Hard Conversations: Have Them Today, with Cathy Cioth

Trigger Warning: this episode discusses loss of a child due to substance use. Please decide if this is the right time to listen. 

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 speaking to your child that might change your next interaction with them

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Stages of Addiction: Hopestream podcast episode 322

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