Recover Your Soul: A Spiritual Path to a Happy and Healthy Life

Detachment and Self-Healing: Soul Recovery Guidance for Parents with Adult Children in Addiction

• Rev. Rachel Harrison • Season 6 • Episode 17

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I know firsthand how hard it is to watch your grown kids struggle with addiction or mental health challenges. In this episode, I open up about my own family’s journey, the real emotions that come with loving someone through their darkest moments, and the Soul Recovery tools that have helped me find peace—one day at a time.

No matter where you are on this journey, I’m honored to walk beside you.

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Rev Rachel Harrison:

Many of you have found this podcast because you, as I do, have adult kids who struggle with addiction.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

And maybe it's not addiction, maybe it's mental illness or some sort of dysfunction. And watching children that you love so much make choices that feel like not the right choices for you can be really tough for seven years. Of course, I want my kids to move into a sober, sobriety lifestyle, like I have, just because I got sober at 48, I want them to not have to go through everything that I went through on all those years to get to where I am today. But what I recognize is that we are all on our own journeys and the amount of energy that I have spent in trying to fix and help them had kept me from helping myself, had kept me from asking spirit source whatever you call it to choose my own path and to find unconditional love that allows me to be present and loving to my kids, no matter where they're at in their season of sobriety or not. We are each on our own journey in our own time, on our own path and finding our own way. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our inner change and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to the Recovery Soul podcast and community. I'm Rev Rachel. Thank you so much for choosing to be here with me today. I am truly honored and grateful for this amazing community and that you continue to choose to come back week after week. Or maybe you're new, maybe you're just checking it out, or we're glad you're here. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, I have a favor to ask you, and that is after you listen to this episode, will you just hit that five star button wherever you listen to this podcast, so that we can continue to grow the community. Thank you, wherever you listen to this podcast, so that we can continue to grow the community, thank you. Today's episode is around addiction and this is why many of you are here.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Many of you found this podcast because I was so inspired by Al-Anon early on. You know, I got sober from my own addiction to alcoholism seven years ago and that was its own whole journey. And then I started attending Al-Anon with the same level of intensity that I was doing for my recovery from addiction and really realized that my real issue was codependence, that I was so enmeshed with my family and I was so uncomfortable with their discomfort that drinking became my way of being in my body and drinking is addictive, it just is. Alcohol is addictive. So I became addicted to alcohol and it became my entire world for a while because I was uncomfortable in my entire world. So it kind of goes hand in hand in terms of what those are. And then I had two kids who are genetically predispositioned for addiction because their dad has the genetic predisposition for addiction. I have it too. It just is different for me, I think the drinking kids who are addicts and I know many of you have come because I've talked about Al-Anon and I've talked about how can we be in relationship with people who are either continuing to be in addiction or in recovery of their own choosing and we're here in soul recovery to choose ourselves, to allow ourselves, to be in these situations with people and to stop trying to control them and to come back to ourselves.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

And this episode is really around my adult children who continue to be addicts. And you know that a couple weeks ago we had the episode that Bodhi shared about a season of sobriety that he's in while the season's over and that's hard. It's hard to wonder what that's going to look like and although he hasn't completely fallen off the face of the planet on some you know, crazy ride, just the knowing that that season that really was being helpful to him is has taken a turn and he gets to choose. I recorded this episode at least once already and then got to almost to the end and realized I wasn't telling the story that I want to tell because it isn't about their story and most of us come into these situations because we think it's about their story and I can give you the information that is around the choices that my adult children are making to continue to choose to drink and that's part of the story. That's definitely part of it. But the bigger reason we're here in soul recovery is because we are working really hard to choose our own happiness, to have a spiritual path for our own health, for our own well-being, for our own joy, for our own inner peace, and that may mean that the people around us continue to choose to be addicts.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Are you ready to step into your soul recovery? Visit the website recoveryoursoulnet to learn more about the nine-step soul recovery process. I hope that you'll join us the first Monday of every month for the free soul recovery support group on Zoom, where we learn more about soul recovery and connect with each other. If you'd like to work directly with me to move through the nine-step soul recovery process, I'm here for you, but you can also choose to work the steps on your own, with individual modules intended to support you, to work at your own pace and on your own time. And if you want even more soul recovery, join us for the Recover your Soul bonus podcast for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, where I interview amazing people sharing soul recovery tips for us and also do spiritual book studies. You can also find daily inspiration on Facebook and Instagram and join our private Facebook community. Visit the website for more information, links and registration for everything.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Back to the episode I was reflecting on. One of the most popular podcast episodes is the Three C's of Al-Anon that I did two years ago. It's Al-Anon's three C's didn't cause it, can't control it, can't cure it, and between YouTube and on the regular Audible podcast on Spotify and Apple and every place that it is. It's been downloaded over 30,000 times. The other most popular one is around detachment, which I did in the first season, which was talking about Alex and using the detachment bookmark and how important that was in my life and that one's been downloaded over 40,000 times. So these two episodes that are around Al-Anon concepts and how they've been so impactful in my own life have helped to bring you here.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

I'm not Al-Anon, I'm not speaking for Al-Anon. I am grateful for Al-Anon and I know how incredibly important it was for me in those early years to begin to look at those principles and they opened me up to something else. Well, in that episode of the three C's there was a comment on the YouTube, because you can leave comments on YouTube, which is great, and most of the comments are always really positive. I've had in all of these years just a handful of comments that are either frustrated that I'm talking about Al-Anon and it's not official Al-Anon literature Totally get it. Understand those comments and I'm again not here to be Al-Anon and this one was one that I really thought a lot about.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Al-anon and this one was one that I really thought a lot about and her response was you normalized it, meaning alcohol as a coping mechanism when they were in their formative years. It is your fault. I've thought about this so much and long before this comment, I thought about this and I have episodes around. Are we to blame? What is the remorse that we have around it? Because there is some truth that says I did raise my kids in a home where alcohol was normal and it was normalized as the coping mechanism. And when I'm in these situations where I'm watching my children choosing alcohol as their coping mechanism, as their reward, as their solution, there is a part of me that thinks if I had done it different, if I had been different, if I had not had it in our lives at all, then it would be different.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Well, just the other day, as Alex was opening his Easter basket because I was just in California for two weeks to visit Alex and his girlfriend and the new baby who is two months old, and Bodie showed up and my mom came in. Rich stayed behind because he has a new job and he couldn't get away for the couple weeks that I was gone, so we had our whole family together, anyway. So Alex opens up his Easter basket and he has all this candy and he talked about how much he loves candy and he said we never had any candy growing up, so I'm obsessed with having candy. Interesting, right, I raised them in a home where we ate pretty clean food. They had ADHD, so I didn't give them dyes as much as possible. I was really mindful not to give them reds and yellows and dyes and blues, and we made a big deal about that, about not having candy very often. And here they are. They're like these. Both of them are totally addicted to sugar and I didn't create an environment that said, sure, eat all the junk food that you want. That was not at all what our house was, but we did have a house that had alcohol in it, and so it makes sense that it would be easy for them to choose that as their solution.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Well, I disagree with her final sentence, which says it is your fault. I disagree with that Because, ultimately, we all came from various upbringings that had various ways of being, whether you had parents who were so strict or so crazy or so enmeshed with their own dysfunction, or had such high expectations. I mean, we all have this wild ride of humanity and it comes in all shapes and sizes and we get those patterns imprinted on us Absolutely and a lot of our core wounds come from these very complex relationships. It is the nature of being a human being, but in the end we get to choose. Basically, starting around 16 years old, we are making a conscious decision and then by the time you're in your early 20s, when your frontal cortex has really come in, then you're really beginning to make a decision and I think that it's really complicated to take responsibility for your own life. It's so much easier to blame somebody else and to say you did this to me, you made me feel this way. Blame somebody else and to say you did this to me, you made me feel this way. This is why I'm like this, is because you were like that. That really takes a responsibility off of ourselves to recognize that in each moment we are choosing a way of living, a way of seeing, and that's why you're here, is because you're making that choice.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

And so when I recorded this episode in the beginning, I kind of went into more depth of what the stories are. You know that I had been in California for a couple days and was already kind of having this awareness around Alex's daily drinking and what that looks like, and that part of me that that just wishes it was different, because of course I do and I'm entitled to my feelings. I'm entitled to wish that they didn't have to go through what I did. But I pretty quickly moved to a place of acceptance and an awareness that it's really my discomfort that I'm experiencing in that situation. Because I went through it. I know what all that feels like.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

I would just love for him to bypass all of that. And he and his girlfriend are doing a beautiful job with their son, little Rocky's, two months old. He is thriving. He was starting to smile and coo while I was there and they're just their own people having their own life. Does it look like what I like, ideally, quote unquote would do no, but it's not mine. It's not mine. They are doing a beautiful job at the house that they live in, the life that they live in, the relationship that they live in, and they're working their stuff out. And that was really helpful for me because it'd been such a difficult birth and I had gone home and not witnessed their day to day. So going and seeing their day to day was really healing for me.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Well then Bodhi comes into town and we have this great conversation about sobriety and not 10 minutes later he's drinking a beer. And I'm like what happened to sobriety? And he said, oh, I'm not doing any drugs or anything, I'm just having beers every once in a while. And my heart just broke because I know the slippery slope that that can take. But I get to choose what I'm going to do with those feelings and in that experience of having these two kids who are, who continue to choose the path that they're on, I went to my journal. I highly recommend journaling.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Journaling allows you to a slow down your brain enough to not just be in the spin and you have to have conscious time to think out wow, do I feel what is going on for me? And sometimes it needs to be the thing where you just dump and vent. We all are entitled to dumping and venting, but then it's a space where I connect to my higher self and I connect to those parts of me that have been doing this soul recovery work for such a long time now and have such success in the peace that I feel. And when I do that and I'm in the journal and I ask questions, I'll do a little cue for question and I'll say how can I show up in this? What am I to learn about this for myself? What can I do here to love them and still be authentic to myself? And then I'll put a little A and I'll just start writing. And when you are asking your higher self and your connection to something greater still, to your higher power, for the answers that are not for them, the answers are for you.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

What I got back was remember to stay in your lane. Remember to love them through whatever journey they have to take. Remember that you too, just like them, went through the darkness or used these tools. Remind yourself to be present in your most authentic highest self. Love them unconditionally. Love them unconditionally, which means that whatever that journey is, that you allow them as if we're allowing them right, like as if we have any control, that you accept whatever that is for them. But you're entitled to being disappointed, you're entitled to being heartbroken, you're entitled to being sad and over the.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

We had a lovely time together as a family and there was a whole bunch of old behaviors that I am not a big fan of and I watched how it pricked that part of me that has a very strong memory of some really really difficult hard times, memory of some really really difficult hard times, and we've made it through those hard times. But then I had the memory about how much work we've all been doing and that if I'm the one who's going to have control of my own thoughts, if I have the power to choose how I'm going to see it, if I'm going to do the practice, the principles that I told them, you get to pick your attitude, choose a good one and growing up, I get to be a participant in whether I'm going to go into that part of me wants to control and nitpick and blame and be shaming of these behaviors or whether I'm going to recognize that they have to figure this out. I'm going to recognize that they have to figure this out, which means that it might be okay. Maybe you know there's that even keel. There's a lot of people who have pretty steady drinking their whole life and it just is the way that they do it and I can't be the one to judge and to say that it's going to look any different and it might have to go down a dark road, that it's going to look any different and it might have to go down a dark road because that's their path to take.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Now I have many of you that either work with me in coaching or have sent emails and I am so appreciative of your communication with me, either through the one way texts or through the emails that have some really difficult situations with kids, where the kids are homeless, where you're trying to help them and they seem like they want the help but then they don't. Where they really are stuck in the darkness and my heart goes out to you. My heart goes out to you and I want you to know how we feel those situations. And so it isn't something that is just so easy to say oh, just detach with love. You know, just follow the seven detachments from the Al-Anon. It's really about staying conscious in your own experience and this part that I continue to be so grateful for in my own healing journey and soul recovery, to be so grateful for in my own healing journey and soul recovery, that working the nine steps of soul recovery has given to me is a place to come more and more strongly into my spiritually grounded self, because my human self can't help but want to attach and connect to the solution for them, to fix it for them, to make it not be as hard for them, or to try it for them to make it not be as hard for them, or to try to let them have some sort of insight. If I could just save them from whatever.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

And it's not that I don't do some things that I probably should do differently. I think that's why you guys love me so much is because I'm here with you. I get it. I'm not perfect. I'm not doing it perfect with you. I get it. I'm not perfect, I'm not doing it perfect.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Do I lay awake at night? Yes, I lay awake at night sometimes, but my prayer has changed from oh God, spirit, universe. Do this for them, this beseeching prayer. Can you make it be this way for Bodhi? Make it be this way for Alex? Do this for them. Do this for them. The prayer has turned and it's help me, help me, help me see this differently. Give me the strength to be able to love them unconditionally. Allow me to be at peace regardless of what's happening. Hold my heart here. Help me to be a light. Help me to see this from the most healthy perspective. Help me has become the prayer. And when I remember that that's really the only control that I have for me to help me really the only control that I have for me to help me Then that level of desperately wanting to make it be different loosens up, because I couldn't catastrophize and go down dark holes because we were there, because we were there.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Or maybe you are in that moment where you are there, but soul recovery is this reminder that you are indeed being held by something greater still that can give you some just moment of hope and peace for yourself. That this interaction that we have with these people in our lives is complicated because ultimately, we all have our own responsibility to choose our own happiness. And at one point on the trip with Alex I told him that when I had left after the baby was born and it had been, you know, such a kind of rough ride that I found myself getting really afraid that he was going to fall down some sort of spiral and dark hole of depression again. And he looked me right in the eyes and he said, mom, I hope and pray I'll never be that dark again? I don't think I will, and I think this is what he said.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

I think every single day about how lucky I am, and he said I'm so grateful for my life, I'm grateful for my girlfriend, I'm grateful for the job that I have, I'm grateful to have a baby, I'm grateful to have this car. And he named off some very basic life gratitudes, which really gratitude is the foundation of a spiritual practice, and I could feel that, knowing in him that he is so much stronger and so much more aware than I give him credit for, because I get caught in seeing and witnessing the addict, 16 year old, who was completely fallen apart 10 years ago. Well, he was falling apart 10 years ago because he was only 16 and that was the best that he had at that time. So I get to choose where I'm going to show up for him and how I'm going to see him, and that conversation really shifted how we were together for the next two weeks because I was able to come back into my grounded, centered place and to remind myself I am going to see him as whole and he's making these choices. So did he smoke weed while I was there? Absolutely. Did he drink? Almost every day. I was there, he did, but you know what he was showing up as himself and he was okay, he was good, he was attentive to his son, he was attentive to his girlfriend. You know, they have a life. That is their life. They are choosing and are responsible for their life. And he is choosing to not be sober.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

And at the end of the trip I said some snarky comment of some sort, but I probably said about sobriety, and he looked me in the eyes and he said at some point you're going to have to stop trying to make me be sober. He's right, because it is that piece. That's crazy, that even through everything, I'm still saying something kind of offhanded in the hopes that maybe he'll get it. And then, with Bodhi, even today, I sent him the episode that he just did around his own sobriety and I said be careful, addiction is a slippery slope and remind yourself what wise and beautiful words you said in this podcast. And then I have to let it go, because I can catastrophize and go into a dark place that remembers and and saw where he was two years ago or a year ago. Well, he's not in that place and I'm responsible to recognize his wholeness, I'm responsible to accept him for wherever he's at, and this encouragement that I felt from spirit in my journaling was this deep reminder to stay in my own healing, to recognize that we have to let go of this piece where we think that we know better for them or this is what they should do. This is their soul's journey.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

I did create an environment from them when they were younger that normalized drinking, but I did not create them choosing addiction when they have had a mom who has been sober, solid in doing this practice and has a whole career around how to be detached from your adult kids who are addicts for seven years, and that there were three and a half years in the 15 years ago where I was sober then too and there was always this pull and this desire to try to move into a healthier place. We were always conscious of that and they have that within them. So if I'm responsible for how I'm showing up, I'm going to be in that space and again I'm just thinking about those of you who have kids in particular who are in really dark places, and all the spirituality that I read and listen to reminds me that there's so much more than what we can see, and that the love that spirit has for each of us isn't contingent on this wild ride of humanity that we have and sometimes these choices that we make of whatever this experience is, whatever the karma is. It's hard to understand why that has to be the case, but the more that we step into unconditional love and see past that and allow them to have whatever that experience is which again does not mean that we don't show up in our best self or that we don't offer help when they are ready and needing of a hand we let go of control and we let go of that part that thinks it's our job to fix or make it be different, or for them to have a different life, or all the manipulation or the comments that we're trying to make them be something else. We know we're powerless over that. We've tried that, we've seen that it doesn't work, and the more that I let my boys have this life, which includes all these seasons of sobriety that they've both had ever since they were younger, because they both started using when they're about 13 years old. They've had DUIs and they've had rehabs and they've had, you know, seasons of this and seasons of that.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

This is their journey of them finding themselves and if I can just lift up enough to recognize that they too, just like me, are in their own process of discovering who they are and healing from their own wounds, and that if I can see them for their wholeness, they're more likely to see that for themselves and they're more likely to not slip down the slippery slope and again they might. They might and I'm entitled to be sad and disappointed and have grief around it. And one of my recognitions is that one of the boundaries that I've set, in a way, is to not live in the same state as them, and I know many of you are in situations where you don't have that sort of luxury to be in a location that's different. But the ability for us to really be in our own experience, our own energy bubble, and to pull our energy back constantly and and reset ourselves, is the process of staying awake, about staying conscious in the midst of it, even if you have a moment where you totally fall off and you're in the throes of control and upset and trying to fix it and you come back and you remind yourself I am powerless over their addiction, I'm powerless over their choices. They are indeed choosing it. I did not create this.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

I disagree with this woman's statement that says it is. She has it in capitals. It is your fault, I disagree. Capitals it is your fault, I disagree. So many of us have come from very complicated upbringings and we've made choices about what our lives are going to be like, and I'm here to support you to make the choice in your life.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

To say that sometimes it means that you have to physically distance yourself, emotionally distance yourself, create that level of detachment that's always holding love. Love does not mean that you have to be in their presence. Love means that you unconditionally give them to the universe and you choose your own, healthiest self and whatever that looks like for you. I want to hold space that my boys are smart enough that they've witnessed enough of recovery, that they have these tools available to them, that they have to go through whatever their experiences are, and that they are entitled to their lives of whatever that is. And I have to remind myself of this on a regular basis because I want to fix it for them. I want to make it be different for them, but it's actually not my job to do that. My job is to heal me. My job is to ask spirit to save me, to let go of my beliefs, my old wounds. To let go of my beliefs, my old wounds, to update my operating system and to stand in my most authentic self. That's the greatest gift that I can give them and to love them unconditionally. There's no black and white in this. It's gray, and each family in each situation is unique.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Into your own, and the key is always to check in with your higher self and to allow yourself to ask the questions of how can I learn more about myself here? How can I take care of myself here? How can I put my oxygen mask on first here? How can I be in the way that I choose to see it? That recognizes that we all have permission and the right really to make the choices that we're going to make, but you do not need to suffer for the deeds of somebody else. You do not need to suffer from somebody else's choices, but you can feel sad from somebody else's choices. The suffering is the clinging and the wanting it to be different. Use your spiritual tools to give yourself what you need to take care of yourself first.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

I'm going to continue to love my children. I'm going to continue to love them even more fully than ever, ever, ever, and to witness them as the beautiful human beings that they are on this wild ride, and to continue to let go of control and see that this is an opportunity for me to heal me and to send them light. So when I do those prayers just lastly, when I do those prayers to save me, then when I'm feeling more lowered in my anxiety, when I'm feeling more centered, more grounded, I visualize them surrounded by light. I visualize them surrounded by love. I visualize them seeing and making choices that are aligned for their highest good. But that doesn't mean that their highest good may not mean that there's challenges for them to overcome. We're here to have our own experience of our challenges.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

That was a recent episode as well. I love you all so much and I cannot say enough how strong you are and how courageous you are to be on this journey, because what we're witnessing, especially with our grown kids or our family members or our spouses, is incredibly painful. It absolutely is, there's no doubt. But we can only choose our own way of being and we must let go of control and that belief that we have that we are here or need to fix them or that we may know better for what their experience needs to be. Until next time, namaste, thank you for listening and I hope that that helps support your soul recovery process.

Rev Rachel Harrison:

Just a reminder that every Friday is the recovercover your Soul bonus podcast. This podcast is for Patreon members and Apple podcast subscribers, and not only do you get an incredible interview or book study that comes with being part of that community, but your subscribing helps support this podcast and the Recover your Soul community. If you want to listen to those bonus episodes but can't subscribe right now, do know that you can be a free Patreon member and have access for limited time to new episodes. Visit the website RecoverYourSoulnet or check out the show links below for coupons and information for upcoming events. I thank you for sharing this podcast with your friends and family. I thank you for giving it five stars, and the reviews that are left bring tears to my eyes. I am honored to be part of your life. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.

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