Front Porch Thoughts

“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”  C.S. Lewis Regrets. Over the years I have spoken with many parents about the impact of addiction on their families...

Hope. Isn’t that what this holiday season is about? As families gather to celebrate both Easter and Passover for the second time in Covid, we all are invited to reflect on the power of hope in our lives.  Both...

You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith...

Sometimes as the parent of an adult child struggling in addiction, your life can feel like treacherous maze. There are so many twists and turns to trying to get your adult child help and ride out the chaos and...

We cannot live in a world that is not our own, in a world that is interpreted for us by others. An interpreted world is not a home. Part of the terror is to take back our own listening,...

Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today. Will Rogers  Reminiscing about times past is a delightful thing to do in a perfect world.  Families gather to enjoy old home videos and look at photo albums together. They...

There comes a point when that big, fat elephant in the room needs to be booted out.  The family systems disease of substance use disorder is riddled with denial.  And that denial often causes the person identified as “the addict”...

Powerlessness.  Definitely a lesson we all have been well schooled in during the last 11 months.  This lack of control created by the pandemic has caused fear and anxiety to get waaaaay too much of a stronghold everywhere. The grip of...

Roller skating blindfolded on a floor full of marbles. That’s how one relative described living in a family system dealing with an ongoing addiction circumstance.  And that sense of being precariously off -balance and about to crash is not the sole realm...

Drama. Drama. Drama. No one wants a life that feels like a reality TV show gone sideways. But the reality is that life can feel like one endless binge-watch of an off- the- rails reality TV show when you are dealing with...