Dear Friends and Family, This Is What I Need You To Know; A Shareable Episode To Open Conversations with Brenda Zane

Brenda Zane: Hello and welcome back. This is going to be a new and kind of different episode. This week, I wanted to give you something that you could share with friends or co-workers or family members who might not understand what it is you’re going through, or who may not even know what’s going on with your son or daughter. It is so tragic that we have kids with a life-threatening illness, and yet we’re unable to tell the people closest to us about it. I know many of you have kids who are seriously struggling and you either hide the reality of it, or people don’t even know anything’s going on. And you’re doing this constant tap dance, I call it a tap dance, around where your child is, why they aren’t at this or that event or why they aren’t in any pictures recently, or what colleges they’re applying to and on and on and on. It is exhausting. And it can be embarrassing. And you may be feeling shame about all of this. And so because I know it can be a really difficult thing to talk about yourself. I am dedicating this episode to you and giving you something that you can share with those in your life who may be in the dark either about what you’re going through, or how it’s impacting your life. Now, I will say that some of these things may apply to you and some may not. So this may be a good door opener to a conversation with somebody in your life. And you can let them know this applies to me and this doesn’t. But I just wanted to give general context for people to understand what it’s like to have a child who is misusing drugs or alcohol, and the impact that it has on you as a parent. So here we go. Dear friends, colleagues and family members have a person in your life who has a child struggling with drugs or alcohol. This person in your life is living under a weight that you cannot imagine. When others wake up to start their day by looking at their calendar, their stock market app, the traffic or the weather. This parent wakes up and checks every social media account they can to see if their son or daughter has posted anything. Because if they did, that means that they’re still alive. Or at least they were when they last posted. Your friend, coworker, sister, daughter, son-in-law, that person questions every moment of their parenting career and wonders where they went wrong. Wondering if somehow their choices decisions, actions or non-actions somehow caused their child to turn towards substances that could very easily kill them. This weighs on them every minute of every day. Yet, you will never see that. This very special person in your life spends countless hours on Google, usually between midnight and 2am searching for legitimate treatment programs that would accept their insurance, have a bed open, specializing in dual diagnosis cases, and meet the 11 or so other criteria that they need to make sure that their son or daughter isn’t going to actually be more traumatized by going there. If they could even get them to go. This mom or dad in your life hasn’t slept a full night through in a very long time, because they’re never sure if their child is going to come home. And if they do, what condition they might be in. This person uses a virtual background on video calls because they don’t want you to see the police car and ambulance that’s pulling up in front of their house. While their son goes into a psychotic rage because of the marijuana he’s been vaping. They have to take a day off work while they meet with their realtor to see how quickly they can sell their house to be able to pay the $16,000 per month in cash for their 15-year-old daughter to go to wilderness therapy and residential treatment for a year and a half. You don’t see the mental gymnastics that they perform every time there’s a family gathering, trying to figure out how to answer the questions about where their son or daughter is, and why they’re missing this event. They can’t bear to tell you he or she is out looking for Xanax which is laced with fentanyl, which could cause them to overdose. Because that would mean they were somehow a less than parent, a parent who didn’t do a good enough job somewhere along the way. You don’t see the frantic panic that sets in when your friend family member or co-worker hears a siren in the distance. You don’t see that she knows how to check the county jail register, and does so on a regular basis when she hasn’t heard from her daughter in a week or two. You don’t know that this dad has three police stations on speed dial and knows several officers by name because they’re in his living room regularly telling him that his son will be dead or in jail if he doesn’t do something. It probably never occurred to you that your daughter or manager or cousin sleeps with her wallet under her pillow because if she doesn’t, her cash and credit cards may be gone in the morning. It probably never occurred to you that the reason this person hasn’t had a new car in a long time is because her credit is ruined from so many stolen and bounced checks, debit card theft, and overdrafts, not from her, but from her child. You may not know that this mom or dad spends hours and hours on the phone with their insurance company trying to get therapy and treatment services paid for they’re legally required to be covered by the parity law, but which often aren’t. Or that every time your friend goes to the pharmacy, she prays that the drive thru will be open so that she doesn’t risk running into somebody she knows when she’s picking up another dose of Narcan, the medication that will reverse an overdose, which it has done for her son already on several occasions. When this mom sees her son wearing a long sleeve shirt, her first thought is whether it’s to cover needle marks. And when he’s in the bathroom longer than usual, her heart races because she knows he’s likely putting a substance in his body that can make his heart stop beating. And she doesn’t know what to do about it. And she can’t tell you any of this. When you chit-chat on a call before a meeting starts and the conversation turns towards graduation and the college’s your kids are going off to she puts herself on mute because she can’t fathom what it would be like to have her daughter on that path. Her 17-year-old daughter hasn’t been to school in months, and last night stayed at a motel where her friends were having a party. Your co-worker is humiliated and exhausted. The days when your friend doesn’t text you back are the days when she can’t get out of bed when she is so defeated and paralyzed by anxiety and fear that even sending a text is too much. Those are the days that she can’t put a smile on her face and fake it. So she retreats into herself and wonders how she’s going to make it through another day. She has to bite her lip and excuse herself to the bathroom during girl’s night out. When you complain that your son didn’t get into the fraternity he really wanted because she would pay cash money to have that kind of problem. But she loves you and understands that your problems are big to you. Hers are just on a life or death level. So it’s hard to hear what normal people deal with. That vacation she said she was taking to Maui was actually a trip to Utah to spend time with her daughter who earned a visit at her residential treatment center. She’s not lounging by a pool in islands. She’s sitting in a group therapy session with 12 other girls and their parents trying to understand their kids, and why life is incredibly difficult for them. When your colleague looks so tired on the morning’s zoom call, it’s not because he was celebrating his 50th birthday with friends. On his 50th birthday. He was driving around until 40. I’m looking for his daughter, checking out her dealer’s house, the local motels, the convenience stores and two emergency rooms. He still hasn’t found her by the time you have a status call at 9am. This person in your life is hurting in ways most people can’t imagine. And they don’t want you to ever have to imagine it. But they do want you to know that under the veneer of their smile, and their best attempts to look like all as well. All is not well. And they may be ashamed and embarrassed to tell you any of this because it hurts. It feels like a failing to them, it feels like they have failed at the parenting gig. And they’d rather not have to explain their life to you for fear you won’t understand or have empathy. So what do they want? How can you help, or at least not do more damage? Well, first you can learn about substance use and addiction. And when you do, you’ll know that kids don’t use drugs or alcohol because their parents are bad absent or unskilled. This podcast is a good place to start from an education standpoint. And you can also check drugfree.org to learn a lot more. You can also respond with empathy. If your person does open up to you. Imagine if they told you their son or daughter had just been diagnosed with cancer, life-threatening cancer. How would you respond? What would you say in that case? Whatever it is, say that. Understand that this person’s child is hurting is suffering in their own way, regardless of what it looks like from the outside. This will help your friend, your son or sister or whoever this person is because you’ll be able to approach their child with compassion instead of disgust or anger. And finally, do what you can to reduce the stigma that’s associated with drug and alcohol use, especially in young people. Stigma is one of the biggest reasons parents stay quiet and put off getting help for their kids. It’s tragic because kids need help quickly when they had done this path. And parents shouldn’t feel ashamed to look for the help they need. Because the world is telling them that they’re subpar parents, compassion, understanding, and even a casserole would be really welcomed. Your person who sent you this needs all of those things. They need to know that you won’t judge or blame them when they do share their child’s struggle with you. If this has resonated with you, I would really encourage you to start a conversation with that person in your life. Let them know you’ve listened to this, let them know you’re there to listen to hear them, not to judge them not to try and dissect their problem and solve it for them. Just listen just be a listening ear for them. You can also learn a lot more about what I do to try and reduce the stigma for families. And for the services I offer for moms in particular of kids who are struggling with drugs and alcohol. My website is www.BrendaZane.com and everything you need will be right there. Also, if you want to get on my email list, so you can get the email every Wednesday that I send out just as a way to support you and what you’re going through you can go to Brendazane.com/email and just drop your email there and I’ll send you a short kind of one-pager email on Wednesdays, and I would love to be able to do that for you.