Parenting a child with substance abuse issues is daunting. Patty Fallone knows this firsthand from witnessing her own son’s battle with addiction and seeing the toll it took on her entire family. She has also learned that when parents work their own program of recovery, their lives can return to a state of peace, no longer waiting for the next shoe to drop, where they can find peace in the moment, and that peace will benefit all those around them. Patty has taken all she has learned, not just from her own journey, but from hundreds of other parents that she has met and helped along the way and laid it all bare it a practical, heartwarming and totally relatable guide that every parent of an addict can benefit from.
The addict has their drug of choice and they become the parent’s drug of choice. The parents become as obsessed with them as they are with drugs and alcohol. The parents isolate from their friends, they ignore other relationships, they don’t perform at work, and they become fixated on the addict. They act like an addict without ever using a substance. They allow their child’s addiction to take charge of their own lives just as it has taken over their child’s.
There is a way out. It is possible for parents to start getting better even before their child does. Coming from a place of overwhelming compassion for both the addict and the parent, Patty provides a no-nonsense approach to instructing parents on healthier ways to navigate the challenges they face as the parent of a struggling child, whether the child is 14 for 54. She offers clear and concise do’s and don’ts to help parents protect themselves from the ravages of this disease. She debunks terms like enabling, detachment and self-care and guides parents through practical tools and behaviors to help them begin to find peace even if their child continues to struggle. She shows parents how to step out of the never-ending state of chaos to regain power in their own lives.
Equally as important, Patty helps the parent understand what it means to take care of themselves and to focus on themselves as she takes parents on a beautiful journey of self-discovery, guiding them on how to begin to get their own lives back. With clear guidance, she helps parents fill their own toolboxes with specific skills that will lead them on a path to a happier and more meaningful life. Parents come to realize that taking care of themselves is not selfish and that it doesn’t mean they don’t care about others. It simply means that they do so from a healthier place. She found that joy isn’t even on parent’s radar. This book provides the guidance on ways to rediscover joy in life so that we can be both happy and sad at the same time. Parents learn how to take all the challenges that they have faced and to take everything they have learned from them and use that to build a better future. A future filled with peace and joy.
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