually kind of want to talk about a different kind of hard.
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It's a hard that kind of caught
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me off guard a little bit. It's something that I never expected as
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part of this experience, because it's a hard that actually showed up
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right alongside hope. I know
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that sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it? I think that's
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why I'm struggling with it so much. Don't get me wrong.
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Hope. Hope is wonderful no matter how it shows up.
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Whether it shows up quietly,
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in small moments that catch you off guard, like a conversation
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with your child that feels a little more honest, or a
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flicker of self awareness that maybe you haven't seen before,
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or maybe just even a sentence that's
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kind of casually muttered that makes you pause and think,
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huh, maybe something's shifting here.
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I think the part that I'm finding a little challenging is that even
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as hope rises, there's a tension in it
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now. I guess because I've
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had this hope before, because I know how fragile
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these moments can be, because I'm afraid to let myself get
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ahead of what's actually happening. I think what
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I'm saying is that sometimes hope brings relief and anxiety
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at the same time. Does that make sense? Sometimes it
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offers a sense of safety while also stirring up fear.
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Sometimes what you thought would be an end is
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just the beginning of another long chapter in the story.
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Maybe this is one of those things that you only really get when you experience
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it. And, man, I hope that somebody out there besides
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me gets this. But sometimes,
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as great as hope can be for a mama, it raises
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questions that we don't always want to ask ourselves out loud.
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Questions like, what if this doesn't work?
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Hope asks us to open our hearts
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again. And that can be really hard to do
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after we've learned, sometimes for years, just how
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painful disappointment can be.
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So this makes me a little sad to say, but for now,
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hope comes with restraint.
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With a little bit of hesitation, with a guarded
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kind of tenderness. I don't know.
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I don't. I don't throw the doors open to hope anymore.
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Not with this. But I'm finding
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that I can push myself to crack them open.
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And I wait and
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I force myself to breathe when everything inside me wants to hold my breath.
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And then sometimes the door is gently
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pushed closed from the other side. Maybe it's
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because they're not feeling as sure about their ability to loosen the hold
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this substance has on them. Or maybe it's
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pushed closed because fear starts to creep in for them. Or maybe
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they acknowledge the problem, but they just still aren't ready to act on it.
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And just like that, hope drops into a familiar ache.
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And I think this is a part that no one really prepares you for.
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You know, not the crisis,
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but the cycle. Hope,
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disappointment, waiting,
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trying again for them,
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for you, over and over.
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This is the pattern that I've learned to notice. Not because I wanted
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to, but because I keep finding myself here.
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You know, first hope rises. Hope that this might be the
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moment when something changes, that they might be able to move through this,
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that that help could actually make a difference. And then disappointment.
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Not always because things fall apart, but because readiness just
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isn't quite here yet. Or the timing isn't quite right.
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Or maybe the next step doesn't materialize the way we hoped.
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It's not dramatic heartbreak.
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It's more like quiet grief that just repeats itself.
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And every time it does, I'm left with
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this decision. What will I do
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with my love?
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Somewhere in between that hope and disappointment,
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I sense a quiet nudge from the spirit.
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It's not urging me to fix. It's not asking me
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to force anything. It's not calling me to carry what isn't mine.
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Just one word, steady and anchoring. A word
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my heart needs to hear.
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Stay. So I've had to
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do a lot of work lately on what it means to stay.
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Every time we hit a bump in the road, instead of problem solving what I'm
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going to do to get them back on track, I ask myself how I'm going
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to stay. And I'm learning some things in the process.
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I'm learning that staying doesn't mean monitoring
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every move. It doesn't mean chasing answers or explanations.
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And it doesn't mean living in a constant state of alert.
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Staying means staying present in my lane,
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even when the urge is to jump into theirs.
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It means staying rooted in who I am,
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not reshaping myself around their struggle, not letting fear
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decide who I become in a moment.
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Staying means loving without trying to control the story.
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Choosing to focus on connection over coercion.
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Choosing to focus on presence over pressure.
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Choosing faith over frantic fixing.
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For those of you who are listening, thinking, perfect.
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Maybe that's the answer. Maybe focusing on
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staying will make things easier. I've got some bad news
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for you. I know I'm really a Debbie Downer today.
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Focusing on staying has actually made things a little
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harder. Because now I'm no longer negotiating inside
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myself whether I'll continue to stay or not. Instead,
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I'm living inside how to Stay.
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How to stay present without hovering.
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How to stay loving without managing outcomes.
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How to stay honest about how serious this is without
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letting fear run the show.
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Staying asks me to live with open eyes, to acknowledge
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the problem clearly, to stop minimizing or explaining it away,
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and at the same time, to resist the pull to become consumed
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by it. Staying means I don't look away,
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but I also don't stare so hard that it overtakes everything
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else in my life.
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It's a very narrow lane, and it
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takes constant attention for me to remain there.
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Because once, once, I committed to staying,
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I also committed to uncertainty.
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There's no clear timeline for
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recovery. There's no guarantee that things will
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move forward the way that I hope they will.
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There's no assurance that my steadiness in
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this storm is even going to be rewarded with change.
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Addiction is hard.
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Staying is hard. Everything about the journey
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is hard. And so it's
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only natural that as we navigate this, we're going to stumble and backslide.
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We're going to fall back into patterns that offer a false sense
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of safety. You know, even when we know our lane,
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we're going to have moments where we drift unintentionally.
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We're going to shift back into factory settings without noticing.
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We're going to start again to scan for signs,
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to read into tone shifts, to watch for clues,
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rehearse conversations that haven't happened yet.
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And we're going to tell ourselves that we're just being attentive, that we're just being
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prepared, that we're just being loving. But inside,
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we're going to feel something tighten,
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and our thoughts are going to begin to circle, and our nervous system is
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going to stay on alert. And before we realize it,
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we've shifted right back into emotionally living in a future
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that hasn't happened yet. And after a period of
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time, we'll isolate, we'll pull inward. We'll keep
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our worries to ourselves because talking about them again feels exhausting.
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We'll fall back into staying busy so we don't have to feel or
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emotionally pulling back, just enough to take the edge off the ache.
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And none of that makes us weak.
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It makes us human.
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Staying without control costs
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something. And sometimes our
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nervous system looks for relief wherever it can find it.
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But awareness gives us a choice. And when we notice
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ourselves shifting, the work isn't to shame ourselves back into place.
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I think our work is to gently return,
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or to use my word of the year, to reset
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to this moment. Not to yesterday
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or tomorrow, but to where things are right now.
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And Sometimes that return is quiet. Sometimes it's a deep breath,
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it's a pause. It's a decision to close
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that Internet window, to not type that text,
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to stop rehearsing that conversation that may never need to
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happen. Sometimes that
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reset is stepping outside, praying.
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Sometimes it's just sitting with what is.
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Coming back to the present doesn't erase concern.
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It just. It just brings us home to where our feet actually are.
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And I think that's often where staying looks different from
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what I expect.
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Sometimes staying for me, looks like restraint,
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like letting silence be silence, like trusting
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that love doesn't have to be loud to be present.
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Sometimes it's choosing to stay grounded without demanding resolution.
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And that's often where God meets me,
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you know, not in the imagined futures, but in the grounded now.
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Hope still lives here, and I love that for
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us. But I'm learning that it's not the early hope I
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experienced that was desperate for change. It's a quieter hope,
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a steadier hope. It's a hope that's
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learning to trust that God is at work, even when nothing looks
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different yet. A hope that doesn't hinge on
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timelines. A hope that can coexist with
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uncertainty. A hope that allows me to stay soft without
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becoming fragile. This hope doesn't ask us to
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predict the ending. It simply asks us to stay faithful in the
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middle. If you're listening today and
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realizing how tired you are, how much
19:58
energy staying has taken, I want you
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to hear this clearly. You are
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not weak for feeling worn down. You are not failing
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because you need rest, and you are not losing ground when
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you choose steadiness over urgency.
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Staying is work. Quiet work,
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invisible work, Work that often goes
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unseen. And the truth is,
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we don't have to do it perfectly for it to matter.
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One of the things I've come to love about this space is that it's
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not something I carry on my own. Parenting through the Heart is a community we're
20:45
building together, shaped by the stories that you share and the way that you show
20:49
up here. If this space has been supportive to you, one way to help sustain
20:53
it is by sponsoring an upcoming episode. You can donate whatever feels right to
20:57
you, and those gifts help cover the production costs of the podcast and
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keep this community growing. You'll find the link in the show notes whenever
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you're ready. No pressure, just gratitude. Now for the fun part.
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I truly love hearing from you. I've already received such
21:14
thoughtful messages and ideas for future episodes, and they mean more to me than you
21:19
know. This space is guided by real stories and real needs.
21:23
If you have something that you're walking through or a question that you want
21:27
to share, you can always email me@parentingthroughthehardmail.com
21:33
it's easy to forget how even the hard parts of our story can
21:37
become a lifeline for someone else. If you haven't
21:40
yet, you can also visit parentingthroughthehard.com
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to explore resources or to subscribe and sign up
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for encouragement in your inbox. Just simple grace filled reminders
21:53
meant to meet you where you are with once or twice a month.
21:56
It's truly an honor to walk this road with you friend.
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Until next time, let's stay grounded in what matters.
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Keep taking small steps forward, and remember, you're allowed
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to stumble to learn and to give yourself grace. You're doing better than
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you think.