Hopestream for parenting kids through drug use and addiction

When You Confiscate Substances and Things Explode One of the most common scenarios parents face is taking away a substance — a vape pen, pills, alcohol, weed — only to have the situation escalate rapidly. Kids may become aggressive, threaten to hurt themselves, or say things that are genuinely frightening. Brenda and Cathy are clear that the first self-coaching question in any of these moments is...

When a Child in the Community Is Lost Brenda and Cathy open this episode by acknowledging something deeply painful: a child of one of the moms in their community had recently passed away as a result of complications from substance use. They were honest about their hesitation to share it, not wanting to add to the trauma parents already carry or to use fear as a motivator. But they decided to talk...

Episode 331 When Beth Hillman's son came home from wilderness treatment, the first crisis didn’t come from him. It came from her. Standing in the driveway, anxious and spiraling, she watched her teenage son look at her calmly and say, "Mom, look at me. I'm gonna be okay." Her first thought was not relief. It was, oh! I’m in big trouble. Her son had come home with more access to his thinking brain...

Episode 330 ABOUT THE EPISODE: There are days in this journey when the weight of it all becomes almost too much to carry. You are still showing up, still trying, still breathing through a kind of pain most people around you will never fully understand. A few years ago, I sat down and wrote something for you, for the mom and the dad and the grandparent in the thick of it, and I tucked it away. Toda...

If you have been watching your child blow up their life and wondering why nothing reaches them, this episode will change how you see what is happening inside them. Brenda Zane's son Enzo Narciso -- founder of Life Strategies Mentors and a young man who survived two fentanyl overdoses -- returns to the podcast with something specific: the things kids who are actively struggling cannot say to their...

There are moments in this journey when your coach isn't available, your therapist can't be reached, and the community is quiet. It is just you and whatever is unfolding in your relationship with your child, and you need a way through. In this solo episode, Brenda Zane distills a year of thinking into ten self-coaching questions drawn from CRAFT (Community Reinforcement and Family Training) and the...

If you have ever felt like a failure simply because you could not fix what your child is going through, this episode of Hopestream is for you. Brenda Zane sits down with Dr. Wes Robins , a licensed professional counselor, PhD, and self-described Soul Nurse practicing out of a 1960s ranch house in Alpharetta, Georgia. Since his previous appearance on the show, Wes made the gut-wrenching decision to...

If you have a daughter and a relationship that feels like it is missing something you can't quite name, this episode of Hopestream may be the conversation you have been waiting for. Brenda Zane talks with Lacey Tezino , founder of Passport Journeys and author of Therapy After Mom Died , about adoption, reunion, generational patterns around alcohol, and the single insight that changed how she paren...

If you have ever watched your child go through treatment and wondered whether anything was actually landing, this episode of Hopestream will feel like a permission slip. Brenda Zane speaks with Brad McLeod , host of Sober Motivation, a top 0.5 percent podcast globally with over five million downloads. Brad was seventeen when he sat in a psych ward for the second time. He ran from a rest stop on th...

If you have ever been handed the word codependent and felt it didn't quite fit, this episode of Hopestream will feel like a relief. Brenda Zane talks with Rawly Glass, LCSW , a therapist and parent educator who spent years turning the codependency label over in his hands before setting it down and looking for something truer. What he found reframes a concept most of us were handed without enough c...