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The Catholic Sobriety Podcast
Welcome to The Catholic Sobriety Podcast with your host Christie Walker!
This podcast is dedicated to empowering Catholics to live lives of freedom by providing tips and tools to help them be successful as they reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption. Christie Walker, a compassionate Catholic life and sobriety coach, is here to support you on your journey toward a healthier, more fulfilling life.
Are you questioning whether alcohol has taken control of your life? Do you worry about the impact it may have on your well-being? Many people find themselves in this situation, fearing the loss of pleasure and stress relief associated with alcohol. They assume that giving it up will only bring deprivation and misery. But Christie offers a different and much more positive perspective.
With Christie's expertise, you'll discover the joy and peace that come from embracing a healthier lifestyle rooted in the Catholic faith and tradition.
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The Catholic Sobriety Podcast
Ep 102: Eric Gallagher's Healing Journey: A Son's Perspective on Addiction
What happens when a mother’s battle with alcohol addiction becomes the catalyst for her son’s spiritual awakening? Eric Gallagher, a devoted husband and father, shares his poignant journey from the heart of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where the shadows of his mother’s alcoholism loomed over his youth. Eric recounts the turbulent days following an unexpected intervention, which marked the beginning of his quest for healing. Guided by his father’s encouragement to explore faith, Eric experienced a life-altering conversion at church camp, setting him on a path to ministry and helping him turn personal turmoil into a mission spanning two decades.
Eric’s story offers an intimate look into the complexities of family dynamics disrupted by addiction and the transformative power of faith. We explore how grace and forgiveness can guide families through adversity, emphasizing the strength found in open communication and understanding. Eric discusses the significance of breaking free from destructive patterns and embracing a God-centered approach to healing, offering insights into the role of love, support, and community in overcoming personal struggles. This episode highlights the spiritual dimensions of addiction and advocates for moving beyond blame to find true healing.
We also dive into the importance of presence and silence, particularly in the age of constant digital distractions. Eric shares how fostering intentional spiritual practices at home, such as moments of silence and engagement in prayer, can profoundly impact young people. We examine how parents can nurture their children’s spiritual journeys by being authentically present and creating opportunities for meaningful conversations. By sharing his experiences, Eric invites us to consider how vulnerability and authenticity can lead to healing and growth within families, ultimately enriching our spiritual lives and those of our children.
Find more about Eric and the work he does www.suscipe.org and www.thecatholicbest.com
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Today, my guest, eric Gallagher and I are going to explore the impact of alcohol addiction and misuse on families, children and spiritual well-being. This can be a tough conversation, but it's an important one and it's meant to raise awareness and to provide encouragement for those on a journey to drink less or not at all. Eric Gallagher is a husband and father of four from Sioux Falls, south Dakota. He has served over 20 years in full-time ministry at both the parish and diocesan levels. Eric is the founder of the Catholic Best and serves as the president and executive director of Sushi Bee, a nonprofit focused on deep formation of young people in the spiritual life. Welcome, eric, to the program.
Speaker 2:Christy, thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here. Preparing for this was an interesting spiritual exercise for me, because I've given my testimony many times, but that's usually just kind of you brush over some of these things. So to really think about some of these things was again really, really beautiful. So thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you so much for being here. So yeah, with that, why don't you go ahead and just share about a bit about you and your story?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I, for the last 15 years or so I've been living in Sioux Falls, as you mentioned. I'm married to my wife, desiree. We have four children and I've been in full-time ministry for 20 years and just recently left full-time ministry to pursue some more of my own kind of efforts that I've just really wanted to focus in on. And my life in ministry really started really through the process of the way that God brought me to him, which was a direct result of my mother's alcoholism, and it was. It was something that I was in high school. There was kind of this moment like everything was normal. Growing up for us as kids I, at least you felt like it was normal, especially in the community that we were in and the circles that we were in. It seemed like it wasn't unusual for someone in your class to say, hey, I saw your mom at the bar last night or something. It was a small, small town and so you just kind of grew up with that. It wasn't out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2:But the great kind of scandal and trauma in my life was I remember coming home from school one day and I walked into the house and in my kitchen were all of my mom's siblings and they had showed up to do an intervention and and no, no one had told the. At least no one told me. Maybe they they told my siblings. I never really asked them but I didn't even know really what alcoholism like. I didn't, I didn't know that it was really a thing, or that it was a serious thing or really that it had a hold on my, on my mother. Like you knew, there was things, like you, there's some embarrassing moments, there's some things, but that was family life. I think it just felt normal moments or some things, but that was family life, I think it just felt normal. And so she went off to get treatment and that really led me down a path of just confusion. I was a freshman in high school at the time. My brother had just left, my older brother just left for college and it's just me and my younger sister in the house and really over the next couple years it just unfolded into she. She went to treatment, she came back, um, she fell, fell apart again and ended up just a cycle of many things which led to a divorce of my parents and so that them separating pretty quickly.
Speaker 2:In the midst of all that and after a couple years of divorce and, as a high schooler, just angry. And we still go to mass every week, um, we'd still all the catholic stuff, we still go to religious education. But there was definitely this war going on inside of me. I think my dad saw that and he made a comment one time that he just said if there's anything you ever want to do in the church, um, I'll pay for it, I'll just make sure that you're taken care of. And so, in my effort to kind of escape, I asked if he would send me this church camp that someone told me about. Um, and I went and, long story short, like the lord just kind of swept the floor with me, um, and I, I was encouraged at this camp to really pray to god and say just tell him what's on my heart. And I essentially said god, I, god, I'm angry, I'm confused, I might even tell him that I hate him. But I said, if you are real, you got 10 seconds to show me. And he did.
Speaker 2:It's like the conversion experience that many people listening can probably relate to, of just knowing, coming to know the beauty and the love of Christ in a powerful way. That happened that night and everything kind of changed and so I I'll kind of leave it there and we can continue to go through the story. But really that's what started the trajectory of me of trying to look at my life seriously. Trying to look at my life seriously, trying to figure these things out, kind of stop blaming things on everyone and everything and just kind of taking ownership for myself and saying I need to grow up quickly, more quickly than I probably needed to, and fortunately it was through the grace of God and through the life in the church. So there was a really healthy foundation that started being laid, as my priest especially where I was growing up really saw this conversion in me and began to take interest in that in my life and then just being able to kind of essentially just gave my life to the church and I went to school for music in college, but that's because I didn't really know how to be a professional church person in the small town. No one did that. You didn't go get religious degrees or anything um. But I always knew that I wanted to work for the church and so I did um and that's what I've been doing for the last 20 years and along all in those 20 years. Also, of course, just this ongoing, like what's what's happening, like what happens and and who am I and why did all these things happen?
Speaker 2:Um, if you speed up, we, we lost track of my mom for a while. I spent a year overseas in iraq and, um, I think that was one of the times, right, we kind of reconnected and we were still kind of in touch. But really it was up until about five, six years ago. We I don't think we talked to, really knew where she was our kids, me and my siblings for about five or six years, um, and then we got a call saying that she had cancer and so that led down this, this beautiful path, um, of she ended up. We ended up kind of reconnecting with her. She had never met my kids before so we, like she got to meet my kids have asked me before we've done those question exercises and they're like, what's some of the best trips you've ever had and for me it was my top one is the time we went all the way up, we took the seven hour drive to go see grandma for the first time and we stayed in a hotel and, like, just my kids got to meet my mom.
Speaker 2:Um, she ended up moving as her health got worse and worse. She ended up moving into town here and we were able to spend I think it was about a year, 18 months with her um before she passed um and then, alongside of that, I got to see her own kind of conversion back into the church. She was, she always had this passion for the blessed mother. You could ask her like she would. Alongside of that, I got to see her own kind of conversion back into the church. She always had this passion for the Blessed Mother. You could ask her. I think she received the emails every week of the Medjugorje messages and she would read these.
Speaker 2:She didn't have great thoughts about a lot of things about the church, but she was very convicted of the Blessed Mother. So she had an interesting faith. I was able to. We had to commute to bring her in in town and I'm out of town for her appointments and just lots of conversations. Um, because I think initially her thought was that I went to this camp and I'd break this kool-aid and I went crazy. They, they gave me something and I I was different now and she didn't like that um, but I think, as she got to know me over those last couple of years. She ended up being able to go to this communal penance service. We got her to confession, she received all the sacraments and lived a very holy, healthy, beautiful last several months of her life.
Speaker 2:And so I don't know, I get excited because I think something that might be interesting for even people who are listening to my story, like I've already talked about, for alcoholism being the, the way and the reason that I am who I like, involved in the church, and the life that I have. Like you can, you can blame and thank my mother's alcoholism and, by God's grace, to be where I am and as well as her cancer and and this, this early death that she had, um, probably one of the most grace filled, beautiful realities of my family's life was to to engage in that time with her Um. So I come at all this from a very um, grateful, blessed perspective. Um, there's a lot of messiness, of course. I come at all this from a very grateful, blessed perspective. There's a lot of messiness. Of course there's a lot of chaos in all of it.
Speaker 1:But God's really good. Your story, wow, it's beautiful and such. I mean I'm just struck so much by how God's grace like just held you the whole time, even in those times when you were so angry at him and you know the idea that your dad had to like I will pay for anything like seeing that in you. That was definitely a grace that he had, I think, to say like God was saying, like you need to talk to him, you need to do this, and how beautiful that it has taken you to where you are now and been able to just help. You help so many people. And I know from my own experience too, and so many others that I talk to. I know from my own experience too, and so many others that I talk to, we do go through these trials, we do go through these hard times. You know we're not promised perfect lives and nobody has them. We all have suffering in so many ways. But if we allow God, then he can really use that to bless others and blesses us in the process as well and it heals heals those wounds. And I know the more that I've moved closer to God and grown in my faith, the more I can see his goodness and greatness and love. And it sounds like that happened for you as well, and it's so beautiful that you are also able to recognize like you stopped blaming and stopped being that victim like so many of us can get caught up in and just moved forward and wanted to use that to help others. And I think that that is just amazing and so beautiful that you are able to reconnect, bring your children to your mom and also whether she liked it or not lead her even closer to the faith and to the Lord, and I just love that.
Speaker 1:And I hear stories. You know, I think we can go in a couple of different directions. I hear people either go completely away from what their parents did with alcohol and how they drank, or you know what their home life was like, and that's always a great thing to hear about. But then there's also the reverse, where you hear that they're just repeating what happened to them to their children, and it just like breaks their heart because they can see it, because they remember what life was like when they were young, and then they're still repeating that. But then they have this like epiphany, or this awakening where they're like I don't want to do this anymore. I'm not doing this to myself or my kids. It's not how I'm going to live, so I've seen it both ways, but yours is surely absolutely beautiful, and I thank you so much for sharing all of that.
Speaker 2:I think there's we try to simplify it sometimes too of like, of like, we like like. Every kid has a choice, and you?
Speaker 2:just they should just choose, like, the thing they want. And it's not that easy because Satan's involved. He's he's trying to use all this to tear everything apart. God's in trying to use it all for his goodness and his grace. He's trying to perfect all things and make good with all things and there's very like kind of human things to deal with, there's spiritual things to deal with.
Speaker 2:There's just so many layers of stuff and as a high schooler, as a freshman, like I'm pretty ignorant towards things and I just had made some of these decisions of my mom's a horrible person because why would she do this right? And so there's a great ignorance there which later was corrected when I I remember kind of talking to my dad about that and and he didn't share much, but he essentially shared, like from a beautiful, charitable perspective, like well, she's had a really rough life and I don't know much about my mom's life. Later I learned more and more and actually the more the light kind of shone on all of reality, of what was going on, like my heart began to grow to love my mom more and more.
Speaker 2:And so I think, and so being a ninth grader is kind of a thing. So I think the age of where things kind of occur it's not as simple as I did have that mindset of when I started dating and thinking about marriage. The simplicity was really just like I don't want my kids to have to go through what I went through, and there's nothing really spiritual about that, there's just a really psychological kind of emotional pain that's directing that. So I do, I think the story that I have again by God's grace, because I know dozens of other people who could share a similar story with a different ending and so I recognize how good God has been to me to give me what I don't deserve and and barely asked for. So I, yeah, I I'm grateful, but I it's tough and I I think that if I were to find one similar pattern, I think, um, I just think generally families love each other and they want the best for each other, regardless of how old anyone is or where they've been.
Speaker 2:Um, and I think if there's one commonality, it's we just need to learn to bring things out into light a little bit and just be open and honest with each other.
Speaker 2:Because if I look at kind of the key moments where I experienced like a greater openness and a greater I don't know just process to healing or process to just clarity in my life. It was just when I started to actually come to realize what was going on and all the stuff and that it's not as simple as your mom doesn't like you, so she's drinking. But that's what the evil ones punched into my brain over and over and over again, and so it's yeah, you start to realize, well, mom, well, mom, I love you. I just don't want this for you anymore, um, because it's kind of hurting everything, and but if everyone can come together in different ways, then that's. That's been the most helpful part, obviously it are. In my story that was tried, like they tried to kind of get all the help, but that there was such a stronghold on things. It was just, it just took time, mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I can relate to that so much. Like my dad suffered from addiction and he died at age 47. And I remember being so mad at him, like I was mad at him for a long time like and playing the victim, like he wasn't the dad I deserved. He was. You know, my parents divorced when I was like five. I thought he was so selfish and I thought he loved his drugs and his alcohol more than he loved me and I mean I didn't. I was around him but I didn't like grow up and he wasn't in our home. So I did have that blessing that he wasn't around, like doing that in front of me. But I still had so much animosity and even when I stopped drinking myself I was still mad. But in learning, in going through my recovery and understanding the reasons why I was over drinking, why I had my alcoholism, it gave me greater compassion for him. And then, like you, my mom shared with me about my dad's childhood and some of the things he experienced and all of that and it just when you said that your heart swelled.
Speaker 1:I felt that too, like for my dad and I could see him as a child and love him and you know, just understand that he didn't want the life that he had, but you know, he didn't know how to deal with it. He didn't have the tools, the resources or like the faith foundation that I was blessed to have. And so I think we just, you know, try to do better and help like stop that cycle. And that's where I got to the point. I'm like I'm never doing that to my children or my family or anything like that. But you're right, the evil one does like pick at you because he picked at my identity, like nobody loves you, everyone's going to abandon you. You know, I didn't trust people for a long time. I had this very unhealthy, unholy self-reliance and control, like needing to control everything, and that was based on a lot of that experience.
Speaker 1:And it's hard for kids because they don't. It's confusing because you love your parent, like you were saying, you just love them and you want them to be happy and you want them to be healthy, but you can't do anything. It's hard for us as adults, right, if we have a spouse or somebody that we love who is suffering from addiction, or even they're just misusing alcohol and it's causing a lot of chaos, we just we can't do it for them. We can't want it enough for them. We can't wish it or pray I mean, we can pray and that can definitely help, but they have to want it, they have to get a plate to a place where they want that help.
Speaker 1:And so many times I've heard and I'm sure my dad thought this often is like it's not hurting anyone else. It's not hurting anyone, it's you know. Yes, it's causing me anxiety, it's causing these loss of relationships and these types of things. But really I'm just trying to medicate myself, I'm trying to heal this trauma, I'm trying to do all this stuff and it's not hurting anyone, when in reality it is. It's like that trickle down effect, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:But then there, then we have to stop it and say you know what it ends with me yeah, and I think that's, and even part of the mediation process or the like, when, when my mom went to treatment, that's part of the process is the family has to come in and share the way that it has hurt them and depending on, and so I I've had to do I did that twice with my mom because she was in treatment twice. It was interesting because one of them was when I was 15, 16 years old and the other one was when I was 30-something and my two siblings were with me both times. I don't remember much about the one when I was a freshman, but it was so obvious how different and how capable I was of entering into what's actually needed to help here. Capable I was of entering into what what's actually needed to help here. And so I think that's part of the reality of someone who's struggling is people. We can be more helpful, like when I get older, like, but the ways that I can help it's it changes as you get to be an adult, like I, just as I become more mature and able to again, even just when I move past kind of the alcoholism, and just treat my mom like mom and just love her, and that that's really when I felt things started to change, where she always, until the day she passed she she had alcohol to some extent. I mean, she weaned off quite a bit in the last couple years, but at some point you, just you just got to love the heck out of her and that's when things started to change.
Speaker 2:And so I, as a, in those initial phases that's the hardest part is I watched my dad really try to to do what he could to love her and to help her and it just it, it just seemed to go nowhere many times and then, as kids, you just don't even know where to start because you're like, come on, you're the parents who should be able to figure this out. But I agree, I do. I do think, as, as I've now been an adult and and worked with people and even had my own experiences of struggles, of even things like technology like you, just you really do just got to kind of draw a line in the sand and and this is where lent is really helpful, because you should be able to put something aside for 40 days and if you can't, then maybe we really need to look at this right. But I think that's it. It alleviates some of the pressure of like. We know that. We know this is hard, right and and an addiction is not the end of the world, but don don't we want better and so let's start.
Speaker 2:It can be slow, but also the commitment to make a change. You're right, you just have to say I'm just not going to do it now and we just have to stop. Not that that's easy, of course. Try not anyone to put their cell phone away for two hours and they're going to struggle with it. So I don't know. It's just got to be something that I think people can come together and work through. It's just like any.
Speaker 2:To me it's not the same, of course, as other addictions, but in the church there are many other forms of addiction that are incredibly problematic and also harm other people, but I think the solutions are generally the same. You just need support, you need prayer, you need dependence on others and God and your family. You just got to. Yeah, you need to do it together and learn to receive the love that God has for you and whatever.
Speaker 2:And I remember giving a talk at a men's.
Speaker 2:It was a youth retreat and there was a men's session.
Speaker 2:We were talking about the struggle with pornography and I basically ridiculed all these lists, lists like you just got to do this, like make sure your computer's out in the open, and here's, do this, and and then it always ends with like, oh, and, by the way, remember to pray.
Speaker 2:And it always frustrated me and and so I said you know what, if you you'll learn to do like, you'll be able to stop doing this when you learn to receive the love of God and that becomes more important to you than than the addiction itself. It takes time, like that's it's, and it's really hard, it's painful, that's literally the journey that everyone's on is to learn to like surrender, submit to the life and the will of God and to allow it to consume every part of you. So, yeah, I just think there's so much into it, but a firm commitment, a firm resolve. The church teaches us that very well through how we do confession, and even at mass there's moments where we just say I do this, I believe this, and we have to say it and act on it and we need to model that even in these situations.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and I'm glad that you brought up other addictions and other attachments too, because that's something that we all struggle with. You know, I think I didn't miss out on anything with my kids because I was drinking, but I might've had my phone up when they were trying to tell me something, right. And so we, these attachments, keep us from hearing things we're supposed to hear, seeing things we're supposed to see, experiencing things we're supposed to experience, and that can be a real spiritual attack has been marketed to women, and the way that our culture is right now and the way that our world is right now, it's just giving women like, oh, you can't handle motherhood, you can't handle this, here's this comfort. And for men it's pornography, and I know women struggle with it too, but it's really pushed for men. And now for our children, you know like, oh, you don't feel good enough, you don't feel loved, you don't feel here, here's somebody who will love you, you know. So there are those ways that the enemy is just trying to give us solutions for. He's trying to give us counterfeit solutions for things that really need a God solution. We need the Lord, and that's really hard because you can, like you were saying you can't just say, oh, just pray it away, just, you know, whatever, yes, that does help.
Speaker 1:I remember when I was like I was struggling with the urge. I was sober, but I called it, cried out to God and I said, god, I need you to remove this urge to drink or I'm not gonna. I and I said God, I need you to remove this urge to drink or I'm not going to, I'm not going to be able to do this, and he did so. I mean I am very, very firm on prayer works and it helps, but we have to keep asking, we have to keep approaching him.
Speaker 1:So how you work with a lot of youth, which I think is amazing and wonderful, how do you see these comforts which have increased so much since you and I were kids? I mean it's even more in our face and in their face and hard to be a young person. How do you help the youth that you work with be in the world but learn to kind of detach so that they can connect with the Lord and have that encounter, because we can't encounter God? I mean you can, but it's a little bit more difficult. You know scrolling reels every day. You can, but it's just a lot harder, because you don't have that quiet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, going back to what you said about the, when you cried out to God, like what you had in that moment was an alertness, like an awareness, and and the, the capability, the capacity within you to make that prayer. And that's where we we don't do the prep work to like live a life where that is always available to us, right? I think that's the greatest struggle that many people have in all these things is, well, you start scrolling and then you become numb and then all of a sudden, like all of your guards are down and your sleep, like I did. I did tower duty for six months in Iraq and all we did is look out in the middle of a desert for something, and it's very easy to just like tap your buddy over here and be like, hey, wake me up If you see, you, you, you.
Speaker 2:Just it doesn't seem. If there doesn't seem to be much purpose or much to look forward to, then we we want to, because it's it takes exercise, it takes work, it's, it's, it takes exercise, it takes work, it's. It's almost painful to try to engage in the right way. That's the fault of original sin. Right, the stain of original sin is we're going to constantly be pulled away from this comfort and or this joy, this real life that god wants to give us. And so it takes this exercise and if we're, if we're becoming lazy or we just get weaker and weaker and weaker and you're less likely to cry out and say, god, I need you yes, it's always a possibility in the moment, and by god, but we don't want to like hope that god gives us the grace in those moments like we can do our part to be ready. So I think that's generally the main exercise that our young people, our families, are not taking into account is you have to have silence. You have to have a presence, a daily dependency on what's happening around you and receive, like letting, letting it's the Marian, let it be done, like just be present and receive everything that God has in store for you, rather than trying to fill it yourself.
Speaker 2:In a lot of the retreats that I lead, I often have this statement where I say well, god, if you're not going to do it, then I'm going to. We have this tendency in our minds of where we really think something should be happening and we believe in God, but if God's not going to do it, then we're just going to take care of it. And that is such a disordered like way that I live daily, like I know that my mind processes in a roundabout way, that all the time and I think what it's doing to our young people is they're longing to be a part of a presence like the present moments and and, relationally, to be paid attention to. And I don't, I don't just think this is our young people, but what's lacking is someone taking the time to just sit and get to know you, ask you questions, hear about the things that there's nothing more important than you in that moment, and what cell phones do. And I I see this so many times as a parent, like I'm looking around and my kids are doing things and I'm on my phone and I know how much that's communicating to them. Well, what he's doing, something important and my thing must not be that important. And I, even with my mom as an alcoholic like that was the thing that I always struggled with is she did miss several of my important events in high school. And you have that same mindset. Well, there must be something more important than me right now. Don't want that seed, that foundational seed thought planted into your mind, because that's gonna, that's gonna frustrate your faith life. That's gonna frustrate all your anytime you encounter anyone, or anytime like I see this a lot of people you send a text and a person doesn't respond to you for like a couple of hours. Oh, there must be something more important than me. Like well, no, they probably just need to look at their phone or like there's so many other reasons.
Speaker 2:But I think that that fundamental reality of just learning to be in the presence of God, to be in presence of the reality of what's happening around you, learning to receive and be present in the moment and available, all of these like deep spiritual practices that are just neglected in our human nature these days, like in our culture, like this is just not what happens anymore. And so I do. I think that's the struggle that our young people have, and so what I've done to counter that for about 12 years I actually I took a couple years break, but I'm getting back into them but we actually started leading they're essentially silent retreats for high schoolers started leading they're essentially silent retreats for high schoolers and we invited young people who had this deep longing to be known, to be loved, like all the what everyone wants, basically, um, but we're willing to make the sacrifice of coming and and suffering silence for a weekend. Um, they, they're willing to put in the work to get it, basically, and we taught them. We taught them the lives of the saints, like we would teach them.
Speaker 2:There's a retreat on francis de sales and ignatius of leola. We, like we're teaching them all the spiritual greats and then giving them lots of silence and prayer. And then we were doing one on one instead of any small group ministry they were meeting with. Most of them were trained spiritual directors or they were mentors, um, and I, just the world began to change around and their families began to change. Um, and I think that's what happens when they start to receive the thing that was kind of intended for them in the first place. But parents, parenting, neglect the world.
Speaker 1:All the stuff is what it is yeah, I think that there's so much that is vying for our attention constantly and for the youth, so I love that. I don't know if I could do a silent retreat. I feel like I'm so chatty, but I know I could. But for a high schooler, I mean, that's just like, uh, even when my, my, they're in high school and they do retreats every year, and now they're seniors and I know they take their cell phones, you know, for these retreats and this will be like a weekend now that they won't have their cell phone. But it's so good for them to detach because it's so easy for us to be like, oh, I just want to look at this, oh, I just want to do this.
Speaker 1:And what we are doing like what you were saying, you know, with your mom you thought like, oh, the alcohol must be more important than me. Or when you're on your phone, whatever they're doing must be more important for me. And what we're saying to God when we're doing these things is this is more important than you right now, you know, than my relationship with you. For our young people, they just have so many voices online, like you were saying, in the home, at school, everywhere else and just to be able to take that silent time for trying to hear God's voice. How can parents, first of all, provide that, try to provide that for their children? If they don't have, you know, like a wonderful retreat like you provide, or a parish that has these types of treat, like you provide, or a parish that has these types of things, how can they do that for their children in a way that doesn't make the kids resentful, like, oh, we have to go again, oh, they're dragging me to adoration again, or whatever?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I mean the retreats that I get to offer are really a blessed. I haven't seen. I've talked to a lot of youth ministry people around the country. They try these going deep retreats but they still do a lot of the fun. It's just classic youth ministry stuff and they just talk about deeper topics. I think I think for parents, the most important thing For me I think it was the realization of, especially if we're talking about alcohol, it's not just when you're drinking, um, it's the drinking is like a symptom of of things that like, is there a? Are you there? Are you present? Are you? That? That's the stuff that changes a young person's life. Um, it's really easy and this I built a whole big ministry in our diocese around this simple idea that, like, we're just someone who listens and that's so rare, that's so rare for someone to be to ask them questions. But ask them questions that are real and and challenging and deep, like and create kind of an intimacy of like you, you, you know me differently.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I have good friends, but I've never talked to my friends about my relationship with God or whatever. Um, so I think silence and and a prayerful presence, wasted time, like those are some of the most important things you can do as parents is, um, again, realize that it's not just when you're like you can't. I know someone really well who who claims that they try to be very present, but they're constantly like sneaking off to like quickly respond to an email or a text. Everyone knows it, and so no, you're not like you're you are, you're not present text, everyone knows it, and so, no, you're not like you're you are, you're not present, and everyone sees it. As much as you try to like you're trying, I can see you're trying and god bless you for trying, but that's not a real presence, and so I I think when you're always looking for something else, you have to pay attention to that, and the best way to to cultivate that in your home is just to stop trying to look for something else. Right, the vocation, my vocation as a father, the way that I'm going to get to heaven, is received when my kid comes and sits on my lap, and if I'm distracted from that, I'm neglecting and not receiving my vocation from God. In the moment, I'm not becoming a father. I'm not allowing myself to be father when I'm distracted, so I think that'd be my first thing is just to create that culture.
Speaker 2:I'm a big advocate of silence, obviously, but we actually have silent. For probably five or six years We've had silence in our house until seven o'clock in the morning. My kids wake up one of them wakes up really early every morning and now our kids as ages change. Obviously, the times they wake up and go to bed changes and such. But we've always had a pretty strict idea of silence in the morning when we wake up. And when we started, it was just because my wife and I couldn't find any other time to pray, so we just said we're going to pray during this time. You can go somewhere else, but the living room is silent. I think that's important. Go somewhere else with the living room is silent, um, I think that's important. And then I yeah, I if I were to encourage parents at all.
Speaker 2:What I learned, what I was surprised by when I started doing these retreats, is I didn't think these young people would be capable of receiving the depths of what I really wanted for them, um, and they surprised the heck out of me Every time we we started these retreats. We would, and they surprised the heck out of me Every time we started these retreats. We did kind of like half of a retreat on Francis de Sales and then half like all the other youth ministry stuff and they just wanted the Francis de Sales stuff. As we started doing these semi-silent retreats, they were about probably 60-70% silent retreats. They wanted fully silent retreats and so we added one of those into the mix as we taught about contemplative prayer and such.
Speaker 2:You want to set the bar for what it means and just study lives of some of the saints. My daughter's just doing a school project on Philomena and St Philomena and then looking at the Blessed Mother, of course, and the age that they were at and we tend to discredit our young people for what they're capable of. There's so much there and, yeah, it is our responsibility. We just have to trust, like it's okay, because what you want, that the goal is when they leave the house. I believe now I'm a. My oldest is a ninth grader, so I'm talking I'm probably speaking ignorantly. As a parent, I don't have the experience of sending them out and seeing if it works basically yet. But I want them to know what they're attaining, aspiring for in their life and and all of the other things that they're going to experience should be tested against that, and when they want to go and do this with their life or this with their life, they need to. I hope they'll. They'll be able to recognize that they're lacking the most important things that we've ingrained in them, which is silence and a presence in their life. That's that just provides more value than anything you could possibly go for. So that would be.
Speaker 2:My biggest thing is is just dream big and set set standards in your house. So I know I have a friend who they their Saturday is their family day, nothing. It's like they because Sunday they do stuff in their church and people think they're crazy. They're like what do you do about sports that are on Saturdays? And they're like we don't do them. And people are like scandalized that they like wouldn't even consider, like how, if it's just like once a week or once a month, nope, saturday, like they have set the standard. And I think parents need to be willing to be a little bit radical in that and realize you're not really missing out. You don't sign your kids like god. If you're pursuing true virtue, like true holiness and and a great presence and an availability to god in your life, what else do you need? Um, so I I say that of course I have four kids involved in 80 different things, so I'm not the greatest at that, but I do feel like we're cultivating that well in our kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that that's good and it doesn't sound super overwhelming. I mean, like your first thing is just be present and listen. So I think that's so doable for all of us. Just be present and listen, so I think that's so doable for all of us, and just exposing them to, like you said, the saints, the sacraments you know, and just weaving it into your daily life, weaving your faith into your daily life, and it's just part of everything and it's very normal.
Speaker 1:Loved what you said about like kids are more capable of things than we think of or or maybe they're more receptive to something than we would. Like my, we just had father calloway here. He did a talk on the eucharist and it was a pretty like he. Like he just it did not pull. I mean he pulled all the punches and everything. It was just very, um, straightforward and kind of and very bold and I was so grateful for it.
Speaker 1:But I told my husband I was like I think we should. We have twins who are seniors this year and I was like we should bring them, like we should bring, and we have a son who's 11, like we should bring the boys, and he's like, oh, they're not gonna want to go or you know, whatever I'm like, I'm like no, we should bring them. They loved it. Like they hemmed and hawed about it. They didn't like necessarily, they weren't super excited about it. They went and they received and they loved it and I mean that was beautiful.
Speaker 1:And I was so glad that the Holy Spirit like was like no, you need to bring those kids. They need to hear his message because it was beautiful. So I guess what I'm saying is don't always assume that they're not going to get anything about it, and maybe if they give you a little pushback, still, you know, let them come. And if they go and they don't like it or they didn't get like, let them talk about that too. Why didn't you or what was it that bothered you, and have that as a conversation for sure A lot of parents are.
Speaker 2:I think they don't believe that this is really possible because they themselves aren't as really as excited about it as they like to be either. Like so I I see it a lot of times as I've led youth conferences over the years and it's the parents who are complaining about doing like a full holy hour. Like, well, these kids can't just sit through this, and it's like, why did this youth conference? There's 2,000 kids and it looked like they were just kind of sitting through, like they seem to be doing fine, but there's this interior battle that they themselves are having.
Speaker 2:And being in youth ministry for 20 years, what I learned is, like parents have to allow their kids the opportunity to inspire them. But like, go and, and when you see your kid get excited about it and uh, it, it, almost it multiplies, it compounds the, the inspiration that you yourself receive and that that's the gift of just learning to be present and watch god at work and other people is. You see god work in other people and it, it just it's tenfold in your own heart when you just got to witness it. And so, allowing your kids, yeah, just take a risk, try some things. Um, I think we don't because we're afraid. Well, if they don't like it, then I've failed as a parent. And you just, you just want to like, not look at it, because then it means something.
Speaker 2:And so don't be afraid, take risks, try it. The most beautiful things that have ever happened. In my work in youth ministry I thought. Like one I remember just pitching my idea of these retreats to about 15 other diocesan youth directors and I didn't get a single person that was excited about it with me and they they just thought you can't like at the diocesan level you're only going to get like 20 kids at the first one or whatever, and there's all kinds of things about it that they just they weren't digging. And I would just say like in hindsight I look back and just kind of laugh like yeah, this it was a crazy idea, but I did it because I felt compelled to do it. So if there's that little knot in your heart to say like I think, I think my kids should go, and then all these doubts follow it, your kids should go.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely Absolutely. Well, I could talk to you forever and I do want to you to be able to tell people where they can find you and and all of that. But I have one more question, or one more thing to ask of you. So, with hindsight of like, having grown up with a mother that struggled with alcohol and then being a parent yourself and a youth director a parent yourself and a youth director what would you say to the woman or the person that's out there the Catholic that's out there who is finding that they are struggling with alcohol, that maybe they have it all together on the outside. Maybe they think that they're, you know, doing all the things, but they are realizing that alcohol is becoming a problem for them. Maybe they're starting to feel guilt about, like, maybe, what their kids have seen or what has happened, like what could you say to encourage that person just to move forward?
Speaker 2:I remember asking. We used to do these discussion journals in ministry where the kids could write whatever they wanted and then the volunteers take it back and they respond to them. And that's kind of just. Kids say things when they write it down that they would never say in person. But I remember asking this one youth in these discussion journals. As I replied, I said well, you come from a family that's very devout, all of your siblings, they have an older sister that's a religious sister.
Speaker 2:Two of their brothers were in seminary for a while. But I remember asking her what was it about it? What did your parents do that you think made the difference to keep all of you really excited and engaged in the faith? And her response was simply, they never left us out of the difficult things. They always talked to us, they, they, they were honest with us about what was going on and that. That really hit me and that's that's been something my my siblings.
Speaker 2:We live in three different states and when my mom was sick like that was actually one reason I like kind of initiated the conversation about her coming and living in our town because I I didn't want to hide my kids from difficult things and even one of my siblings actually said, like you know they're this is gonna hurt them, like they're gonna fall in love with grandma and she's gonna die, and I said, yeah, yeah, I know, and that's sad and I don't want my kids to be sad, but I also want them to be strong. I want them to grow up like well-formed and aware of of the world and all that it involves, and so I I think that make a list of the many lies that that the evil one's kind of been telling you about. Why not talk to your family about it? Or why not get people more involved? Um, of course, whatever age your kids, it matters a bit. Our kids were pretty young about I think our youngest was six when my mom moved in. So it's scandalous to some extent.
Speaker 2:So is the crucifixion of the Son of God Like there's just it's reality. It's things we need to learn and so to not be I'm not uncareful about it and not unthoughtful, but my biggest recommendation is just to be you, just to like surrender and be a hundred percent. You, with your family, with your friends. Your kids love you and I think the your kids know something's up probably, and so I think, giving them ways that they can help you is probably the coolest thing in their minds that you could do, because they want to be your biggest cheerleader and they want to help and it might be the most humbling thing. But what better witness and what better thing can you teach your kids than to humble themselves and to receive the gift of love and grace from other people and from God? So that would be my biggest thing is just invite them into the journey and get.
Speaker 2:Just because it's hard, because you're, you're going to be less, it's like going to confession. I just I hate that I go to confession, but I'm going to be less likely to keep doing it if I have to go tell someone about it. So I although that would be my biggest recommendation, because I've just seen kids again I've probably worked closely with about 50 to 60 kids who the relationship with their parent is the primary struggle in their life and I would bet that all those parents have some interior struggle or something that they're dealing with that is not a part of that relationship and and so there's just this like wall and there's this bitterness and this anger and all this and the evil one's just driving a wedge into that relationship. Um, and anytime I've worked with a young person and they just went and talked to their parent about things. The doors opened up, um, so that would be.
Speaker 2:My biggest recommendation is don't think your kids are that you're supposed to be the perfect parents and you have to stay in your A game, otherwise your kids are, I don't know, going to fault you or the world's going to fault you. Every, every parent's sins against their children, sins against their families, and it's, it's just part of the mix in this world, unfortunately, but again, by my story and by the many things I've experienced in many other people's lives, there's a text that I, a spiritual, my favorite spiritual text is called Into your Hands, fathers, by Father Wilfred Stenison. It's on abandonment, but in it he says God makes use of evil in such superb ways that it's better than if evil had never existed in the first place and so, when you can like, submit these things to god, I mean you'll, you'll see what happens, and so we just have to trust in that.
Speaker 2:And I know kids are resilient and, again, just start the process now, so they're not 30, 40 years old trying to sort it all out.
Speaker 1:Right, yes, thank you so much for all of that, and I love that, like when we shine the light on that darkness or on the things we don't want people to see, just kind of take it out and, and you know, share it. You know, share it. It loses its power because the more we hide it, the more we hold on to it, the more we try to keep it locked up, the worse it gets. The, you know, more anxious we get, the more shame we have. But when we bring that out to the light and share it, it just loses its power and then, like you said, they can help. Finding ways that they can help you be healed and be healthy. I think is beautiful. So, eric, go ahead and share all the things. Where can people find you? What do you got going and I'll put links in the show notes as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I this. Last January 2024, I started a online Catholic directory that they could look on there it's the goal is to help people find everything Catholic Still pretty new, so it's getting there, though we have hundreds like several hundred listings, I think but people can definitely check it out and recommend it. That'd be a great help and hopefully soon it'll be a great help to everyone who just goes and visits it. It's getting there and we're excited about it.
Speaker 2:My main love and my main passion, though, is I was just brought on as the president of a new nonprofit that I helped start, and that's at. Sushi Bay is the name of the organization. It's S-U-S-C-I-P-E, and we're basically investing all of the work of this nonprofit into this deeper spiritual formation, primarily with young people, but striving to do all the things that I really am encouraging through this podcast of just teaching people to dive into their spiritual life, to trust silence, to trust God and to grow in their life of discernment and prayer. So if it's on someone's heart to support that ministry, it is a nonprofit and we would love the support. We're brand new. It's literally is about a month old, and so I'm actually today when we're recording this, setting out on our first financial campaign and big mailing, and so it's a lot of work. But yeah, to support that kind of work is so important.
Speaker 1:We'll keep you in our prayers and for your ministry and everything that you've got going. Thank you so much for sharing not just your story but so much hope and encouragement and information for my listeners and I just really appreciate you being here.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, that does it for this episode of the Catholic Sobriety Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I would invite you to share it with a friend, who might also get value from it as well. And make sure you subscribe so you don't miss a thing. I am the Catholic Sobriety Coach, and if you would like to learn how to work with me or learn more about the coaching that I offer, visit my website, thecatholicsobrietycoachcom. Follow me on Instagram at thecatholicsbrietycoachcom. Follow me on Instagram at thecatholicsobrietycoach. I look forward to speaking to you next time, and remember I am here for you. I am praying for you. You are not alone. Thank you.
