Quick Answer
When your child struggles with substances and mental health, the gap between expectation and reality can feel disorienting—especially during holidays. Rather than distracting yourself, practice being present with uncomfortable feelings, recognize you’ve done what you can with the information you have, and remember you are the only one who can anchor you through this journey.
Key Takeaways
- Distraction may feel easier than introspection, but being present with difficult emotions is essential for healing
- You are the only one who can anchor yourself—you cannot depend on anyone or anything else to do that for you
- Feeling untethered and disappointed is part of the journey when life looks completely different than expected
- Loving your child to life, not to death, sometimes means holding boundaries even when it’s painful
- Give yourself grace and connect with others who understand this struggle so you don’t feel alone
In this article
- Navigating Holidays When Life Doesn't Match Expectations
- The Distraction Trap: Why We Avoid What We Need to Feel
- Being Your Own Anchor Through Uncertainty
- Loving Your Child to Life, Not to Death
- The Importance of Grace and Community
- Finding Peace in the Uncomfortable Space
- Frequently asked questions
Episode Resources
Hopestream Community is a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization and an Amazon Associate. We may make a small commission if you purchase from our links.
The holidays can magnify the distance between the life we imagined and the reality we’re living—especially when your child struggles with substances and mental health. That gap can leave you feeling disoriented, untethered, and searching for solid ground.
Navigating Holidays When Life Doesn’t Match Expectations
When your family picture looks nothing like what you envisioned, the holidays become a minefield of triggers and reminders. Brenda opens this episode with raw honesty about her own tendency to seek distraction rather than sit with uncomfortable feelings.
‘If you are walking around the stores as I was today, distracting myself from what I really needed to be doing, And looking at decorations and food and new appliances and pillows that seem to be like, Hmm, maybe that’s what’s missing.’ — Brenda Zane
This pattern of distraction is common among parents facing their child’s substance misuse. We look for external solutions to internal pain, hoping that somehow the right purchase, the right plan, or the right words will fix everything.
The Distraction Trap: Why We Avoid What We Need to Feel
Brenda shares a poignant story about family friends who recently lost their 27-year-old son in a tragic diving accident—a stark reminder that our struggles exist on a spectrum, and that being present with our feelings, however painful, is essential. She also describes her highly sensitive dog who becomes uncomfortable when the family isn’t all together, a metaphor for how we all feel when our family unit is fractured by addiction and mental health challenges.
‘And all of these things come when your life gets turned upside down, or when it gets turned upside down and then it gets turned right side up again, for some of you, but it looks completely different than the right side up that you used to know.’ — Brenda Zane
The temptation to numb out, stay busy, or avoid difficult emotions is strong. But growth and healing require us to sit with discomfort rather than constantly seeking escape.
Being Your Own Anchor Through Uncertainty
One of the most powerful messages in this episode is about self-reliance—not in a way that isolates, but in a way that empowers. When everything feels unstable, you must become your own anchor.
‘You are going to anchor you. You cannot depend on anyone or anything to do that for you.’ — Brenda Zane
This doesn’t mean going it alone. It means recognizing that while others can support you, ultimately you are responsible for your own stability and well-being. This shift in perspective can be both sobering and liberating.
Loving Your Child to Life, Not to Death
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of parenting a child through substance misuse is knowing when support crosses into enabling. Brenda addresses this with compassion and clarity, acknowledging the pain of having your child out in the world struggling while you hold necessary boundaries.
‘Maybe. Just also take some time for yourself to recognize that. You’ve done what you can with the information you have, you’ve loved and loved and loved and you are not willing to love that person to death. You are only willing to love them to life and I know how painful that is to have your child out there.’ — Brenda Zane
This distinction—loving to life versus loving to death—captures the heartbreaking balance parents must strike between supporting their child and protecting both themselves and their child from the consequences of enabling.
The Importance of Grace and Community
Throughout this episode, Brenda emphasizes the need for self-compassion and connection with others who truly understand this journey. The isolation that comes with parenting a struggling child can be overwhelming, making community support not just helpful but essential.
‘And it’s also part of your story. So give yourself grace and tap into somebody who understands this so that you’re not feeling alone in it.’ — Brenda Zane
Whether through support groups, therapy, or communities like Hopestream, finding others who can witness your pain without judgment provides a lifeline during the darkest moments.
Finding Peace in the Uncomfortable Space
This episode doesn’t offer quick fixes or false promises. Instead, it offers something more valuable: permission to feel what you’re feeling, validation that this journey is as hard as it seems, and gentle guidance toward practices that can help you stay grounded. The uncomfortable space between expectation and reality doesn’t disappear, but with the right tools and support, it becomes more navigable. Self-care isn’t selfish—it’s survival. Taking time to breathe in nature, tend to your own heart, and acknowledge your grief aren’t luxuries but necessities for the long journey ahead.
Connect with parents who get it
You don't have to navigate your young adult's addiction alone. Join The Stream, our private community where moms find understanding, practical strategies, and hope from others who truly get it.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I cope with holidays when my child is struggling with substances?
Acknowledge that your reality may look very different from your expectations. Rather than distracting yourself with busyness or shopping, try to be present with your feelings. Find time in nature to breathe, connect with supportive people who understand, and practice self-care intentionally. Remember that you are the only one who can anchor yourself through this difficult time.
What does it mean to love my child to life rather than to death?
Loving your child to life means setting boundaries that protect both you and your child, even when it’s painful. It means not enabling behaviors that could lead to fatal consequences. You’ve loved your child deeply, but you recognize that continuing to support destructive patterns isn’t actually loving—it’s potentially contributing to a tragic outcome. This distinction, while heartbreaking, is essential.
Why do I feel so disoriented when my child struggles with addiction?
The disorientation comes from the gap between expectation and reality. Your life has been turned upside down, and even when things stabilize, they look completely different from what you once knew. This feeling of being untethered and disappointed is a normal response to having your family picture shattered by substance misuse and mental health challenges.
How can I stop distracting myself from what I really need to do?
Start by recognizing when you’re using distraction as a coping mechanism—whether that’s shopping, staying busy, or avoiding difficult conversations. Instead of seeking external solutions like new purchases or perfect plans, try introspection. Sit with uncomfortable feelings rather than constantly seeking escape. This doesn’t mean wallowing, but rather being present with your reality.
What if I feel alone in this struggle with my child’s substance use?
Feeling alone is common but doesn’t have to be permanent. Tap into communities, support groups, or resources where others understand this specific journey. Give yourself grace and recognize this is part of your story. Connecting with people who truly get it provides validation and support that well-meaning friends and family often can’t offer.
How do I anchor myself when everything feels unstable?
You must recognize that you—and only you—can anchor yourself through this uncertainty. While others can support you, you cannot depend on anyone or anything else to provide your stability. This means developing practices that ground you: time in nature, self-care routines, connecting with supportive people, and acknowledging your feelings rather than running from them.
AI Answer Summary
When your child struggles with substances and mental health, especially during holidays, the gap between your expectations and reality can feel overwhelming. Rather than seeking distraction through busyness or shopping, practice being present with uncomfortable feelings. Recognize that you are the only one who can anchor yourself through this journey. Love your child to life, not to death, by setting necessary boundaries even when painful. Give yourself grace, connect with others who understand, and tend to your own heart through intentional self-care. The uncomfortable space between what you expected and what you’re living doesn’t disappear, but with support and self-compassion, it becomes more navigable.
Transcript
If you are walking around the stores as I was today, distracting myself from what I really needed to be doing, And looking at decorations and food and new appliances and pillows that seem to be like, Hmm, maybe that’s what’s missing. Maybe that pillow on the couch will make me feel better. Instead of distracting yourself, try a little bit of introspection, find a place outside to breathe in all of the magic that comes from nature that comes from the leaves on the ground. And just know that not one of those things out there is going to anchor you.
[00:00:42] Welcome to Hopestream, a podcast where you’ll hear interviews, conversations, and encouraging words for parents of teens and young adults who struggle with substance misuse and mental health. I’m Brenda Zane, your host and a fellow parent whose child struggled. I’m so glad you’re here. Take a deep breath and know you’re not doing this alone anymore.
[00:01:11] Hey friend, well, since today’s episode falls on Thanksgiving, it seems natural that I would do an episode about being thankful for all the things that we should have gratitude for, or how to navigate Thanksgiving with complicated kids and families.
[00:01:29] And at the end of the day, I realized that what I see so many people suffering with is this sense of displacement and disassociation from everything that they know or everything that they thought that they would be experiencing. It’s kind of this sense of disorientation. And all of these things come when your life gets turned upside down, or when it gets turned upside down and then it gets turned right side up again, for some of you, but it looks completely different than the right side up that you used to know.
[00:02:10] It’s like you’re having dinner at your dinner table. And just like in the Housewives of New Jersey, if you remember this episode from a long, long time ago, there was a big table flip. Everything went crazy. Everything fell to the floor. There was a lot of mayhem. And then eventually the table gets uprighted only you are not at the same table anymore.
[00:02:34] And it is so confusing and things aren’t bad. They’re good. But maybe they’re different good. It is just very confusing.
[00:02:43] And this idea came to me today because I was trying to figure out what to share with you on this episode on Thanksgiving. And I found myself distracting myself over and over and over finding all kinds of [00:03:00] things that I needed to do, like go to target, like talk to my kids on the phone. like organize my office, sort out some bills, dig into a problem that we were having on the website, you know, all these things that kept distracting me from sitting down and really facing what I needed to get done Because it requires thinking, it requires concentration, and it requires tapping into emotions and feeling and sometimes Target looks like a way better option to that. And I am so fortunate because my table in this scenario has been uprighted and it does look different and that’s okay. And I’m thinking that you might be either in the pre table flip stage or your table might be upside down right now.
[00:03:58] And the chaos is ensuing. Or you may be somewhere in between and it’s all disorienting. And I think that is the feeling that I experienced myself and that I see you experiencing. It’s this feeling of disorientation of like, where am I now? My life doesn’t look like what I anticipated it would look like.
[00:04:22] And what we anticipate life is going to look like is usually based on what other members of our family’s lives [00:04:30] have looked like, right? That’s our vision or what people who we admire, what their lives look like, or what we see in the media or what we read in books. And it can be, I think, extremely dangerous to focus on those things because those are not our things.
[00:04:51] And we have to realize that that anticipation of what we thought a holiday like Thanksgiving would look like is just a fabrication of what it actually really is. And what it really is, is a time to be in the presence of others have some grace with people who are working on becoming better versions of themselves, have grace with ourselves, as we work on having and being better versions of ourselves.
[00:05:24] And for taking a moment to appreciate the delicate, fragile, and impermanent nature of ourselves of being together. And I say this coming out of a week of family friends losing their son tragically in a diving accident had nothing to do with substances. This young man was 27 at the peak of his very young life, doing incredible things in his own personal life and in his career, but also serving [00:06:00] others.
[00:06:01] And when a life is just extinguished with no notice, no reason, no anything, it kind of stops you in your tracks. It’s like a punch to the gut that told me and is still telling me, be here, be present for all of it, for the good stuff, for the painful stuff, for the stuff confuses me for the stuff that frustrates me or angers me.
[00:06:37] Even be here to be curious about this sense of disorientation and to what I think should be going on. And why do I think that if you think about it, we may say, Oh, I feel so untethered to what my life should be, but this is your life. You can’t be untethered from it because you are in it and you are tied to it and it is it.
[00:07:05] And so I don’t know if you can sneak away, if you’re listening in real time on Thanksgiving from whatever or wherever you may be with friends, with family, [00:07:18] if you’re by yourself to just pause and say, thank you life for being here. Thank you for holding me, even though I feel untethered, [00:07:30] even though I feel like I’m floating and I really want my feet to ground and land and have everything feel right and in order, like everything is spinning in the right direction again.
[00:07:44] It’s okay if it’s not like that today. I always laugh because we have a dog who I call our high sensitive dog. You know how there’s highly sensitive people. He is our highly sensitive dog. And just like a highly sensitive person, he feels our discomfort when we are uncomfortable.
[00:08:06] He feels sadness. And it’s not until my husband, my son and I are all at home, all together in the same room, where I can see him, just, I can see him thinking to himself, it’s okay. Now life is spinning in the right direction. My people are all here. I’m in my bed. The fire is going in the fireplace. The soccer game is on TV.
[00:08:31] Somebody is cooking and everything is okay. It’s okay. And we all want that right? We all want everything to be okay and spinning in the right direction. And so if you’re in a position where everything is okay, you’re in your bed, the fireplace is going, someone’s cooking and all your people are around. I hope I hope I hope that you will just close your eyes and savor that because there’s no [00:09:00] guarantee that that is going to last.
[00:09:03] And I don’t say that to scare you. I don’t say that to be, you know, pessimistic, but live in it today and breathe it in and soak it in tell those around you how much they mean to you. And if your table is flipped, legs in the air and the food is all over the floor. And people are slipping and sliding and swearing and punching holes in the wall.
[00:09:32] That’s okay too. Or maybe your person or your people are not with you. They’re away from you. Maybe they have to be somewhere else right now because they can’t be with you. And that hurts deeply. Maybe. Just also take some time for yourself to recognize that. You’ve done what you can with the information you have, you’ve loved and loved and loved and you are not willing to love that person to death. You are only willing to love them to life and I know how painful that is to have your child out there. not with you. Maybe they’re not safe. And the only thing I can say through the scar tissue of my lived experience is that it is part of their journey.
[00:10:27] We wish it wasn’t. We wish this was [00:10:30] not their story, but it is. And it’s also part of your story. So give yourself grace and tap into somebody who understands this so that you’re not feeling alone in it.
[00:10:45] And if you are walking around the stores as I was today, walking through Target, distracting myself from what I really needed to be doing, And looking at decorations and food and new appliances and pillows that seem to be like, Hmm, maybe that’s what’s missing. Maybe that pillow on the couch will make me feel better.
[00:11:09] Maybe a new recipe for stuffing this year will be just what we need. Instead of distracting yourself, try a little bit of introspection, maybe find a place outside to breathe in all of the magic that comes from nature that comes from the leaves on the ground. And just know that none of those things, not one of those things out there is going to anchor you.
[00:11:38] You are going to anchor you. You cannot depend on anyone or anything to do that for you. And so just find your practices.
[00:11:48] You know what those are. You know what makes you feel good and feel grounded. And if you are in a good place with happiness around you and celebrating with loved ones, [00:12:00] maybe send a wish for that parent who is not where you are today. We need all of the good energy in the world that we can right now, especially the ones who are really struggling.
[00:12:13] And instead of distracting yourself, just go inward, look inside, be okay with being untethered. Be okay with the feeling of disillusion, disappointment. I heard a great word this week, a friend of mine shared the word antisappointment, which I think is so beautiful and fitting for everything and everywhere that we are right now.
[00:12:38] So grasp on and hold on to your antisappointment and know that it’s okay. These holidays and special occasions don’t have a right way. There is no right way. So looking at the family next to you or the home next to you or the things on TV or Instagram or wherever, that’s not a template. That is not right.
[00:13:01] They are not right. And you are not wrong. You’re exactly exactly where you’re supposed to be right now. Even if that feels scratchy, and sandpapery and uncomfortable, it’s okay. Just be okay with it. we often feel the sandpaperiness of life and we try to smooth it out immediately and just sitting with it and welcoming it and saying, wow, I feel the [00:13:30] scratch.
[00:13:30] It’s okay. I feel the crack in my heart. I just feel it. I don’t buy into it. It’s not me. I’m not going to make stories about it. It’s not here forever. It’s what it is today. And I’m now going to do something to care for myself and tend to myself and my heart. So yeah, that’s what I’ve got today. That’s what came after I stopped all the distraction around me.
[00:13:59] And it’s really hard sometimes. So if you’re in distraction mode, Picking up the last minute thing that you really didn’t need, but it felt like it was important. You can smile to yourself and know that you are in good company. Many of us are trying to distract our way through the holiday. And I am just sending so much love, so much peace, lots of low drama energy to you.
[00:14:26] And know that you are okay. Even if you feel disoriented, even if your table is upside down, even if you are not quite sure what is going to ensue, it’s okay. You’re going to be okay. You’re going to get through it and you’re going to do it with grace because I know you, you are going to do it with grace and style and empathy and compassion and all kinds of badassery because that is the kind of parent that you are.
[00:14:57] And I look forward to meeting [00:15:00] you right back here next week.
