Overcoming Guilt, Shame, and Blame in the Face of Our Children’s Struggles

Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm your host, Dr. Zoe, and today we're talking about overcoming guilt, shame, and blame for our children's struggles. That's, that's a big one. Our guest is Dawn Ward. She's an author, a speaker, Bible teacher, and certified biblical coach. She's the founder of Faith to Flourish, a ministry offering support and encouragement to women with addicted loved ones. She's married to Steve, and she's a mom to 3 adult children, and her book, From Guilt to Grace, Hope and Healing for Christian Moms of Addicted Children, uh, was published last year in September 2024. Listen in. Dawn, welcome to the podcast. I'm really excited to have this conversation because I know so many of my clients, and I even have, you know, friends and people that write into me who are estranged from children or really struggling with some things that are going on in their adult children's lives. So thank you for being willing to have this conversation.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm looking forward to our conversation.

So can we start by kind of just laying out your story? When did you first realize that your son was struggling with addiction?

So I am the mother of 2 sons who both struggled with addiction. And it was a little bit backwards. My older son had already graduated from high school. He was— the kids had gone to Christian school. He was now in college. And he was doing well. Actually, I think it was right about the time he was getting close to graduating from college. And the The problem started with his younger brother who was in his senior year of high school at the time and had been doing great. We had let them go to public school for high school, and he was involved in sports and band and all of that. And so I was working more. My husband was off on disability, and I had long hours in a medical practice, and I was seeing some changes in him, his appearance, and some of the things that were going on. His grades were starting to slip. And I would— I just didn't even know back then. This would be close to 20 years ago now that, uh, I just didn't even know, like, hey, there is such a thing as a drug test, or who do you go to? What do you— I didn't know. I caught him smoking, uh, where he worked one time, and I thought, gosh, now he's smoking. And there were some things there that I was seeing, but thankfully in this situation, he came to us.

Oh.

I confronted him a few times, and no, there's nothing going on, Mom, you're crazy, and all those things. But then he came to us and said, look, I thought I was smoking marijuana, but I'm on something I can't get Oh,

wow.

That's a lot of how these predator drug dealers work on young kids, is that they're doing one thing and they're lacing the drugs with other substances that are addictive. And so him and his friend both were in kind of trouble. And so we— because he was on board with getting help, it was one of those, you know, of course he was naive. He didn't know. We didn't know that. It was all a big learning curve.

Yeah.

seemed to really make progress because he did have goals of wanting to go to college and all of those things. And so there were slip-ups, there was secular rehab, there was Christian faith-based programs. But really, within a year or so, he got his life on track and has been doing great. And that was just a major blessing for us. Like, if the way that it went for us was— while it had bumps and I was terrified and I didn't know how this was going to turn out, it— Yeah. Went well, and he's been doing well for the last probably 17, 18 years. He has been married for 10 years. They don't have any children, but they have careers and college degrees and everything. So I'm grateful. So we thought we dodged a bullet. And then it was probably another year later that we— his brother had to have surgery. He had a stomach surgery from a congenital birth defect. And it was during the time when they were putting them on these pain medications and they were saying they weren't addictive. Right. All again, news to us. You know, we didn't know. And so it— he had been struggling with some depression and anxiety. So when this— when he got this medication, it was like mother's milk to him.

Hmm.

Because, you know, he was just then starting to understand, like, there's something not right with my brain, and I'm dealing with all this anxiety, and my stomach's always upset, and I've got almost kind of like a borderline agoraphobia going on, those things. And so with him, it was much harder because He almost had this mindset of like, hey, it's not my fault. The medical community did this to me.

Yeah.

And then he was going back and forth to psychologists and all of that as well, trying to— and psychiatrists, trying to get treatment for his mental health issues. And so he became more of what— and our situation with him became more of what you would think of as a traditional, if you're going to call any kind of an addiction story or mental health journey traditional, right? And the highs and the lows and the relapses and the in and outs and the cycles, and they became increasingly worse. And so there were, of course, car accidents and DUIs and, you know, hospitalizations, mental health breakdowns and jail and suicide attempts, and that we went through all of that. And at that point, all of the things that I dealt with as a kid growing up in an alcoholic family, being the oldest child, all of that This overwhelming guilt, shame, and self-blame came over me of, hey, you may have gotten a get-out-of-jail-free card with the first one, but now with 2 sons, this is on you, Mom. Whether it's bad genes, whether it's you missed, you know, you weren't awake, you were asleep at the wheel, whatever it is, Mom, you should have caught this. You should have been able to prevent this. And all those emotions and thoughts started coming in on me. And it became just a really difficult situation because I was trying to rescue and save my son. In the process, I was continuing to decline and my mental health was declining as my obsession with fixing and saving him increased.

My goodness, my heart hurts just hearing the story. I, I can imagine, you know, we have these ideas when we're parenting these younger ones that getting them to adulthood is kind of the goal, right? And then we realize when our children are in adulthood that we care for them and worry about them. And parenting is just a lifelong journey. It's lifelong.

It is a lifelong journey.

Yeah. So how did you deal with those feelings of guilt and shame over your, your children's addictions? I want to say choices, but we also know so much about addiction that, you know, there are genetic components. And it sounds like if you came from an alcoholic family, there's— there probably were some genetic components in addition to choices that your children made. But I heard all of the blame. I heard all of the shame. How did you? How did you deal with that and get out of that?

Okay, so what happened was I realized I was pouring myself into research, everything that I could figure out to help him. And I mean, I'm talking like, should we take him to Mexico? Should we take him to Costa Rica? Like, what can we do? He's addicted to opiates. What should we do that America isn't offering? Like, you get so desperate as a parent. Right. I've had him in phase. based programs. I had him in secular programs. I said, like, one of them we basically went bankrupt on with the, like, Lindsay Lohan, you know, those expensive ones, top-notch. And every time he gained, and we all gained from the experience, we gained from the knowledge. We understood that, you know, while there's the physical side of addiction, there's also the mental, emotional, and spiritual side of it. I, as a Christian, I was really looking into the Bible and what does it say about these kind of strongholds in our life. So I was I was trying to understand it all. But what happened was one day my husband said, you're going to worry yourself to death. And he was right, because what was going on in my mind, Zoe, was I could hear my mind playing, you have to fix your son, you have to fix your son, 24/7.

It

didn't matter. I was at work, I was performing, I was doing all the things I needed to do. But in my mind, it was like a little quiet radio playing in the background. It really gave me an appreciation for people who truly struggle with mental health problems.

Yes.

Because my brain had just reached that point. I don't think it could take much more.

Right.

And so my go-to is to function. My go-to is to fight. My go-to is to do something about it. So I thought I was doing okay, you know, because I was managing to work and take care of everybody else in the family and do all of those things. But this broken record was playing back there. And so when my husband said that to me, I realized, like, he's right. And I said, you have permission to put that on my tombstone. She worried herself to death. And I kind of at that point had like this aha moment where God spoke to me and said, no, I wanted to say she trusted God. And so I thought, well, what does that look like? Like, I think I trust God, and I, you know, I trust the people that are in my son's life to help him and all of this. But, you know, like, these are professionals, and like, I, you know, I'm still trying to figure out how to fix it myself.

Right.

And so the shift was that I, I really felt like I needed to stop Googling and researching how to help him and start looking for what I needed and where I was hurting and where I needed help. And that's what I started doing, like help for mothers of children who are struggling with addiction and mental health issues and life-destructive behaviors and for Christian moms because I'm a woman of faith. And so, and just trying to find what was out there.

Yeah.

And starting to put that same effort into my mental health and my well-being and not going and just speaking to the family drug addiction counselor about my child, but also about me.

That's so good.

And that helped me because then I started to realize there was so many things. Like when you go to a 12-step meeting, they say you didn't cause it, you can't control it, and you can't cure it. And so I tended to not really care for the 12-step meetings.

I was gonna say, did you believe that?

Yeah, yeah. For me, no. But, but what happened was I Uh, when I would leave, I would feel defeated. I would feel hopeless. I didn't feel the encouragement. It could have been the meeting. It could have been where I was at.

Sure.

So many people get help and support, and I say, go where you need to go, right? But, um, at that point, everything that was said to me by anybody else just compounded my sense of responsibility.

Yeah.

So even in letting go of my child— and I don't mean letting go like, get out of my life, I want nothing to do with you— but this constant need to fix, Prepare, save, and all of that. Even that was how do I do it right? You know this perfectionism, this performance, this people pleasing. And so I took what was being said to me like well if you don't say the right thing to them, they might relapse and they might go out and use. If you get mad and you say what's really going on in your own heart and what you're feeling right now, you might be to blame. For the next time they use, and the next time he uses, he might die.

Yes. Wow.

And so there was this hypervigilance that came with this overweighted sense of guilt and responsibility. And we're going to talk about my book a little bit, but the title's From Guilt to Grace. And I did publish through Hope Books, and they have this really cool system where I had this great name for this book. It was going to be called That Mom, Those Kids. But they explained to me that, you know, that's more for a memoir. And you do have a journey book here about like what process you went through. So let's talk about the process. And I didn't realize that there was a common thread in there of me talking about my guilt. And so when they put these names out there and suggested these names for the book, it was like so obvious once somebody else took a look at my story and saw that, Dawn, you really are talking about how you got over this overwhelming sense of guilt, shame, and self-blame. And, um, for me, healing really did come in being able to Talk about it and find people who maybe didn't necessarily agree with me about everything, but we were sharing our story.

Right.

We were talking with each other and we were, you know, kind of destigmatizing it and able to say, hey, you know, if you're feeling bad about that, Mom, why? Like, why are you putting that on yourself? And somebody asking those hard questions and really helping me to kind of see that some of the things that I was believing, there was just no ground. There was no foundation for those beliefs. They were false beliefs.

We often have those beliefs and, and instead of evaluating them, we just assume they're true.

Right.

We apply them to ourselves and then we interact with the world as if they are true and it's so damaging. You mentioned letting go and I want to talk a little bit more about that because I have a number of clients who are struggling in their relationship with their children. I have clients who are struggling in the choices that their children have made, like I already said. And I think that biggest struggle is letting go. Because even in whatever letting go means, we'll talk about what that means. I think there's guilt in that, because maybe it feels like you're giving up on your child or giving up that the relationship can ever be repaired. Can you talk a little bit about letting go and what that means and what that could look like?

In a healthy relationship, letting go is natural. So I have 2 other adult children. Now, one of my children, my daughter still lives at home. And she's on the autism spectrum. So she's 33. But she's still here, but she works outside the home. And I let go of anything that she can handle on her own. And she's perfectly, you know, you can see it. And often it takes a little bit of encouragement, like, you can do it, honey. I know you can do it. And that was things like getting her driver's license, getting her first job, those type of things where inside she was all bottled up and felt like she couldn't do it and couldn't self-advocate. And that's kind of one of her biggest struggles is that more social thing. But me encouraging her and seeing her being able to step out and do it instead of holding on and so afraid. What's going to happen if she goes to work and they're mean to her, or they fire her, or she, you know, gets in a car accident and she doesn't know how to talk to the police officer? And everything being really fear-based.

Right.

And for my middle son, when he went into getting, you know, the right counseling, getting— the Lord really worked in his life and really had goals for himself. Me not holding him back because of my fear and that, oh gosh, he might relapse if he's stressed out or whatever, because that's a very real part of their journey that could happen to anyone who is walking in sobriety or recovery right now. And so letting go when you're dealing with people who are moving forward in a healthy pattern means, you know, hey, life is rough, they still have their issues, everybody has their stuff, but they're processing it that way is natural and it feels okay in a healthy relationship.

But what about letting go of the dream?

The dream is hard. And when you are looking at somebody who is struggling, And they don't have the confidence to do this on their own. And now their parent is coming to this realization that, hey, we might be more part of the problem if we cling too tightly to you and don't let you swim a little bit and try this. But they're taking it as abandonment.

Right.

And so that can be in any relationship where there's maybe some codependency, some enabling, uh, some struggles that the adult child is having. And so the letting go— and you were asking, what was the question you asked me again?

I think it's for a lot of moms, it's letting go of the dream that they had of what the relationship could be.

Yes.

Especially when there's estrangement or letting go of, you know, the dreams that they had for their, their children.

That one is hard.

Yeah.

And the longer the dream isn't fulfilled, the harder it is. So now with my son, my older son, this cycle that we've been going through has been for over 15 years.

Mm-hmm.

And so it gets to the point now where the proof is in the pudding, and it's hard to have hope for a dream when you keep being disappointed. And my son seems to cycle pretty regularly, so it seems to be about once or twice a year. So just as soon as he's doing well, getting a good job, things are going well, something spirals him downward and he, and he falls, he goes back to his patterns. And what happens is it's hard for us As the parent to muster it up and keep dreaming and to keep hoping and believing that this is going to turn out well. And that's where I think that we have to process, is this my dream for my child, or is this my child's dream for their own life?

Mm-hmm.

And kind of looking at like, what is it that they're wanting in their life? And it might not be what I had for them. Right. And that's a real— you have to allow yourself to grieve. I do talk about that in the book too, just a little segment about this anticipatory grief, the death of a dream, uh, you know, this thought,

this loss,

right? Yeah. And you do have to allow yourself to go through that and process it as your emotion and not put the responsibility on them to fix that for you, but just to allow yourself to sit in that. And that's hard because I do realize that even if things miraculously changed overnight. My son is working hard to get his life back together. There's so many consequences now because he's almost 39. And so there's so many consequences and things that we don't often talk about. We often hear on social media about those miraculous, uh, you know, turnarounds. And these people are up and talking on stages, and they're leading so many people, and they've got these successful businesses and things. And we don't often think about those hard journeys that, that are just a lifetime of living with disappointment.

Right.

As you're still striving for your dream. And, and so my encouragement is, you know, to pray for them and encourage them, but also recognize that at this point they're adults and we need to support them in their dream and allow ourselves to know that maybe our dream, like my dream of having grandchildren, my one son who's married, they don't want children. And then my daughter is living at home and she's on the autism spectrum. So I don't know. And then my oldest son, while he has a significant other, she can't have any more children. And so as I look at this situation and think, wouldn't it be nice to have a grandchild? It would be wrong for me to put that on them.

Right.

Right. I have to take ownership of that. This is something that I would like, but this is their life, their journey, and I have to respect where they're at and where they want to and how they want to move forward. And so, yes, you need a professional like yourself, people that can really help us process and say, what of this is a valid emotion that I'm having? Because all the emotions are valid, but is it a realistic dream for me to hold on to, or is it something that I should hold on to loosely? And you did mention that some of the moms are estranged, and that is a really hard thing. And I do know in my community that a lot of the mothers are going through that situation, whether their children are using drugs, not using drugs. Sometimes they come to us and it doesn't have anything to do with drugs. They just have somebody in the family, one of their children, that isn't speaking to them and communicating with them. And, or there's ones whose children are living very life-destructive lives right now, and they don't know whether, you know, where they are. If they're safe, if they're not. That seems to be really— in my case, my son, I call him the boomerang kid because he's always around, and no matter how mad he gets, he's always showing up. And so for me, I haven't ever gone very long without communicating with him. You know, if he pouts for a few days, that's about it. But, but I've seen the anguish. of the mothers and the parents who go through this and all their questioning. And what happens is they often again put it on themselves.

Right.

And it's like, how many times can you apologize because you said something harsh to them? You know, and I often have to look at like, what was my track record as a mom? And, you know, as a mom, I wasn't abusing my children. I wasn't perfect by any means, but they could never say I didn't love them. And I had to start to look at the other relationships. I had to look at my relationship with my husband and with my other 2 children and say, oh, am I capable of having a good, you know, natural, normal relationship with people? And when I realized I could do that, that I wasn't so broken from my past and from the things— And my daughter sent me a note yesterday knowing that I was going through some struggles and my son had said some things that were harsh. And she said, Mom— and she even— it was so cute. She sent me an article from Psychology Today. And she said, Mom, you know, Look at the— look at the kids that you've raised. And, you know, they all love you. One has problems, but look at the other 2 of us and look how we're doing. And if you were like— if you were really a bad person and a bad mother and all of these, you know, there would be sharp metal all over the place because— or shrapnel, as they call it— because of, of how you were abusing all of us.

Right.

You didn't do that. And that kind of grounded me, you know. It helped me to know, like, okay, Lord. And so one of the things is I really say invest in the relationships. That want you with them right now. Invest in those. We tend— yeah, we tend to focus on the broken one,

the

one that we are powerless to fix. We can pray, we can, you know, we can encourage, but I had to stop obsessing over sending text messages to the one who was upsetting me all the time, or that was upset with me all the time, sending, you know, memes and YouTube songs and videos and things like that, trying fix that relationship and really started to adjust to the relationships that were, you know, give and take, that we were both encouraging each other and putting my energy into that. Because time and time again, I do hear moms say that their relationship with healthy children— healthy, again, how do you define healthy? But having a normal relationship at that point, as you would define normal. They would say, those kids would say, Mom, I'm here.

Yes.

Don't forget about me. Yeah, don't forget about me. I love you, and I want to be part of your life. And I— and when we're together, I don't always want you to talk about my sister and everything that's going on bad with her. I want us to go have fun and have lunch and go grocery shopping or go to the movies or something together. And, and I, I tended— I worked in the medical field for over 25 years. I worked in plastic surgery and dermatology, and I was a medical esthetician, so I did lasers and skincare and all of But we had a surgical part of the practice. We had a daily part of the practice where the dermatologist came in and all of that. And the biggest problem we had with patients is when they didn't follow our directions.

Hmm.

And they would— we would tell them, you need to use this cream to clear up that rash. And they would go home and they'd get on Dr. Google or, you know, whatever. And they would say, oh, this has this side effect and or whatever. And they wouldn't do what we asked them to do. And then they would come in a few weeks later and the rash is blown up. Over their face, and they didn't use the medication because they were afraid of it. Instead of calling the office and saying, hey, I'm concerned about this, and having someone answer their questions,

right,

right, did their own thing. So when I did decide to hire a professional counselor to help walk us through this, and when I did put my children into programs where there were professional counselors and psychiatrists and you know, medical staff involved, I made the decision that I was going to trust them, that I had done my research. You'll hear a lot of negativity. You'll hear a lot of people saying, oh, they don't know what they're talking about, and this person did this and now look where they're at. But I knew what it was like to have them come in and not take my professional advice that I had spent years going to school for.

Right.

So, what I encourage people is find somebody you feel hears you. that you feel comfortable with their experience and talk to them. I understand that they can't always afford private counseling, but there are, you know, groups out there. There are a lot of support groups out there and things where you can find people who are there to help you and you can gain from their experience.

Mm-hmm.

And that was very helpful to me to quit. One of the best counselors, one of the best counsels that I ever got from a counselor was he said, you know, you're the mom. And right now, what you're going through is so hard, and you have your role as the mom. The medical professionals have their role. The psychiatrists and psychologists have theirs.

Right.

Believe it or not, the legal authorities have theirs.

Right.

Right? And the mental health professionals have theirs. And you have to learn to work collaboratively while staying in your own lane. And that was great. That was so good for me because it helped me to understand, like, you're all helping me be a better mother in this situation, but I'm not having to be judge, jury, doctor, lawyer, all of that. And so I appreciate when people appreciated, respected, and at least gave my advice a try. And if they didn't agree with my advice, that they would come and talk with me about it. And that's what I would really encourage is find that, you know, if you have all these questions and you don't know what to do, And your go-to response seems to be making matters worse. That's when it's good to bring in someone who can help you figure out how to kind of do it differently. And you know, and that helped me a lot. It helped me a lot to realize like what things I was responsible for, what things I wasn't. Relieved a lot of guilt for me.

Wow, thank you. That was a lot of information, and I think really helpful for a mom who is struggling in her relationship with her adult children right now. You know, I always say when it comes to relationships, we can only fix ourselves, right? And fixing us changes everything. It doesn't fix everything, but when we focus on, on healing ourselves instead of being so outwardly focused on trying to change everybody around us that we can't change, then things get better. That's good. So can I ask you to give one last word of encouragement to a mom? Regarding moving on with joy, moving on in her life, even when her children aren't getting better?

Okay, that's such a good question because at one point early on, this was with my middle son, my first— we were the first experience with addiction. And again, this counselor that we had, I remember like he was telling me things I had to do and I'm like, this is on you if this gets messed up. Buddy, this is on you because I'm putting my trust in you, and I'm going to do this the way you're telling me to because I can't think. And I remember saying at one point, you know, I'm never going to be happy again.

Wow.

I said that. And I said— I thought to myself, unless my child is healthy, happy, and whole, I can't be happy. I can't have joy. And he kind of chuckled at me, and I almost went across the room at him. But he was saying it in such a way as like, I understand what you're saying, but like, never say never, right? Because things can change. And when I started to realize, like, gosh, you know, there's so many components to this.

My

son has so many resources available to him on top of all the professionals. We, you know, he has faith. He has his faith.

Yes.

And so he has God in his life, and things could change on a dime. But either way, now I look back on this long journey, and people who might get discouraged and say, gosh, that's such a long journey. Along the way, there was so much joy. There was so much happiness in times where everyone was doing well and the family was together. But there were times when even they weren't doing well, but we were laughing at our crazy dogs doing something funny. And I started to realize that when you start to see the world around you, you open up your eyes again and see all the blessings, and you have gratitude.

Yeah.

And you look and you say, Doc, you know, Lord, thank you that my daughter sent me that note yesterday. It meant the world to me. I was going through a lot. Like we said, my dad My dad passed away a few weeks ago, and family dynamics were in there. And a lot of those feelings of insecurity and all the expectations, as you know, in my family that I was raised in all came up.

Right.

At the right time, that little note came, and I just stopped and I thought, thank you. You know, thank you so much for her.

And

for, you know, she's had so many struggles of her own, and she's concerned about me. Or my son, my middle son, writing such a long, nice, kind note to me out of nowhere.

Mm-hmm.

You know, for just being an amazing mom, or my husband saying something kind to me, or a dear friend calling me and saying, gosh, you know, we've been friends forever and you've always been with me.

Yeah.

You've never let me down. Those kind of things, when we look at those and we go outside and we see the sun and we see the flowers and we, we have a healthy body or whatever it is— some of us are struggling with sickness too— but, but we look at the other things in our life That we have been blessed with. That gratitude naturally brings joy.

Right. And we need to value those because sometimes we devalue them because we're so focused on the relationship and what's going on with our children. You know, my mom has said to me a number of times, you're only as happy as your least happy child, or something like that.

Yes.

And I hear that, and I can understand as a mom that, that you might feel that way. And yet still, I think that that is an idea that we want to detach ourselves from because in some ways that's a codependent response, right? I can't be happy if you're not happy. And the reality is, is that it's not necessarily true. We can feel for our children, we can do everything that we can do for our children, and we can still find happiness even if our children are not.

I do hear that and I hear it in my group even. I definitely probably bought into it at one point. I don't feel that way now. I believe I'm much happier than my son is. Okay. He tends to gravitate towards drama because of this cycling constantly. And I think there's bipolar and things. And so that daily just boredom or monotone or whatever doesn't feel natural to him. So he tends to be in a constant state of heightened or depressed, you know, these kinds of things. And even when he's trying to stabilize it, he's creating environments often that self-sabotage.

Yes.

And, and so he recognizes that he's working with his therapist on it, but it just tends to be something. I, on the other hand, like, especially at this point in my life, I like, I like calm. I like peace. I love my home and my dogs bundling up around me and my daughter and all of us watching TV and having tea at night and all of that. And so So that I find joy in. And so, you know, protect your joy is something I would say as well. Guard it. Yeah. Because there's a lot of peace stealers and joy stealers in our life, and we can't always control when they come in and when they come out and all of that. But we can say, like, what time— what's— what am I doing that it would make it easily accessible to steal my joy versus what areas of my life and relationships in my life am I guarding and cultivating and nourishing to build up that joy. And what happens is it'll start to not blend. It won't be like this gray area anymore. It'll be like, hey, these are my joy makers and these are my joy breakers. And while I love my child, I'm only going to give him so much access to taking my peace or my joy. And that's a whole other conversation, of course, about boundaries.

Yeah.

But boundaries are so good when we implement boundaries, trying to manipulate or change them It's— they're going to run out. We're going to be exhausted and overwhelmed with guilt when we set boundaries because we understand what's good for us, healthy for us.

Right.

And I get older, you know, my, um, adrenals and cortisol and all the different things going on in my limbic system and all that, it doesn't recover like it used to.

Right.

I, you know, it takes longer when I, when I get super, super upset. I can train myself to decon— you know, decombust and come back down, but my body will, will, um, take longer for it to get itself reset. And I'm aware of that now. And so I'm not going to put myself into situations that are going to heighten that response. Now, they do come sometimes.

Right.

But so that is another thing, is when you're having boundaries around conversations and you're having boundaries around certain triggers in that relationship that could turn that real quick.

Yeah.

You recognize that that boundary is for me so that I don't go Off the deep end, right? And that I can stay in a healthy place. Then it's much easier to implement the boundary because it's, you know, it seems selfish, but it's not. It's actually healthy for the relationship as a whole.

Absolutely. That was— yes, that was wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you for coming on and sharing your wisdom. Thank you for giving women freedom to live, live a life of joy and peace, even in the midst of difficulties with children and adult children, especially. How can people find you? Can— how can they find your book?

Oh, thank you for asking. So the ministry that I started is called The Faith to Flourish. So the word thefaithtoflourish.com, they can find me there. They can find me under my author name, dawnrward.com, as well. And I'm on social media like Instagram, and I just recently started a little account on TikTok because a lot of friends are over there. But Facebook, you'll find me there. And then the group to support moms if any of their children are struggling with addiction is called Christian Moms of And of course, the book, uh, From Guilt to Grace: Hope and Healing for Christian Moms of Addicted Children, can be purchased on Amazon or Barnes& Noble or pretty much any of those bookstores.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Dawn. Thank you for the work that you're doing.

Thank you. I appreciate you having me.