What a year!  How are you defining your 2022? 

For me, there was a series of crises and losses, difficult changes to process, and the need to approach old problems in new ways.  I worked very hard to find silver linings, practice peace and gratitude, and to transform fears to understanding and love.  Still am.  I think it's a great life practice no matter the circumstances.  I could say it was a crappy year, and instead, with an open mind to translate the events, will re-define the story to a spectacular year.

A year with lots of support from very loving people (like you), confirming the efficacy and trust in the tools and peace practices I've been thankful to find (and share).  I trust I rise and will continue, I trust it's more than OK to be with worry and grief - in fact it's sacred.  I trust that love will continue to find me in all, through all.  I trust it does this for us all!  And it's bringing us all into a New Year. 

But, Instead of saying "Happy New Year", it feels fitting and actually more uplifting to say to you:

I wish you an Abundance of New Possibilities in the New Year! 

Take the experiences, however you define them, and consider the learning and growth, the guidance, the inspiration, the re-direct, the endings, the beginnings.  What story will you tell?  What is possible if you were to welcome each and every experience, every emotion, every last thing and trust that there is a purpose in it, that it can serve you, it can serve the world?  That somehow, all these things get recycled, restored, recreated, that something is born from it?  

Just for today as you read this message, I invite you to consider "What is one possibility that you realized or that you can intend for, that is doable, small, that feels inspiring, that has been whispering to you, that will feel good today, that you can give yourself?  Breathe into the feeling of it now and let it fill your heart, your mind, your body and feel the good in the possibility of that moment.  

This is a new moment.  Every moment is.  One goes, another comes all day, every day, it all gets new.  Each moment becomes a new hour, a new day, a new month, a new year.   It will find you, and you can find it.   

Have the kind of new moments you have, and trust that each one will lend itself to a new year, a new possibility. 

And so, I wish you Happy New Moments for New Possibilities in the New Year! 

With gratitude, for Peace and Possibility,
​
Joanne

It's been a horrific kind of year.  My son's mental and physical health deteriorating more by the month.  Offers of all kinds of supports are declined.  Kindness is misunderstood and condemned, the confrontations definitely condemned.  It can feel sometimes that we are condemned to this misery, though I know we're not. 

Homeless in the cold with only the clothes on his back and refusing shelter, unable to contain the rage that life has been so cruel, my son seethes that I haven’t helped him, that I’ve actually made things worse.  What?!  But, I can find how that makes sense, how it’s even true in some ways, and especially from my son's perspective, especially after an involuntary petition that stopped some of the madness but started other complications.  It's been really hard to watch him walk away from the shelter to "sleep outside".  They'd even help find aftercare for him.  He says "no'.  He expects to stay at my house, but it is too volatile.  I say "no", and it is hard and heartbreaking.  The worry and guilt begins to rage deep within.  

His life does seem worse.  He’s right, I agree with that.  But for the times I might believe I’m the cause of it, the guilt washes over me like sludge.  It’s triggered by thoughts like I "made things harder for him", "he’ll never forgive me", "I shouldn’t have done the petition", "Somehow I should be able to calm him down", "I should do better, know better", and on and on and on.  The mind is at play.  It doesn't mean it's true though!  

Is it absolutely true that we are guilty, should feel guilty, that we are guilty of trying, of doing the best we can quickly making choices while in the middle of chaos, offering concrete resources we think can help, offering to take to a meeting, to coordinate sober living or treatment.  Is it true we're guilty of trying to limit the destruction, trying to do something to keep ourselves safe ourselves?  
 
No.  No.  And No.  Not guilty!  Here’s why:
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• Mental illness and use of drugs (some that incite psychoses) do what they do. It's brain science and unless you are a miracle performing god, you are not the one who can fix that.  Not guilty!   What you CAN do is educate yourself, get tools, and gain skills to navigate the challenges (and the heartache).   If there is to be any expectation, let it be that it will be hard and you’re going to have to learn new things.  As much as you don’t have power over your child, they may not have power over psychosis and the science of addiction either. 

 

• We all are doing the best we can with what we’ve got at any given moment.  Every one has thoughts and beliefs and we act on them, sometimes it's based on assumptions and expectations, it goes sideways.  It is the human condition, and we are all human.  Not guilty! of being human, you don't have a choice about it!  The moments can get dark and ugly and we’re still going to be doing our best.  Things happen fast, we can all get triggered.  This is hard!  We are going to be imperfect.  You will not always know what to do, what to say, and how to do it.  Accept and give compassion to these imperfections AND know that fresh ideas and supports can find you, and you can seek them out too.  You can also do your own healing work, learn and grow from it, apologize and make amends (to yourself and others).

 

• There are limited resources, the system restricts care sometimes, timing is not ideal, and things can change dramatically and quickly.  You may find yourself scrambling or hitting roadblocks.  Not guilty! You will want a tool box of resources and supports to help or guide you through it.  No one does this alone, at least not in a way that can contribute to easing the struggle and streamlining solutions.

 

• Sometimes there is little you can do to help someone when they, for whatever the reason, are not ready, willing, or able to receive help.  Not guilty!  That doesn’t mean you can’t be helpful.  Always, you are behind the scenes with your energy, compassion, learning, skill building, peace practice, and considering what influence and impact is possible when you’re taking care of what is within your power. 

  
Your healing, your inner peace, your clarity, your self-care, your support systems, your doing all you can, even waiting are ways that inspiration can find you.  I'll just say it:  It's required if you are going to influence possibility.  This is your business.  This is where your influence and power lies and where you create possibility.
 
Guilt is not the best motivator even though some think it is.  Guilt tells a story that if you feel guilty enough, you might do better.  But that’s not true.  Guilt suggests unforgiveness and blame.  It will make the cycle of stress, pain and struggle continue, and it will block what you want the most – to show up with peace and loving action for your child, and for yourself. 
 
I don’t know if my son will make it through this next round.  What I do know is he won’t make it unless I make it, at least from a place of peace, understanding, forgiveness, compassion, love.  He won’t escape my fear, worry, guilt, weariness, any of what lays within me unless I take care of it.  

So, please take the very best care of you that is within your power.  Reach out for ideas if you’re not sure how to do that.  Make it your business.  The guide "How to Get Clear on Next Steps"  can help you identify how to empower your clarity and choices.

As you make it into deeper healing and learning how to navigate these difficult times, you bring your child with you, always in your heart.

Love wins here! 

For Peace and Possibility,

Joanne Richards 

Holidays have so much meaning, so many stories, memories of past ~ the good, the bad, and the ugly, the anticipation of joy, of newness ... and of loss and grief.  It all has a place, if we know how to hold space for it, to hold ourselves in caring, to hold on, to hold on to our intention to choose life and love.  

Here are two supports for you to consider gratitude AND to care for your grief ~ two sides of the coin.  For that is how it is, both sides exist.  I hope they help you to navigate back and forth so it's not such a bumpy ride.  

How Practicing Gratitude Can Help In Your Hardest Moments: 
https://www.dailymotivation.site/how-practicing-gratitude-can-help-you-in-your-hardest-moments/

“In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times.”  Dr. Robert Emmons 

Grief and The Holidays - Dealing with The Pain:  https://grief.com/grief-the-holidays/

You're never alone.  You're always with your thoughts at the very least.  So take a look at the above resources that can provoke your thoughts towards healing, and know that so many of us are with you!  

Happy Thanksgiving AND I'm holding space for my own and YOUR grief too!  For now, let's come back to finding the specific things for which to be thankful.  You, your life, your wisdom, your resilience, look further ... look further.  Together we can and we will because we are trying.  In that trying, you're a rock star!  

Thank you for YOU!  

Wishing you Peace,

Joanne Richards

For more inspiration ~ I invite you to download a free guide that can help you re-focus and re-connect with your best intentions that can help both you and your child.  Just click here for your copy: "How to Get Clear on Next Steps when Your Child Struggles with Substance Use".  

There are times I've been consumed by fear, by worry, by depression - the on the floor, in bed kind when I can barely summon the energy to rise.  Like when my son calls in a meth psychosis, raging, homeless, hangs up, no phone and I have no idea where he is. 

If you've ever loved a child struggling with substance abuse, my guess is you understand, and maybe have been there too? 

And still somehow we rise.  We rise over time.  Somehow.  But, I don't want to stay there any longer than is absolutely necessary to grieve, to get up, to choose life again.  

Here's what helps me (and so many others thankfully). A Prescription for Peace:  Questioning my thoughts, my fears.  Opening my mind, getting into my heart and wisdom's guidance.  I have it.  You have it.  Then I apply some of the best family recovery tools and methods I've learned. 

Please register here: 
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrfu2sqTIvGtHh-_wu_HGkuyfCYXpa0jSf 

So I invite you to do the same, with me.  November 18 is the day. (There will be another in December).  It's my gift to you for the next two months, and yes that means free, no obligation.  Why?  Because it is just not ok that we walk around like ghosts, scaring ourselves believing our fears over and over and over.  This is what spills over, and I know we don't want that.  We don't want that probably more than we don't want to experience it in the first place.

I really hope you can join me.  And please do invite anyone and everyone who might also benefit from moving from fear to peace, through a deeper understanding of how our thoughts can bring us down a dark rabbit hole.  Just share the link and/or this email, and thank you.

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrfu2sqTIvGtHh-_wu_HGkuyfCYXpa0jSf 

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This is a way out.  How do I know?  I do this frequently.  I share it frequently.  It is reliable, it is deep, it works for me, for hundreds I've worked with, and for thousands and thousands throughout the world.  I think it can work for you too!

Please register in advance.  I'll send you reminders closer to the date.  I'm pretty sure we need no reminders of how hard this path is, and how hard it might be to find peace.  I hope to make it easier for you.  

Love wins here!

Please register here:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMrfu2sqTIvGtHh-_wu_HGkuyfCYXpa0jSf 

May you know more peace, for you and your family, with love

Joanne

Ps.  Do you know someone who may enjoy reading my monthly newsletter, Love wins!?  New friends can join our Love wins! community by clicking here. 

Pps.  Again, to register for Nov 18 Prescription for Peace, just click here. 

Ppps.   Here's another gift, a guide for you to download so you can re-focus and re-connect to your best intentions to help you and your child.  Jus click here: "How to Get Clear on Next Steps when Your Child Struggles with Substance Use".  
​

Have you sometimes found yourself going from peaceful to impatient, even disgusted; from feeling kind to feeling angry within minutes?  Sometimes it doesn't take much:  like when someone sounds demanding, blaming, stuck, uncooperative, or disinterested for the millionth time, or after a decade of struggling with repeated conflicts.
 
Good news is we are not our emotions, we are not our thoughts, even these reactions do not define who we are.  We are having a very real human experience, fully experiencing whatever emotions arise, subject to the hundreds of thoughts that drop in every day.  Because it's uncomfortable on any side of these reactions, it's important to take care of ourselves and practice responding in a way that can restore connection, compassion, and improved communication.

As we know, there are distinct times that it is overwhelming, to be sure!  It can feel like you might not be able to withstand the avalanche of fear, of worry, of grief, not be able to navigate the next crisis that is a real experience of loving a child who struggles with substance use.  What can you do when this happens?
 
First, I invite you to accept that this is the reality of things, and it will happen.  Please develop a willingness to at least, whenever possible, NOT go to war with it. War continues the kind of battle that we can prevent or de-escalate. We can learn and practice ways to interrupt this heartbreaking battle. 
 
If there is to be a battle, let there be a battle cry to hold ourselves in gentle compassion of our human experience.  Let there be a battle cry to feel, to comfort and care for ourselves, especially when it feels like we're in a war with ourselves, with circumstances, with people, with systems.  The battle cry is calling out for us to give ourselves some much needed TLC. 
 
Here are some battle cry ideas to armor yourself with awareness, with compassion, with tender loving care:

• Invite a willingness to allow the emotions, to sit with them, to hold yourself as you feel them with caring intention.  I promise the energy will shift on its own.  It will lose its intensity enough for you to transition and be better able to consider choices that are presented when you're clear and calm.
• Breathe my dear, breathe.  Inhale through your nose for 4 breaths, hold your precious breath at the top for 4 counts, then exhale through you mouth for a count of 8 as if you're slowly blowing out candles.
• Imagine the wisest part of you, the one you are or could be at your very, very best. Give yourself an inner hug from that part of you.  Recall and affirm those qualities that are true parts of you and imagine you holding the fearful one in you with so much TLC until you feel safe. Breathe into this inner hug.  Let it fill your dear heart.
• Be willing to allow the co-existence of the many thoughts or emotions that will come and go, the hope, the fear, any and all of it.  Your intention to be the one who notices and allows it, even to welcome it, will show your fearful one you are ok, and you are capable of caring for yourself.  This practice will also reinforce your wisest one, and declare that you can and are showing up for you, especially when your dear self needs it the most.

You need you.  Your child needs you.  We all need each other.  This is how Love moves in us and through us.  We all need some Love don't we?  

I honor the Love that you are, the Love in you.  I honor your fears too.  They can guide you to truth, when they are questioned. When in truth, fear is transformed from misunderstanding to understanding and into the awareness of Love where peace can be found. I'll be sharing a gift with you, a healing session on November 18 to do this, so watch out for those emails soon. 

To support you with more and something that can enhance your healing practices, I invite you to download my free guide "How to Get Clear on Next Steps when Your Child Struggles with Substance Use".   The guide offers you a way to build a foundation that can enhance your ability to identify and practice much needed skills of connection and communication, and especially when it gets challenging. It's something I use pretty much every day to re-mind myself how I want to show up and to identify how I'm going to show up more peaceful and lovingly pro-active. Click here to get your (free) copy.  And please share the link with friends who may benefit from the guide also.  
 
Let's do Love together!  Let there be peace!  Sometimes it must and can co-exist with the challenges we face.  Let peace begin with each of us.  Are you with me?  Say "yes" to being with yourself and choose Peace.

I'm with you!  

Love wins here!

Ps.  Do you know someone who may enjoy reading my monthly newsletter, Love wins!?  New friends can join our Love wins! community by clicking here. 

Pps.  To get a jump on registration for Nov 18 Prescription for Peace, just click here. 

Ppps.   Again, to download the free guide, just click here: "How to Get Clear on Next Steps when Your Child Struggles with Substance Use". 

Loving a child who struggles with substance use causes WORRY.  Not just a little, a whole lot!  Right?!
 
Are they ok?
Are they alive?
They need treatment desperately, but not agreeing to it!
I can't stand it any more!
I'm losing them.
I'm losing my mind, my health, my own life. I'm losing me!

I don't have to tell you how difficult this path is loving a child through all the struggles of addiction.  There is pain, there is tons of worry.  We really, really need to know how to take care of it and ease the struggle.  Let's look at some doable things you can do so you don't lose your mind entirely, so you don't lose you. 
 
You need you.  Your child needs you.  No matter what, you are needed in your own life, you do have your own journey, and it will contribute to your own unique footprint in this world.  

Worry is about the future.  Let's talk about how to relieve the worry, and come back to the present.  The here and now is where you will find RELIEF.  
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• Breathe - at least 10 breaths, trying to slow down and deepen your breath until it starts to regulate itself - and it will. Breathe into now.
• Notice - are you in the future (probably) or reliving a scary past?  This is imagination and not real now.  Notice where your mind can take you, and breathe into now.  Notice the mind travel, allow it to come, and allow it to pass without attaching to it as your only truth. It will eventually pass.  The mind will get distracted with something else. 
• Touch something - the chair you sit in, a pen, an ice cube, a piece of fruit, anything. Examine it for how it feels, its texture, and breathe into now.
• Start from the top of your head and deliberately talk out loud to yourself relaxing each major body part as best you can.  And breathe into now.
• Step into a new environment and bring your focus to noticing what it looks like, smells like, look up, touch your heart, explore this new environment in detail.
• Write down all the scary thoughts and allow your thoughts to move from your mind to paper.  Burn the paper, throw it away, rip it up, make it a ceremonious release. 
• Question the very truth of your thoughts that cause your worry.  Again, are they true or imagination of what might be possible in the future, or what was in the past.  Can you for sure know whatever it is your imagining or thinking is absolutely true?  
• Take a bath or a shower.
• Get busy with something that demands your full attention:  home repair, cooking, cleaning, organizing your closet.  
• Smell something that reminds you of peace, kindness, calm (lavender, rose, chamomile, bergamot, geranium, sage)
• Ask the worry what it needs from you now?  Sometimes mine has said to get up and move, dance, get outside for a walk, hold myself in a hug, journal, ask for help; ask for a hug from someone who loves me.
• Call someone to vent and ask for their support, ask them to reflect and hold space for you (if you can trust their advice or guidance), and not to join you in this worry avalanche.
• Watch a video of babies or animals, something inspiring and uplifting.
• Pick up an inspiring book and read for at least 10 minutes.
• Write down specifics of at least 10 things for which you are grateful. 
• Notice how breathing can bring you back to the present.  It can calm your parasympathetic nervous system, lower your blood pressure, help you sleep, improve your immune system, and so much more.  It has a cumulative effect, it's free, it's powerful.
• And, when the worry and grief is so intense, fully allow yourself to drop to the floor, lay down, sit down, do whatever you need to do to let those tears flow, let those fears be vented, scream, release the accumulating fears.  Let yourself be held in this sacred grieving as long as it takes for the intensity to shift.  It will.  Honor it.  Honor you.  Love will find you and calm your breath again, bring you back to present. The ideas above, and all your inner reserves, resilience, and wisdom will be waiting for you there.

Let me know what else works for you and how some of the above works for you too.  Let's continue to care for our worry and care for ourselves. 

Our kids don't make it unless we do.  There's lots of tools, methods, and supports to make it, even if it is to just relieve the intense worry and grief until we can learn and practice more.  We'll make it together.  We can and so we will!

Love wins here!

For Peace and Possibilities,

Joanne

Ps.  Do you know someone who may enjoy reading my monthly newsletter, Love wins!?  New friends can join our Love wins! community by clicking here. 

Little lies, big lies, white lies, lies of omission.  Lies are not unique to the struggles of mental illness or substance use.  But WHY, especially when it seems so obvious, so unnecessary, when some lies cause even bigger problems?

Consider this:  Essentially every thing we do has some kind of payoff, some benefit or we wouldn't do it.  It has a benefit and makes sense in some way even if it seems illogical or dysfunctional.  It is the way the mind, the ego operates.  It's the way of being human.

One of the benefits we desperately try to get is to feel SAFE.  SAFETY is an essential, core need.  If there's a hint of a threat to not getting a perceived need met, to avoid struggle, to distract because it's easier that way, well then lying is a way to accomplish that.  It gets the job done, and no you do not have to like it or empower the lie.  Still, we all need to feel safe. 

Our kids, in all the chaos, shame, desperation, will do whatever they need to do to restore safety.  How many of us just want them to feel safe?  We just have different perspectives of how to be safe.  One way, in their world, in order to BE SAFE is to LIE.
 
We might think "he/she is never going to stop lying".  Could be true.  Let me tell you some things that are even truer:

• He/She will stop lying when she feels safe enough to tell the truth, and not a minute before.  So to establish a calm, safe presence, what can you do?
• He/She is telling her version of the truth, you don't have to agree but demanding they agree with you will sustain the disconnect, reinforce the "lie".  And in delusional thinking, it will be very true for them.  And it is safer for them not to challenge that delusion unless you really know what you're doing.
• He/She is trying to avoid shame, embarrassment, guilt, more anxiety, more pain.
• We all change our minds with new info, with new experiences.  What seemed like something true before becomes essentially a lie later.  Bottom line - we change our minds, all of us.
• If we all change our minds, then we're all in the same boat of "lying".  Now we can begin conversation, exploration, clarification.
• To keep the peace, we don't say the full truth (thank goodness because sometimes that's really not helpful or comes out in anger).  This too, human condition, pretty common.  Just to notice.  
• If one of your highest need is to be safe, and lying helps you stay safe, you are going to do whatever it takes to be safe.  Makes sense, right?  So, how do we become a safe harbor for a ship that has lost its way and is on a crash course into jagged rocks? 

I'm not saying to ignore the potential damages of the interpreted lies, or not converse about facts.  It is with compassion, with realizing that lying makes sense, with realizing that to remove someone's safety, it  is going to throw them into possibly worse conditions than the lie itself.  With these truths, we are able to better navigate this very common, sometimes repetitive interaction.

Here are some possible responses to lies to consider if they feel true for you:

• Hmmmmm, that's interesting.
• Silence.  Try to remain calm and keep your heart open with compassion, understanding.
• Change the subject.
• Discontinue the conversation gracefully and kindly.  Invite to a different time to talk.
• Let's agree to disagree, you could be right.  I Love you. 
• Something doesn't make sense to me.  Can you explain that?  Can you help me understand? How does it work that way? 

It's no lie that we have a whole lot of struggles when we love a child who struggles with substance use.  And it is no lie that this is hard stuff!   And it is no lie that we are called to learn and practice new ways of connecting and communicating so we stay in the greater truths.  And the greatest truth is that Love wins here! 

For Peace,
Joanne

​(in honor of Nancy)

When we love someone who struggles with substance use and addiction, it is all too common to believe the thought “he/she might not be able to do IT for themselves”.  Of course, it doesn’t mean we always believe that, it’s just that if we’re totally honest, we can sometimes believe that thought.  At least I do sometimes when the rug is pulled out from under my feet, again.  
 
Another slip.  Things were going ok for about a month after another slip, and another, and another.  Years of other slips.  It makes sense that the thought “he might not be able to do IT for himself” will show up.  So I'm not going to judge the thought.  It has a right to show up. And when it does, the stress is so potent that the kindest thing I can possibly do (for me and my son) is to question it.  Pain becomes the guide, the teacher, the path to peace when these thoughts and beliefs want to say otherwise.  

Join me in this exploration, to find truths that arise in the stillness of an open mind, an open heart.  

1.  I can not possibly know the future, his future, my future.  What does “it” even mean? Abstinence? Just not being homeless? Staying alive? Only smoking weed?   

2.  When I believe the thought, even if briefly, I can barely think of anything else except worrying about his future, my future.  I leave my wisdom, my heart, I go into fear, imagined worst case scenarios … and it is painful.  I doubt him, I doubt the benevolence of Love itself.  This thought might try to help save me from further pain to anticipate it, however, it actually causes more pain.  There would be no preparation to worse.  The worse is already happening in my mind and imagination.  And to put my son there hurts him, hurts me, hurts the love I can feel now, now, now.  I have left love, no wonder it hurts.  I know Love wants me back though, I want it back too. 

3.  I know to question the thought, to give myself an opportunity to contemplate this situation without believing the whole story of him not being able to do IT. And when I don't believe the thought to be the only truth, I am available to breathe deeply into now, into the support of my chair, the deep breaths that keep grounding and centering me enough to be moved throughout the day without crumbling, to notice imagination vs just not knowing.  Not knowing is far kinder.  I become kinder to me, knowing I will be kind and compassionate in this unfolding situation as best I can.  Again, the only IT I really need is to try and show up as Love, loving, acknowledging he has IT – he has Love too! 

4.  I can not do IT for him.  I wish I could.  But, if I go to war with that reality, I suffer.  If I suffer in that argument with the way things are, my relationship with him is sure to suffer too.  I don't like it, but it is the way it is.  What can I do?  This work, from fear to love, and loving.

I don’t know the future, do you?  We can not.  What we can know is to set our minds, our hearts, set intentions to love now, and the next now as best we can.  It will be imperfect and so much better than not doing this work. The way back to the awareness of love is through the fear. This is one of the most powerful ways I do that.  Questioning the fears.  Love finds me every time. It can find you too!  
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​The answer is LOVE, always.  How does Love show up and how do we join it? What do we need to join it, to take care of our fears, to take care of our needs, to take care of the ones we love so dearly without imposing a scary future onto them, onto ourselves, onto now?   Now is where Love lives. 
 
Love wins! 

For Peace,

Have you ever found yourself frustrated that you really want something but it’s just so hard to make it happen?  And maybe once you start a new goal, something happens and your best intentions are out the window?  

How about these scenarios?  I want to lose weight and I want to eat those cookies;  I want to exercise or go to the gym and I don’t want to or can’t wake up early to fit it in; I want to go to Europe and I don’t want to spend the money;  I want to switch jobs and I don’t want to shake up my life right now;  I want to stop using substances and I don’t want to give up the thing that is reliable and available and helps me through the day.

Notice the “and”.  Notice how it is very possible to want something new, want some kind of change AND to also want something that will make it really hard to get it.  This brings us to topic #3 from The Invitation to Change Approach ~ Ambivalence is Normal.  Here’s an overview for your consideration:

Ambivalence is Normal

• Wanting two conflicting things is actually normal.
• When habits are formed in our behaviors, body memory and mental memory can be automatic for many reasons.  They’re familiar.  These habits aren’t just erased because we want something else.  We still might want those cookies!
• Substance use as a habit met or meets the wants and needs.  It is true that using substances gets the job done, many of them.  Rather than argue with the reality of it, it is far better to acknowledge the truth of it and then figure out next steps and choices.

Why it matters that Ambivalence is Normal

• When you’re trying to make sense of your child’s ambivalence it’s not a shock and can help you stay calm, open-minded, and curious. When you hear your child’s opposing remarks or observe the conflicting messages in their behavior instead you can meet it with understanding.
• It will help you listen, help you respond with understanding and empathy, help you hear between the lines of how your child may still want the change even though the old behavior showed up. 
• It will help you be encouraging rather than accusatory, arguing, and blaming. 
• It will help you re-connect and re-mind you that your truer intention is to connect with and help your child.  Added benefit is that you will feel so much better showing up this way.

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Life Application Ideas from Joanne:

• Notice how we are all so similar and can be ambivalent with big changes in our lives.  Relate with your child from this truth and with compassion for yourself and them.
• Practice the Pause.  Breathe, slow it down, set an intention for calm connection, do what it takes to show up that way.
• Replace an old behavior with a new behavior that is simple and doable with a desired benefit.  Let’s call that a positive pay off.
• Acknowledge that change is possible, it will take effort, it is doable, even though it might be unfamiliar and uncomfortable. 
• Rather than repeating the mantra “change is hard”, turn it around to “change is very possible” AND specify the ways it is doable, what you’ll need to achieve that change, who can support you, and how to return to your efforts if you return to an old habit. It’s ok, and can be a natural part of change!
• Everything changes, repeatedly bring yourself back to present, come back to facts and out of your imagined future and remembered past.  Now is where change happens and that is what changes the future.  Focus on now. 

I invite you to consider with an open mind, open heart, and with compassion how behaviors, emotions, attitudes actually make sense – in others and in yourself - and how there are many roads to travel, many ways to travel those roads, that we all have our unique perspective and thoughts about what will work for us, when and how AND even with the best intentions we might get sidetracked.  Consider it's OK, put the puppy back on the paper and begin again.  The time is always NOW. 

Breathe, touch your heart, feel the love in you, send it out to your child, to the world, to anyone who needs it. 

Love wins here!

To learn more about The Invitation to Change Approach and access additional resources, please click here:  https://cmcffc.org/about

To Peace and Possibility!

​Joanne