Hopestream: Parenting Kids Through Addiction & Mental Health
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Vape Addiction: The THC Use You May Not Even Notice, with Dr. Deepa Camenga
5 november 2026 · 52 min
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Maybe you found it in the laundry, or at the bottom of a backpack. It looked like a highlighter, or a USB stick, or a cute little accessory that matched their phone case. And now you’re standing there holding it, wondering how worried you should actually be.
Vaping comes up in our community constantly, so I tracked down the most qualified physician I could find to help us sort through it. Dr. Deepa Camenga is an associate professor of emergency medicine at Yale, board certified in pediatrics and addiction medicine, and the associate director for pediatric programs at the Yale Program in Addiction Medicine. She’s also parenting teenagers of her own, so she gets this from both sides of the kitchen table.
Dr. Camenga explains why vapes are a completely different animal from the cigarettes many of us grew up around. They’re tiny, odorless, loaded with far more than nicotine, and the ones our kids are buying aren’t regulated, which means nobody can tell you for sure what’s inside any single device. She’s seeing kids as young as eleven and twelve in her practice, and many of them will look her in the eye and say, “Yeah, I’m definitely addicted.”
We also dig into the situation so many of you have written to me about. Your child comes home from treatment, stays away from the pills and the alcohol, and then starts vaping, along with a very convincing speech about why you can’t take that away from them. Dr. Camenga’s answer is compassionate and honest, and it will help you hold your ground with love.
And I love what she said about quitting. When a young person stops vaping, the anxiety or depression underneath can get louder before it gets better, and that doesn’t mean something is going wrong. It means the thing that was masking those feelings is finally gone. If you’ve been expecting everything to get better the moment they stop, this reframe could save you a lot of heartache.
If you’ve found a vape, suspect there’s one, or you’re trying to get ahe…
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Communicate Your Boundary With Calm, Confidence And Clarity, with Brenda Zane
29 oktober 2026 · 39 min
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You did it the way we practice it. You listened, you validated, you said the compassionate and true thing, and then named your boundary. Your kid looked at you like you had never understood them a day in their life. “You’re selfish. You just want to control me.” And there you are, feeling that familiar pull to explain it one more time, in different words, until they finally get it.
Seven years into the podcast and The Stream, how to set and hold a boundary is still the question I hear more than any other. So this week it is just you and me, talking about the part that so often goes missing, which is the moment right after you say it.
I share a few tools you can tuck into your back pocket, including one with a name that might make you laugh, a visualization that keeps you from playing verbal pickleball with your kid, and a line from a trial lawyer that has become one of my all time favorites. There are scripts too, including one for the holiday plans that are probably already humming in the back of your mind.
We also talk honestly about safety, because confidence looks very different when your child is escalating. And I tell you about the day I went to an ATM to help my son pay back a dealer, knowing in my gut it was not the true story.
If you have caved before, you have not erased your progress. Confidence tends to show up after the practice, not before it, and the first change you notice will most likely be in you.
If you are tired of defending a decision you already know is right, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN:
The small word in the middle of your sentence that quietly cancels out your empathy
A three step way to name a boundary without opening a negotiation
What to do with your kid’s words while they are still talking
The one sentence I want you to get comfortable saying when your child is upset
What to say when you gave in last time and want to go back to your original answer
EPISODE RESOURCES:
The Surprising Power of Non-Re…
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Hope and Heartbreak: A Nurse Mom Couldn’t Fix Her Son’s Addiction, with Tara Norbeck
22 oktober 2026 · 56 min
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You know the mantra, even if you have never said it out loud: I can only be as happy as my unhappiest child. I held that one fiercely for years, and so did Tara Norbeck, until a therapist at her son’s rehab said something to her that rearranged the whole equation.
Tara spent her career as a level one trauma ICU nurse, the steady presence families leaned on in the worst hours of their lives. She knew how to assess, intervene, and fix. Then the script flipped, and she was the mom at the bedside holding her own son’s hand, with nothing in all that training that could fix what was happening to him.
Tara and I are two moms with plenty of scar tissue, and we talk about the things so many of us carry quietly. Grieving the future you pictured the first time they placed that baby in your arms. The shame that metastasizes when everything stays a secret. The way your child’s addiction can become your own, until it governs your mornings, your marriage, and every thought in between. She also shares a story about her youngest daughter, told years after the worst had passed, that gave me chills and may change how you see your other kids.
Tara is a woman of deep faith, and she offers a line about where to place your hope when nothing around your child looks hopeful that I will be holding onto for a long time. Her book, “Dear Mom of an Addict” was written because she needed it when her son was struggling, when she was lying awake at 2 AM, waiting for the phone to ring and dreading it at the same time.
If your own peace has been moored to your child’s worst day, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN
What a rehab therapist told Tara about her tears that changed how she showed up for her son
The difference between anonymity and secrecy, and why only one of them protects your family
Why joy and happiness are not the same thing when your child is struggling
How the neuroscience of addiction can soften the “we didn’t raise you like this” reaction
What Tara wishe…
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Strategies For Parenting A Stuck Young Adult, with Kim Muench
15 oktober 2026 · 55 min
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You have probably been scanning for it for a while. The one consequence that will finally get your 25-year-old out of their room and into a life that looks like forward motion. You can't ground them. You can't take the phone. And you've already decided you will not make them homeless, so what's left?
Kim Muench knows that question from both sides of the kitchen table. She's a Jai Institute for Parenting certified coach, the founder of Real Life Parent Guide, and a mom of five whose oldest son's drinking in his early twenties sent her back to college and into coaching parents of young adults who are stuck. Hundreds of thousands of parents follow her on Instagram and TikTok, and her new book, Lost in Place: How to Support, Motivate, and Launch an Adult Child, comes out November 24.
Kim doesn't hand out the perfect consequence, because she doesn't believe there is one. What she offers instead is a shorter list of what is actually yours to control, and a way of sorting helping from enabling that I kept turning over long after we hung up. She also tells a dog-sitting story that is so ordinary and so telling that every one of us will see ourselves in it.
We talk about the fear that keeps so many of us frozen, especially when self-harm has been part of the picture, and Kim asks a question I had never heard framed this way: why is it only our kids who get to hit rock bottom?
She also explains why she refuses to use the phrase "failure to launch," and her reason made me exhale a little.
If you have a 20-something at home who seems to be standing still while you do all the running, this one is for you.
YOU'LL LEARN:
The three things Kim says are truly yours to control once your child is an adult, and what's missing from that list
One simple question that helps you tell whether you're helping or enabling
What a family dog revealed about how one mom was over-functioning for her son
The four C's Kim teaches parents who have lost their footing
Why …
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Kratom, 7-OH and Gas Station Drugs: What Every Parent Needs to Know, with Dean Francis
8 oktober 2026 · 52 min
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It's the green powder in the shaker bottle, the little blue shot by the register, the "herbal supplement" your kid bought for focus. If you've been quietly wondering whether kratom is something to worry about, drop everything and tune in.
Dean Francis's son Cameron was an elite college runner, closing in on a sub four-minute mile, when he found kratom online, sold as a plant-based boost for energy and focus. For a few months it did exactly what the marketing promised. Then his running slid, the anxiety showed up, and nobody in the family connected any of it to the powder he was shaking into his water bottle every day. It took an ER doctor in 2021 to say it plainly: this is an opioid, he’s addicted, and it's serious.
Dean got mad, and then he got busy. He founded End Kratom Addiction, and he showed up to this conversation with a mountain of knowledge (and a few products to hold up on camera, so the YouTube version is worth a watch). We talk about what kratom actually does in the body, the forms kids are buying it in, why the "safe natural leaf" story isn’t all it’s been touted as, and the Billion-dollar business keeping it on gas station shelves. He also gets honest about what treatment looked like for Cameron, and the gap in care that cost him more than anyone expected.
This is an educational episode, and it's also the wake-up call I think every parent needs, whether or not your child is struggling right now. What's sold at the corner store down the street may not be what you or your child thinks it is.
YOU'LL LEARN
What kratom turns into once it reaches the liver, and why that changes everything
The popular "energy shot" Dean held up that most parents would never look at twice
Why the "used safely for centuries in Southeast Asia" story should be taken with a grain of salt
The treatment mistake Dean wishes someone had warned his family about
How you can add your voice to the push to make kratom a controlled substance
EPISODE RESOURCES:…
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The Surprising Power Of Non-Reactivity, with Cathy Cioth
1 oktober 2026 · 56 min
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The morning of our move, the pods were in the driveway, my dad had shown up ready to work, and my son was barely awake and in no shape to lift a box. Half an hour in, he asked if we were almost done. I felt the butterflies start up in my chest, and within seconds I was matching his drama word for word, with my dad standing right there taking it all in.
Cathy has her own version of that moment - and I’m sure you do as well. We can laugh about it now, but both of us spent years believing we were responding to our kids when we were really just adding fuel to their fire.
This episode is about non-reactivity, the piece of the Invitation to Change approach that I think quietly gets left behind while we focus on more concrete things like boundaries and natural consequences. Chaos needs two participants, so when you stop supplying your half, something shifts, and it has nothing to do with controlling your child.
Cathy and I talk about where reactivity shows up in your body before your brain catches up, why the rules every "good family" follows can pull you into the wrong fight, and what to do when the demands and gaslighting leave you wondering who the parent is in your house. We also talk about safety, because sometimes that pounding heart is telling you something real.
And we re-share a line from our friend Dina Cannizzaro that I think every parent should memorize. Put it on a sticky note, or your forearm, or bathroom mirror - it’s pure gold.
If your home has started to revolve around your child's moods and you’re tired of losing the same argument over and over, this one is for you.
YOU'LL LEARN:
What Cathy and I each finally did mid-blowup that changed the relationship dynamics
The early warning signs your body sends before you say something you regret
Why the small things you care about most can be the perfect distraction for your kid
Two questions to ask yourself when you feel triggered, and why one of them is about your safety
The power…
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What Recovery Looks Like For Parents, with Janice
24 september 2026 · 1 uur 1 min
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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: Worrie…
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From Self-Harm to Healing: A Highly Sensitive Girl’s Path to Recovery, with Ciara Fanlo
17 september 2026 · 59 min
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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:…
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Parents: You Change First, Then Them, with Brook McKenzie
10 september 2026 · 1 uur 11 min
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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…
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His Mom’s Hard Boundary Drove His Recovery, with Darren Hobbs
3 september 2026 · 1 uur 22 min
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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 a…
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What Are Boundaries and Why Parents Need Them, with Cathy Cioth
27 augustus 2026 · 48 min
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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 …
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Sending Your Struggling Kid To College, with Cathy Cioth
20 augustus 2026 · 44 min
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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 Subject…
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Substance Use Isn't the Whole Story, with Dr. Graham Husick
13 augustus 2026 · 54 min
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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 ch…
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Becoming Emotionally Sturdy When Your Child Struggles, with Cathy Cioth
6 augustus 2026 · 1 uur 1 min
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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 …
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The Guilt That Helps You and The Guilt That Just Hurts, with Brenda Zane
30 juli 2026 · 18 min
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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…
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Anger: The Emotion You're Not Supposed To Feel But Definitely Do
23 juli 2026 · 30 min
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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, Harrie…
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THC-Induced Psychosis: What Parents Need to Know Now
16 juli 2026 · 1 uur 33 min
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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 c…
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Practical Ways To Coach Yourself When Your Child Struggles With Alcohol or Drugs, With Cathy Cioth
9 juli 2026 · 1 uur 6 min
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. Lees meer
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 Sel…
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Hard Conversations: Have Them Today, with Cathy Cioth
2 juli 2026 · 45 min
Trigger Warning: this episode discusses loss of a child due to substance use. Please decide if this is the right time to listen. Lees meer
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 s…
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After Treatment: What the First 90 Days Really Look Like, with Beth Hillman
25 juni 2026 · 56 min
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. Lees meer
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 syndr…
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A Love Letter for Parenting Kids Through Addiction, with Brenda Zane
18 juni 2026 · 16 min
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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 AlcoholHopestream 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.
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The Thing Your Kid Can’t Tell You When They’re Struggling, with Enzo Narciso
11 juni 2026 · 59 min
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. Lees meer
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…
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10 Self Coaching Questions for Parents of Kids Who Struggle With Mental Health and Substances, with Brenda Zane
4 juni 2026 · 54 min
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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 AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and a…
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Letting Your Child Struggle and Choosing Love Over Fear, with Dr. Wes Robins
28 mei 2026 · 1 uur 5 min
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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 …
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Connect Before You Correct: Breaking Generational Patterns, with Lacey Tezino
21 mei 2026 · 59 min
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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 Frid…
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Inside Your Kid's Mind: Hidden Pain Behind Substance Use, with Brad McLeod
14 mei 2026 · 58 min
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Brad was 17, sitting in a psych ward for the second time, when a stranger told him about a program in Tennessee. He said no. He ran from a rest stop on the highway, and the police caught him a few hours later. That moment tells you everything about where he was: a kid who had never learned to stay, never learned to feel, and hadn’t yet found anything worth staying for.
What followed was more than a decade of trying to outrun himself. Percocet. Heroin. A methadone clinic he drove to every morning with no car and no money. A felony conviction at 18. A deportation to Canada with a lifetime ban from the US. Brad doesn’t tell his story like a cautionary tale. He tells it like someone who finally understands what his brain was looking for, and what it took to stop running long enough to build something worth keeping.
Today he hosts Sober Motivation, a top 0.5% podcast globally with more than five million downloads, and runs an online community for people in recovery. He started it from his basement not because he had the answers, but because he knew what it felt like to be alone in this.
This conversation is for every parent who has watched their child go through treatment and wondered if anything is actually landing. Brad says something I’ve believed for years but have rarely heard said plainly: sobriety is the starting line, not the finish line. What he built after that line, and why it held, is what this episode is really about.
If you’ve done everything right and it still isn’t working, this one is for you.
YOU’LL LEARN:
How Brad went from two psych ward stays and a felony to host of a top recovery podcast
Why sobriety was never his problem, and what the real work looked like
The question he asks every person about the night before they get sober
What getting back on ADHD medication at 38 finally showed him about himself
What it means to build a life you have something to lose in
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Sober Motivation Podcast
Sober Motiv…
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Co-Dependency Isn’t What You Think, with Rawly Glass, LCSW
7 mei 2026 · 1 uur 5 min
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Rawly Glass grew up in a home full of violence. At 16, he made a pact that he would figure out how to do things differently. He earned a master's in social work, built a career in private therapy, and by all appearances was doing the work. But something from his history kept surfacing, quiet and persistent. When someone handed him the word codependent, he turned it over and put it back down. It did not fit. And he needed to understand why.
What Rawly found was that codependency, as commonly taught, is a behavioral label for something much deeper. It has pathologized one of the most beautiful things about people: the capacity to be gentle and caring. Underneath the behavior there is almost always a more fundamental disruption. Trauma, even the quiet kind, interferes with the development of what he calls a relationship with self. When that gets interrupted, we stop orienting inward and start orienting entirely outward, trying to control what we can see because we cannot access what we feel. He calls it external dependency.
Rawly is a therapist and parent educator who has done this work on himself over decades. He brings research, clinical observation, and a deeply personal story to a question most of us have been handed without enough context: what is driving the behavior, and what does real recovery look like?
If you have ever felt like the codependent label did not quite fit but had no other words for it, Rawly Glass has words for it.
You'll learn:
What Rawly means by external dependency, and why it fits better than codependency
The rotten potato story, and what it revealed about looking for the source
The 15 aspects of a relationship with self, and why most of us are missing some
Why self-care often fails, and what has to come first
What co-regulation actually looks like when your child is escalating
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Rawly Glass website
Rawly Glass on YouTube
Brainstorm - book by Dan Siegel
Broken Toys, Broken Dreams - book by T…
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Stuck After Treatment: Real Options Parents Overlook, with Will White
30 april 2026 · 54 min
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Will White has been doing this work since last century, and he means that literally. Licensed since 1989, he has worked in group homes, boarding schools, mental health centers, and in 1996, co-founded Summit Achievement, a wilderness therapy program he ran for nearly 27 years. When he tells you the landscape of behavioral health for young people has shifted more in the last five years than in the previous three decades combined, he knows what he’s talking about.
The externalizers of a generation ago, the kids who broke things, slammed doors, and announced their pain loudly, have largely given way to a different kind of struggling young person. One who is anxious, inward, and frozen. Who won’t leave the room, won’t leave the house, and whose parents keep quietly rearranging life around them in an effort to keep the peace. Will has watched this pattern closely, including at Mountain Valley Treatment Center, where young residents had become so overwhelmed by anxiety that the outside world felt completely out of reach. The treatment models that worked before are not always the ones that work now, and the gap between what young people need and what is actually available to them is widening.
That gap is exactly what Will set out to address when he helped launch The Trade, a new nonprofit program in rural New Hampshire for young adults (all genders) ages 18 to 30. It’s not a therapy program in the traditional sense and if you have a young person stuck in that uncomfortable in-between of not ready for college, not ready for independence, but also not well-served by just being home, it may be exactly what you did not know to look for.
I wanted Will back on the show (he appears way back in episode 14) because his view of the bigger picture is one I trust. In this conversation, we talk about the seismic shifts in behavioral health, what is driving the rise in anxiety, and why less talk and more doing might be what this generation actually needs. If your…
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Misreading Your Child's Substance Use: What Parents Get Wrong with Brenda Zane
23 april 2026 · 49 min
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I have sat with hundreds of moms who came to me at completely different points in their child's substance use, and the gap between them has always struck me. One mom is barely breathing, convinced the worst is already happening. Another is quietly telling herself it might just be a phase. Neither one is wrong, exactly. What they both share is that they are navigating one of the most consequential situations of their lives without a real map.
That gap, between what parents fear and what is actually happening, is exactly what this episode is about. Medicine has always used staging to give patients and families a language for urgency, for appropriate response, for what comes next. Parents of kids with substance use issues have never been handed anything like that. We are expected to assess, decide, and respond without the framework that clinicians spend years building.
So in this episode, I am borrowing that idea because staging is one of the most useful concepts in medicine. It tells you where you are, how serious things actually are, and what kind of response fits the moment. I walk through four stages of substance use, what you might see on the surface, what is happening underneath, and how your role as a parent shifts at each one.
What I want you to hear in this conversation is that you have more influence than you have probably been told. There is a 94% chance your child does not believe they have a problem yet. That is not a reason to give up. It is actually the case that makes you, the parent, the most important factor in whether they ever get help. This framework is not meant to frighten you into action. It is meant to give you the kind of clear-eyed picture that lets you stop reacting and start responding strategically.
If you have been operating without a map, this one is for you.
YOU'LL LEARN:
The four stages of substance use and what each one actually looks like from the outside
Why a quiet kid at home can be at a higher risk lev…
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4 Things You’re Probably Googling if Your Child Struggles With Substances, with Cathy Cioth
16 april 2026 · 1 uur
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lees meer
There is a specific kind of searching that happens at 2am when you are a parent in the thick of it, typing symptoms and half-formed fears into a search bar because you cannot say them out loud to anyone in your life. My cofounder Cathy Cioth knows exactly what that feels like, and in this conversation, we sit down to answer the questions we hear most from parents in our community, including the ones that tend to arrive with a quiet residue of shame just for asking.
We start with one that stops many parents cold: does your child actually have to go to formal treatment to get better? The answer is more nuanced than most of us were told, and the data behind it may genuinely surprise you. From there, we get into PAWS, post-acute withdrawal syndrome, the thing nobody warned you about when your child finally got sober and you expected life to start looking better, and it did not. Cathy and I are nine and ten years out from the hardest seasons of our own journeys, both trained in CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training), and nothing in this conversation comes from a textbook.
This episode is the conversation you may wish you could have had years ago, before you knew what you did not know yet.
You'll learn:
Why formal treatment is not the only path to recovery, and what the research actually says
What PAWS is, why it blindsides so many families, and how to recognize it in your child
How to reward non-using behavior in a way that feels genuine rather than transactional
Why natural consequences belong to your child, not to you, and what it costs to keep carrying them
When doing nothing is the most potent intervention available to you
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Jo Collete Episode
Recovery Research Institute
Dina Cannizzaro Episodes: 297, 288, 173, 138
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
Downlo… -
Is Your Anxiety Making Your Kid's Addiction Worse?, with Maya Kruger
9 april 2026 · 1 uur 3 min
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lees meer
Maya Kruger grew up knowing, in a way children simply know things, that mothers die. Her own mother had lost her mother suddenly at 26, and the shadow of that loss shaped everything, including the fierce, almost desperate closeness Maya and her mother shared. She was so convinced that by leaving nothing unsaid, she could somehow protect what they had. Then, the evening after a morning hike together, her mother was killed in a car accident. Maya was 18, not yet fully formed, and suddenly on her own in a way she had spent her whole childhood bracing for and still could not have prepared for.
What followed was not a clean grief. It was the kind that gets woven into everything, into the acting conservatory she attended in Tel Aviv, into the plays she wrote for the national theater, into a one-woman show called Hand Me Downs where she played her grandmother, her mother, and herself all at once. She got into Juilliard and could not go. She got into drama programs in the States and found herself, over and over, cast as other people's mothers, which she describes as both a wound and a doorway. It was not until she was sitting alone for three days on an Outward Bound solo in the Utah desert, nine crackers a day and a whistle around her neck, that something cracked open.
She is now a psychotherapist, trauma specialist, and founder of Overture Therapy in New York, where she works with anxious moms navigating the ways that a child's crisis can bring every old wound roaring back to the surface.
This conversation goes somewhere I was not entirely prepared for. Maya reframes anxiety in a way that stopped me cold, and she has a way of talking about the guilt and shame that lives in a mother's body when her child is struggling that made me feel genuinely seen. She says something about what anxiety is actually asking for that I keep returning to.
If you have ever felt like your child's struggle has cracked open something in you that you did not know was still…
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Your Calm Is Your Child's Best Drug, with Hunter Clarke-Fields
2 april 2026 · 53 min
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Hunter Clarke-Fields was a painter. She had a graduate degree in art education, a high school teaching job, and what looked from the outside like a creative life. What nobody could see was that she was white-knuckling her way through it, cycling between intense highs and pits of despair she could not explain, having panic attacks in the hallways before she had any tools to handle them. She reached for yoga, then for books on mindfulness, and read about it for years before she finally, at 27, sat down and actually tried.
She set a timer for 10 minutes and sat there thinking the whole time. She was certain she was doing it wrong. But two months in, she looked back and realized she had not fallen into a single pit. Not one. For someone who had been cycling into darkness every couple of weeks for most of her adult life, that was not a small thing. It was everything. And it sent her down a path she never expected, one that eventually turned her into the Mindful Mama Mentor, a podcast host, a mindfulness teacher, and the bestselling author of Raising Good Humans.
Hunter now teaches mindfulness to parents all over the world, with over 20 years of meditation practice behind her and two daughters who, she will freely admit, grew up slightly allergic to the whole thing.
I wanted to have this conversation because I think mindfulness gets written off as vague or soft, and Hunter makes it anything but. She explains what is actually happening in your brain when you blow up at your kid, why longer exhales are not just a cliche, and what she calls the Three R's, a framework so simple you will remember it in the worst moment. She also says something about feelings being like toddlers that I keep coming back to.
If you have ever thought that mindfulness is not for you, or that you are too far gone to start, this one is for you.
You'll learn:
Why Hunter spent two months certain she was meditating wrong.
The part of mindfulness most people skip that changes …
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Using CRAFT, Getting Results, Still Questioning: Coaching Episode
26 maart 2026 · 1 uur 1 min
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When Marie's son was diagnosed with ADHD at eight, she did what devoted parents do. She learned everything and got to work. By the time weed entered the picture in his teens, she had already lined up CRAFT counselors, drug and alcohol specialists, an at-risk youth petition, even a street artist mentor. She is a school psychologist. She had the frameworks, the language. None of it stopped what was coming.
What followed were years of watching him cycle through residential treatment, partial hospitalization, therapeutic boarding school, sober living, and inpatient care, all before nineteen. When he came home and relapsed within days, Marie and her husband made the call she'd been bracing for: he couldn't live with them anymore. And something unexpected happened inside her.
Today, her son has a job. He calls. He showed up to his dad's birthday and ate cake with relatives he hadn't seen in years. Marie listens without lecturing. She is only now learning what it means to help herself.
This is one of the most honest accounts I've heard of doing everything right and still feeling unsure.
If you've done everything you can think of and you're still waiting, this one's for you.
You’ll learn:
The moment Marie felt a significant shift inside her after her son relapsed and had to leave home
What “active waiting” looks like in practice, and how that doesn’t mean ‘letting go’
The specific kind of change talk Marie started hearing from her son, and what it signals about where he is in his process
How Marie and her husband are thinking through the next housing crisis before it happens, including a practical tool for staying grounded when everything hits at once
The shift from parenting mode to consulting mode, and what it looks like to give your child a voice in solutions without solving everything for them
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Clear30 App - helps people take a 30 day break from weed
Jessica Lahey’s “The Gift of Failure”
This podcast is part of a nonp…
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Why Kids Get Estranged From Loving Families, with Sally Harris
19 maart 2026 · 48 min
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When Sally Harris’s middle daughter started down a dangerous path at 14, she did what most devoted mothers do. She fought hard to fix it. Boarding school. Rehab. Anything and everything she could think of. What she did not expect was that the hardest decade of her life was still ahead, or that the coping mechanism she reached for would quietly become a crisis of its own.
Her daughter’s story wound through some of the darkest places a mother can imagine, and Sally will tell you she did not handle it with grace. She handled it the way most of us do: imperfectly, desperately, and often in ways that made things worse. What turned everything around was not something she did for her daughter. It was something she finally did for herself.
Ten years later, her daughter is back. They speak together publicly. They laugh about things that were anything but funny at the time. Sally now coaches moms who are somewhere in the middle of their own version of this, and she brings the kind of clarity you can only get from having actually lived it.
This conversation goes to places I do not hear enough people talking about honestly: what it does to a mother when her child goes silent, the ways we unknowingly push them further, and what it actually looks like to do the work on yourself while your child is still out there struggling. Sally asks one question of every mom she works with, and I think it will stay with you.
If your child has asked for space, cut contact, or simply drifted somewhere you cannot reach, this one is for you.
You’ll learn:
The coping mechanism Sally reached for and what finally made her put it down for good
Why honoring a requested pause is harder than it sounds, and what happens when we do not
What Sally means by "father wounds" and how often they show up in the families she works with
The one question she asks every mom she coaches, and why the answer changes everything
A practical tool she calls a personal board of directors, and w…
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What’s Tough Love and Does It Work For Addiction? With Cathy Cioth
12 maart 2026 · 56 min
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Tough love. Two words that get thrown around constantly in the addiction world, and yet nobody can quite agree on what they mean. Kick them out. Cut them off. Save yourself. That’s the version I heard early on, and I couldn’t do it. Not because I was too soft, but because something about it felt fundamentally wrong - especially with a teenager.
In this episode, Cathy and I get practical on the topic of this illusive thing called “tough love.” We walk through the nine actual actions we took with our own kids, in order, from the very first steps all the way to the hardest ones (ones we call “strong love”) as a way of demonstrating action, not theories. Just two moms who were figuring it out as we went, without the language, community or support we needed at the time.
YOU’LL LEARN:
What Dr. Gabor Maté said about tough love that stopped me cold
Why I stopped using the phrase “tough love” and what I call it instead
Nine “strong love” actions Cathy and I took with our own kids, and what we wish we had done differently
The thing every person in recovery has told me about what finally changed things for them
The two books I recommend to every parent, no matter where you are in this
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Heather Hayes on Hopestream episode 111
Mary Crocker Cook on Hopestream episode 223
Jessica Lahey on Hopestream episode 163
Trish Ruggles on Hopestream episode 313
Safe Enough To Change course in Hopestream Community’s Limited Membership
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 AlcoholHopestream 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.
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Addiction Makes Sense to Your Child: Here's Why, with Jeremy French
5 maart 2026 · 1 uur 16 min
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When I first heard about a woodworking apprenticeship as an addiction recovery program, I was skeptical. And then I sat down with Jeremy French, founder of Making Whole in Asheville, North Carolina, and everything I thought I knew about what recovery has to look like got turned on its head.
Jeremy got sober at 17 after stolen cars, drug runs to Florida, and a flop house he describes as straight out of a Netflix series. He's been in recovery nearly 30 years, never finished high school, and built one of the most remarkable programs I've come across. A small group of men of all ages build high-end furniture together, share a daily meal, and are never forced to stay.
Of the 55 men who've graduated from Making Whole since 2018, 30 of them will tell you they are exactly where they want to be today. That is not a number you hear in this space. I was so intrigued.
You'll hear about:
Why Jeremy credits drugs with solving nine out of ten problems in his life while he was using, and what that might mean for your child
The two things true in every recovery success story Jeremy has witnessed, without exception
The decision his parents made that changed his life more than anything else
Why stepping back sends a different message than you think
What addiction is actually solving, and why treating it as the problem keeps everyone stuck
What parents who have lost a child would give anything to do, and what that could mean for you right now
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Making Whole 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 AlcoholHopestream 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.
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Ten Reasons You May Not Be Getting Results Using CRAFT, with Brenda Zane
26 februari 2026 · 31 min
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lees meer
This solo episode is my attempt to provide answers to the question of why some families see greater change than others when using the CRAFT approach. Drawing on 6+ years of watching hundreds of parents move through this process, some gaining traction, some spinning their wheels, I’m sharing the 10 most common reasons why parents who are 'doing the work' aren't getting the results they want. It's a no-fluff audit of what might be holding you back, and it comes from my heart because there are no more important results to strive for than a healthy family.
If you've been at this for a while and feel like things aren't moving in the right direction, this one is for you.
You'll hear about:
A foundational piece most parents skip without realizing it
Why doing more often backfires
A timing factor that determines whether any skill works
The fastest path forward when communication has broken down
Why inconsistency isn't a character flaw
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Hopestream Playlists - Start Here Playlist
Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist on using Motivational Interviewing, Hopestream episode 306
Dr. Emily Kline on using Motivational Interviewing for hard conversations, Hopestream episode 160
Using Motivational Interviewing and CRAFT as a double punch effort to create change in your family, Hopestream episode 256
CRAFT family resources and providers with Helping Families Help
Using CRAFT, MI and Acceptance & Commitment Therapy together to help your child, Hopestream episode 260
Stages of Change workshop
Stages of Change downloadable cheat-sheet here
Hopestream podcast episode 66 on the Stages of Change
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 AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered …
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Breaking Down Wilderness Therapy Myths and Realities, with Trish Ruggles
19 februari 2026 · 1 uur 17 min
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When parents hear "wilderness therapy," their minds often race to worst-case scenarios: punishment, boot camps, kids forced to survive in harsh conditions. But Trish Ruggles, who spent over a decade as a field guide and wilderness therapist before becoming an educational consultant, has a different story to tell. After 21 years in the field and working with countless families through Pathfinder Consulting, Trish knows that wilderness therapy has evolved dramatically from its origins.
What makes wilderness therapy effective isn't the outdoor skills or fresh air - though those certainly help. It's magic lies in the complete removal of 'noise.'
When you take a struggling adolescent out of their always-on life and place them in the wilderness, the volume goes down on everything that keeps them from thriving. No bedroom door to close, no delivery apps to summon food, no distractions to buffer the work of actually facing themselves. And there are immediate, natural consequences their adolescent brain can actually understand.
Trish's approach is refreshingly honest and practical. She'll be the first to tell you wilderness therapy isn't for everyone, but for the kid who's stuck in their room, the one running wild in the streets, or the treatment-experienced individual who knows how to game the residential system, wilderness creates something that can't be replicated indoors: a space where you can't phone it in, where every action impacts your group, and where real-life consequences teach more than any lecture ever could.
You'll learn:
Key myths and facts about today's outdoor behavioral health offerings
The critical, natural consequences that wilderness experiences provide in real-time
How wilderness has evolved from its primitive roots
Why adopted kids and those with attachment challenges often thrive in wilderness despite parents' fears
The truth about getting kids to agree to, and actually go to an outdoor, adventure or wilderness program
E…
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When to Stop Rescuing Your Child From Addiction, With Campbell Manning
12 februari 2026 · 42 min
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When Campbell Manning's middle son entered detox the day before Valentine's Day, she genuinely believed he'd be "fixed" and home within a week. What followed instead was a years-long journey through both of her sons' addiction cycles that would ultimately transform her from a completely naive parent into a trained addiction counselor who now helps hundreds of families navigate the same treacherous terrain.
Campbell brings both the raw authenticity of lived experience and the clinical expertise she's gained through extensive education plus real-world training with Amber Hollingsworth (Put The Shovel Down YouTube Channel) at Hope For Families Recovery Center.
In this potent conversation, she speaks directly to the particular torture of watching your child actively harm themselves while grappling with decisions that feel impossible, like when her 14-year-old daughter confronted her about how much more "time, emotion, money, and energy" she was going to give to addiction.
What I love is that Campbell's wisdom isn't theoretical; it's forged from setting boundaries that ended up with her sons leave home at 17, refusing to enable behavior that was metastasizing through her entire family system, and learning that "over-loving" your child can actually be the most deleterious choice you make. Her message offers genuine hope grounded in reality: both her sons are in long-term recovery, and she's built a thriving coaching practice helping parents understand that their child's willingness to change often arrives in fleeting moments, which means your preparation and readiness matters profoundly.
You'll learn:
How Campbell navigated the brutal reality of having two sons in active addiction, including the crucial difference between heartbreak (first son) and fury (second son) in her emotional responses
The concept of "tagging it on" and why your child must truly understand there's no one coming to rescue them before lasting change becomes possible
Why di…
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Helping Your Young Adult Child Choose Treatment With Less Resistance, with Joanna Lilley
5 februari 2026 · 50 min
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If you've been waiting for the right moment to bring up the idea of getting your young adult some support, and you're not sure how to do it without blowing up every landmine between you, this episode is for you. Joanna Lilley, therapeutic consultant and host of the podcast Success is Subjective, is back on Hopestream, and she's pulling back the curtain on what it actually looks like to help a young adult move toward help. Joanna works exclusively with the 18 to 29 crowd, and her approach is deceptively simple: meet them where they are, agenda-free, not where your fear wants them to be.
What makes Joanna's process so potent is the way it preserves a young adult's agency at every step. There’s no attempt at maneuvering them into a decision or finding the magic words that finally crack them open. It's about creating the conditions where they feel like the architect of what comes next, and why that buy-in matters more than the program itself. Joanna also gets real about what she's seeing shift in the treatment landscape right now, including why young adults are staying longer in programs, how the complexity of what's showing up has changed dramatically, and what questions parents actually need to be asking before you commit to anything.
When you listen, you'll learn:
Why some young adults may have a deeply distorted picture of what treatment looks like, and how to gently disrupt that narrative without pushing them further away
How Joanna structures her first conversation with a young adult so it feels like a genuine exchange rather than a formal ‘intake’ process
Why giving your young adult the choice of who to work with matters just as much as the choice of where to go
Why it’s wise to start the ‘what might treatment look like’ process before you think you need to and what it might cost you if you wait
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Joanna Lilley (Lilley Consulting) website
Joanna on Hopestream podcast episode #208
Joanna on Hopestream podcast episode…
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How Online Adult Content Impacts Youth, with Duane Osterlind
29 januari 2026 · 44 min
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When your child's phone becomes their constant companion, you might dismiss it as typical teenage behavior. But Duane Osterlind, LMFT with nearly two decades specializing in sexual addiction, shares an urgent reality: the average first exposure to online adult material is now 10 years old. This conversation illuminates why younger people are seeking help in their early twenties after years of private struggle that began in childhood.
Duane offers perspective on how behavioral addictions reverberate throughout family systems, addressing both youth struggles and partner betrayal. He shares why most relationships impacted by sexual betrayal stay intact when the person causing harm addresses the shame fueling addictive patterns.
You'll learn:
Why Duane has seen dramatic demographic shifts in his practice
How to open conversations with your kids about adult content exposure and impact
What discovery trauma is and why it can trigger PTSD symptoms
The distinction between supporting a partner versus taking responsibility for their healing
How shame operates as both genesis and sustaining force of behavioral addictions
EPISODE RESOURCES:
The Addicted Mind Podcast
Shame to Resilience Workshop (for adults)
Brenda as a guest on The Addicted Mind podcast ep. 360
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 AlcoholHopestream 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.
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Be Ready When Your Child Is Ready To Accept Help for Addiction, With Brenda Zane
22 januari 2026 · 25 min
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lees meer
You've been waiting for your child to say they're ready to get help. You've imagined that conversation a thousand times, rehearsed what you'll say, held your breath every time they seem close to opening up. But what happens if that moment arrives and you're under-prepared? What if that precious window closes before you even realize it was open?
In this solo episode, I'm diving into a CRAFT procedure that often gets reduced to logistics when it's actually about something far more potent: the intersection where your child's desperation meets their willingness, and your preparation.
I'm unpacking two elements that I believe parents consistently overlook. The first is understanding that this intersection requires a third component—your readiness. The second challenges who we define as the "identified patient" in this entire scenario, because if your child is the only one getting help while the rest of your family ecosystem stays static, you're essentially working to preserve the exact conditions that contributed to their struggle in the first place.
This isn't easy work, but it's the kind that can reshape not just your relationship with your struggling child, but every relationship in your life. And you don't have to figure it out alone at three in the morning with Google and ChatGPT as your only companion.
You'll learn:
Why the magical intersection of desperation and willingness requires a third element that many parents miss
How to prepare in the background so you're not scrambling when your child finally says they're ready for help
Why your child shouldn't be the only "identified patient" and what your own version of treatment needs to look like
The difference between rescuing your child from discomfort and allowing natural consequences that can actually motivate change
Why obsessing over daily minutiae (dishes, grades, laundry) is often a distraction from the deeper internal work you need to be doing
This podcast is part of a nonprofit…
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How To Get Young People Ready for Real-World Sobriety, with Alex Zemeckis and Cannon Kristofferson
15 januari 2026 · 1 uur
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When your child transitions from treatment back into everyday life, the real work begins. Alex Zemeckis and Cannon Kristofferson, co-founders of The Grounds Recovery and Mare's House, know the terrain intimately—not from textbooks or theories, but from walking that precarious path themselves. Now, years into their own recovery journeys, they've built a rock solid sober living ecosystem that helps young adults navigate the delicate nuances of early sobriety while building sustainable, meaningful lives.
In this conversation, Alex and Cannon reveal why employment isn't just helpful but essential for young people in recovery, serving as both anchor and compass in those vulnerable early months. They understand the peculiar challenge of leaving treatment's protective bubble, only to face familiar streets, old phone numbers, and muscle memories that can pull a young person back to past patterns. Their approach? Get young adults integrated into real community fabric immediately—working, contributing, encountering actual triggers while building the mental fortitude to navigate them. No therapeutic bubble, no artificial safety—just supported practice at living.
After years of working with young adults struggling with substances and mental health, they've noticed the themes that persist: the hunger for genuine connection, the need for purpose beyond sobriety itself, and the surprising power of peer mentorship from those who've earned their wisdom through lived experience and formal education. Their perspective offers something rare—credibility born from personal transformation coupled with professional dedication to helping others architect their own recovery.
When you listen, you'll learn:
Why meaningful employment serves as recovery's most underutilized tool and how work provides structure that therapy alone cannot
The specific vulnerabilities young adults face when transitioning from treatment to home environments (and practical strategies for navi…
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Gas Station Garbage, Hidden Substances, and Helping Teens Find Healthy Connection, with Sebastian Martin
8 januari 2026 · 51 min
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If you’ve ever felt uncertain about what your teen or young adult might be using—and how easily accessible today’s substances have become—this episode is a must-listen. I sat down with Sebastian Martin, Executive Director at New Life House, a long-standing sober living program for young men, to unpack the alarming rise of so-called “gas station garbage”—substances like Kratom, kava, 7-0H, and “Feel Free” tonics that are marketed as harmless but can create dependency and serious mental health fallout.
With his deep professional experience and 15 years in recovery himself, Sebastian offers an inside look at what’s showing up in schools, treatment centers, and homes—and what parents need to know right now.
You’ll hear a candid, compassionate conversation where we explore how experimentation today can escalate much faster than it did even a decade ago, why isolation in a bedroom can be as concerning as chaotic, risky behavior, and how crucial community and connection are in early recovery—for both parents and their kids. We also discuss the life-changing potential of treatments like TMS (Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation) and what true collaboration between mental health and substance use professionals looks like when it’s done right.
What You’ll Learn:
What “gas station garbage” really is and why it’s showing up in homes, schools, and even jails (but not on standard drug screens)
Why today’s cannabis and other “legal” substances are nothing like what you may have experimented with as a teen
How to recognize when isolation can be just as dangerous as acting out
The essential role of healthy community for teens and young adults—and how parents can encourage it
A powerful mindset shift for parents: how to love your child to life, not to death.
This conversation offers clarity and calm in a world of misinformation, helping you understand what’s happening beneath your child’s behavior—and reminding you that not all hope is lost.
EPISODE RESOUR…
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Use Motivational Interviewing To Prevent Parenting Burnout, with Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist
1 januari 2026 · 55 min
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lees meer
When Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist discovered Motivational Interviewing (MI) in a Swedish women's prison 25 years ago, she found more than a therapeutic technique—she discovered the antidote to professional burnout and the foundation for every meaningful conversation in her life.
Now an MI expert and trainer who works with everyone from incarcerated individuals to parents navigating their children's substance use, Jennifer brings a refreshing perspective on how this evidence-based approach transforms not just our difficult conversations, but our entire energetic contract with change itself.
In this conversation, Jennifer and I explore the delicate dance of supporting autonomy while maintaining boundaries, why school refusal might actually be a sophisticated form of communication, and how motivational interviewing becomes the connective tissue between love and limits. Her renowned book, "Lighthouse Conversations: Being a Beacon for Teens," will give you a practical framework for illuminating pathways without forcing direction - a critical distinction when your child's choices feel increasingly difficult to understand.
When you listen, you'll discover:
• Why sharing responsibility for change prevents parental burnout and creates more durable outcomes than attempting to architect your child's recovery alone
• How to navigate the cognitive friction between supporting autonomy and maintaining safety boundaries—including the counterintuitive power of "doing nothing" as an active intervention
• The critical difference between rolling with resistance versus reinforcing it, and why your nervous system's response matters more than your words
• How motivational interviewing grows with you through different life stages—from negotiating with toddlers to supporting aging parents—making it the most versatile tool in your communication repertoire
• Why school refusal might be your child's way of telling you they don't fit the institutional mold, and how MI c…
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The Hidden Casualties of Family Addiction Battles, with Brenda Zane
25 december 2025 · 21 min
EPISODE DESCRIPTION: Lees meer
"When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers." This African proverb stopped me mid-scroll during a walk, and I saw my family's addiction story with some pretty painful clarity. While my ex-husband, husband and I stomped around trying to wage war on our son's substance use and high-risk lifestyle, we completely missed who was getting trampled beneath our giant, well-meaning feet.
This week's raw and honest solo episode unpacks the heavyweight champion of family conflicts: parents locked in battle over how to handle their child's substance use. I reflect about missing my younger son Marco's quiet suffering (spoiler: he mastered invisibility to survive our chaos), and you'll hear how our struggling kids internalize parental discord as proof they're destroying the family. You'll hear why treating addiction like toothpaste you can force back in the tube only creates more destruction, and how shifting from head-on combat to clay-shaping might just save your entire family ecosystem. (lots of metaphors in this week's show!)
Fortunately, the Invitation to Change Approach offers a roadmap for stepping more carefully through crisis - because your other children, parents, friends, and even your struggling child deserve better than getting flattened while you fight about tough love versus cushioning falls.
What you'll learn:
Why siblings of struggling kids often perfect the art of being "not as bad" - and the long-term cost of that survival strategy
How late-night battles between parents may send dangerous "I'm the problem" messages to your struggling child
The critical shift from manager to consultant when your child hits adulthood (and why this transition can spark explosive co-parenting conflicts)
Why approaching addiction like malleable clay instead of a winnable war creates healing space for everyone
Specific ways to acknowledge and tend to the "trampled grass" in your family this week
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Hopestream podcast episode with…
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Recognizing Warrior Moms With Adult Kids In Addiction, with Cathy Cioth
18 december 2025 · 46 min
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When your journey with a child's substance use stretches into its second decade, you enter what we loving call "warrior mom" (or parent) territory – a place where endurance meets wisdom, and self-preservation becomes an art form. Today's conversation with Hopestream co-founder, Cathy, honors these battle-tested parents who've been navigating their adult children's challenges for ten, fifteen, even twenty years or more.
This isn't an advice-filled episode - because more advice isn't what you need. It's a raw, honest dialogue between two mothers who know the unique terrain of loving a child through active use, high-risk lifestyles, homelessness, incarceration, and the revolving door of recovery and relapse.
Cathy shares her own marathon story, including driving hundreds of miles to share picnics with her daughter – a simple act of presence that seemed insignificant (and ineffective) at the time but later proved transformative.
You'll hear:
Why "handing over a shift" to a higher power becomes essential for sustainable parenting through decades of struggle
How warrior parents navigate the delicate dance of support versus enabling when adult children face eviction, homelessness, or legal troubles
The unexpected and seemingly counterintuitive renewal that comes from serving others
Why those seemingly fruitless gestures of connection (like Cathy's picnics) create an energetic contract that transcends the immediate moment
The liberating truth about our children's remarkable resourcefulness when stability disappears and traditional safety nets fail
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 AlcoholHopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon A…
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A New Way To Treat Trauma and Addiction, with Jan Winhall
11 december 2025 · 58 min
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lees meer
When Jan Winhall landed her first job running a group for incest survivors in a psychiatric ward, she discovered something revolutionary: the young women's self-harming behaviors weren't signs of pathology – they were brilliant survival strategies orchestrated by dysregulated nervous systems. This revelation launched a 45-year journey that would transform how we understand trauma and addiction.
Today, Jan brings her Felt Sense Polyvagal Model to parents navigating the bewildering landscape of their child's substance use. Her approach flips traditional treatment on its head: rather than analyzing thoughts and willpower, she teaches us to decode the body's wisdom.
Your child's behaviors – the ones that terrify you most – might actually be their nervous system's desperate attempt to regulate between hyper-vigilance and shutdown. Jan's work reveals why true healing happens not through confrontation or consequences, but through co-regulation, physical connection, and understanding the body's protective mechanisms.
You'll learn:
• Why your child's "crazy" behaviors (cutting, bingeing, substance use) are actually sophisticated nervous system regulation strategies that shift them between states of survival
• How to become a co-regulating presence for your dysregulated child through physical touch, synchronized breathing, and embodied connection – even when they're pushing you away
• The critical difference between "bottom-up" body-based healing and traditional "top-down" cognitive approaches – and why talk therapy alone often fails with trauma and addiction
• Simple daily practices (like extending your exhale or humming) that activate your ventral vagus nerve, creating the safety your child's nervous system desperately seeks
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Janwinhall.com - Jan’s website (find a practitioner)
Jan Winhall's YouTube channel
Friendly Circle Berlin
Unplugged Canada
Arial Schwartz - Resilience Informed Therapy
This podcast is part of a nonpr…
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The Telepathy Tapes: Connection Can Defy Logic, But Not Love, with Betsy Hicks-Russ
4 december 2025 · 1 uur 6 min
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When your child's struggles shatter every paradigm you've held about communication, consciousness, and connection, where do you turn? Today's guest, Betsy Hicks-Russ, found herself navigating this exact terrain as the mother of Joey, a 32-year-old non-speaking autistic man whose journey would ultimately revolutionize her understanding of human potential. Through her discovery of The Telepathy Tapes—a groundbreaking podcast documenting telepathic abilities in non-speaking individuals—Betsy's world transformed from one of perceived limitations to infinite possibilities.
Now, while you may not think this episode seems relevant to families navigating substance use challenges, the parallels are more profound than you'd imagine. Both journeys involve watching your child exist in what appears to be an unreachable state, questioning expert opinions that don't align with your intuition, and discovering that behaviors we label as "problems" might actually be sophisticated attempts at regulation and connection.
Whether your child is non-speaking or struggling with substances, the path forward often requires releasing control, working on your own healing, and trusting that beneath the visible challenges lies a soul seeking authentic connection—just perhaps through unconventional channels.
In this truly riveting conversation, Betsy shares the profound shift that occurred when she learned her son wasn't trapped in silence but was actually part of what she calls "the telepathic tribe"—individuals who communicate through frequency rather than words. Her evolution from believing experts who said Joey "wasn't there" to recognizing him as a spiritually advanced being holding space for humanity's awakening offers a radical reframe for how we perceive our children's challenges.
This isn't just about autism or telepathy—it's about the courage to question everything you've been told about your child's capabilities and to trust the deeper knowing that whispers bene…
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Don’t Get Distracted: Focus on The Right Things When Your Child Is Struggling with Substances, with Cathy Cioth
27 november 2025 · 35 min
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Lees meer
There's a certain shift that occurs when you stop charging at your child's substance use and instead learn to back in quietly, treats in hand, like Rocky Kanaka (Sitting With Dogs) approaching a terrified shelter dog.
In this conversation with Cathy, you'll discover how this counterintuitive approach, born from watching a man give positive affirmations to traumatized pit bulls, might actually hold the key to reconnecting with your own frightened, defensive teenager. (you have to listen now, right?!)
Your child, barricaded behind substance use and sending desperate signals that "all is not okay," shares more with those cornered shelter dogs than you might want to admit. They're both scared, hurting, expecting another confrontation.
Cathy's vulnerable admission—that she never found the words "Wow, I hear you. How can I help you?"—illuminates the cognitive friction so many parents experience when their instinct to fix collides with their child's need to simply be witnessed.
What you’ll learn:
Why hours spent researching treatment centers might be less effective than learning to sit quietly with your child's discomfort
How holding boundaries actually signals to your child that you're willing to fight for them (even when they're furious)
The strategic choreography of "backing in" versus coming at your child head-on with aggression and defensive body language
Why starting with small boundaries—perhaps not even with your substance-using child—builds the mental fortitude for more significant ones
The liberating realization that a pissed-off kid is infinitely preferable to the alternative
Cathy and I map the delicate territory between “jellyfish parenting” and authoritarian rigidity, where boundaries become acts of love and your willingness to endure discomfort becomes its own form of medicine.
EPISODE RESOURCES:
Hopestream episode 215: A Powerful Combo of Proven Tools for Families When Your Child Misuses Drugs and Alcohol, with Dr. Jennifer …