Episode 107
The Journey to Becoming a Heroic Parent

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Description

In this episode, Chris Burns brings Jason Friesema to welcome back Lisa Smith, certified family recovery coach, to speak on parenting in recovery as well as the journey to becoming a heroic parent. Our team shares personal stories in their own journey of parenthood and explains how important healthy family dynamics are for family systems no matter the situation.

Talking Points

1. Introduction to the heroic parent
   
2. Parenting turning points
   
3. Being relational with your children
   
4. Parenting struggles
   
5. Owning your shame
   
6. Closing thoughts
   

Quotes

“The more you invest in the relationship with your kids, the more delightful it is to be with them. It becomes more and more fun. And even if you go through seasons where they’re less fun to be around, there is still that bond and moments of delight where you really enjoy them. And that makes hard conversations easier.”

– Jason Friesema, Chief Clinical Officer.

Episode Transcripts

Episode -107- Transcripts

hey everybody and welcome to another exciting and amazing episode of Finding Peaks your host Chris Burns president and founder also known and I’m not even joking around about this I celebrate this recovery cheerleader joined by my co-host our chief clinical Officer Jason friesma grateful to have you on the show sir great to be here and we got our family recovery coach a community family recovery coach not just Peaks family recovery coach but the infamous Lisa Smith is joining us today welcome Lisa thanks for having me back absolutely and I was having coffee with Lisa a couple weeks ago a few weeks ago and we started talking and we got into talking about parenting when she knows she has adult sons I have a six and seven year old and we just started to kind of connect on what it what it’s like to be a parent in some of the growing pains in that process and she recommended that I read a book and it was the Journey of a heroic parent the author of that is Brad Reedy Brad Reedy PhD we have Brett Dr Brad Reedy M Reedy and he wrote this book and what he talks about often in the book is his experience walking through the developmental process with his kids specifically he’s a Wilderness A wilderness treatment program owner and has been for a multitude of years one of the the more Infamous programs out of Salt Lake City Utah if I remember yeah evoke Wilderness evoke Wilderness and his story starts around his own personal healing and an intensive that he was in as a result of his son actually his oldest son I believe actually checking into a Wilderness Program himself and he thought to himself where did I go wrong what happened and so I wanted to talk today in my opinion I have two of the greatest parents that I know that I have the opportunity to counterbalance with often I want to talk to you guys today about the journey to becoming a heroic parent not that any of us own that title today or maybe ever will but I think you all have some really tangible insight into what it might take to not only take care of the ones we love with integrity and Grace but more specifically take great care of ourselves and so I just kind of want to start the show and open it up with your experience as walking Walking The Road Not only to personal healing but growing as a parent alongside your loved one and I think we’ll start with Jason um you know you’ve shared with me a lot with your adult children one of which is in college one’s a little bit older um just some of the phases that you’ve walked through developmentally and you just have a tremendous amount of insight not only how to show up as an awesome parent today present and purposeful but really you have a really cool story on what it took to get there maybe you can share that a little bit with us man I feel like there’s so much I could talk about uh with with being a parent Chris and um as you’re kind of doing your intro certainly what I think about a lot is um I feel like my parenting shifted a ton when it really clicked in with me that my children are people and like that sounds interesting uh to say probably but just to really realize that that is a person and this isn’t we’re in a relationship like this isn’t about me trying to control everything they are doing or trying to make me look like a good parent or anything like that like this is about being in a mutual relationship with a child and and obviously there is a hierarchy like in parenting like you are kind of in charge especially when they’re living at home but really learning to respect and attune with them and and all of that I think it has been a journey but really I I think I guess as I’m getting to my final answer I think I really learned how to enjoy that Attunement like enjoy finding ways um to connect with both of my kids as they were growing up and and still now um that I enjoyed like I I was certainly was the first 40-something person I knew that had a Snapchat you know um as a as a way to communicate particularly with my daughter um and uh because I wanted to meet her on her playing field and not just kind of look down and judge that Anna kind of wanted to know what it was about too so um I don’t know that’s where I’ll start that’s interesting you bring that up I remember sitting with you before I had Instagram I don’t know if you remember this yeah and you’re like you got the IG man and I’m like yeah this is like five six years ago I was like I don’t have the IG Jason I don’t need the IG and he’s like oh you got kids and you’re going to want to stay up to speed on some of this stuff okay so I got the IG yeah it’s either that or ignore it and and not be attuned to it because like I mean it even parenting through that is tricky it’s not like there’s a book on like okay what do you do with your kids Snapchat like obviously I thought it was a horrible app but also it’s a way to connect and communicate and it’s actually a primary way that at least at that time teenagers were connecting and so um we just leaned into that world and tried to engage with conversation and relationship to address it so I love that yeah your piece about being relational really just speaks volumes and um we’ll get back to that in a moment but for you Lisa what has it been like for you on this journey on this path and I think even some of the viewers who have watched our show consistently probably know a little bit about your story sure I was also thinking when you were doing your intro about like how does that relate to me and I think you nailed it I’ll use different words but it truly is a journey not an arrival point and you know you you have these kids and they show up in the world and you’ve got an expectation for who they’re going to be I think that’s probably fairly normal was for me and um the Journey of discovering who they are and that that I actually had no control over that right and they were who they were and the fact that I have two and they were completely different from their arrival on Earth um much to my surprise um was you know kind of probably precursor to this is going to be a journey um but it is over and over and over learning that it is a daily journey and if you don’t see it as a journey and experience it as a journey you will miss it yeah and then you’ll get to an arrival point and you will have missed so many opportunities to connect and grow together and heal and change and become a different person and yourself and watch them become their best people um and so it really is about going out and then coming back together and that Journey that hero’s journey that true heroes Journey which is the premise behind the book yeah I love that in the journey the journey I think oftentimes starts with at least to Brad reedy’s Point is the journey starts with us right and discomfort and discomfort and a lot of discomfort because we actually have to take the external motivation and create internal motivation for ourselves and our healing and Jason touched on it really well is as far as the relational piece um I think I don’t know about your guys’s upbringing and it’s not doesn’t have anything to do with your parents it’s more generational but to be relational with kids is something very very new yeah how did you come to grips with being relational with your kids uh
how did I come I was forced honestly um I was forced to really let go of my plan and my path and my expectations um because I had well both of my kids really stretched those um expectations a lot but one in particular stretched them in really scary ways and so I think I was thrown into um I I believe I’ve said it actually on the show before that My Moment of clarity was my son’s not going to make it out of this and so where am I with my last interaction with him and that was I know exactly where I was that day I know the month I don’t remember the exact date but um that was for me when everything started to change in my life and I became an intentional parents and an intentional person and I don’t always get it right um sometimes I fall back into Old patterns but I try to navigate forward a little differently understanding very clearly that I was face to face with this could be my last interaction with my child and am I okay with that am I okay with how it went down yeah and that’s it I think that’s just really profound for the viewers to hear because here we are in a really high risk situation high-risk coping you know that our loved ones are walking through and actually your work tells you to let go and it’s it’s not the let go of the intervention style like set a hard boundary and say you can’t do this or these non-negotiables it’s literally let go with love and that has to be and you know I have a six and seven year old I haven’t had to walk through that type of intensity but I think that experience for the viewers to hear and specifically parents that are struggling with loved ones I think that’s really really important is like the best thing we can do in these times of Crisis is go inward I mean that’s that’s really really cool and for you to be able to find that in that moment I think just speaks volumes for the opportunity to heal one day at a time and Jason too you have a little bit different of a story but I still think there’s some inflection points in and around you know your kids leaving to college you know because you’re leaving a college or whatever it might be but maybe talk a little bit about how did you come to terms or how did you find the wherewithal and the insight to be relational with these humans long before anybody was really talking about it yeah I mean I have great kids I guess
um but I think I think that’s a good question Chris like I think
I really somewhere along the way I came across a quote that like um well and I can’t even remember how it goes actually but it it somehow talked about a boat um but kind of like that you don’t build a boat for it to stay in the harbor right like the boat is meant to go sail and having kind of the realization that like when it when your child is born like you kind of have full control over them and then as they get older like the Venn diagram like the overlap of your lives is just a slow release like whether it’s dropping a kid off for kindergarten or first grade or yeah um you know that’s little step out a little more Independence a little more um them expressing themselves and I think I think I learned how to um grieve what I experienced as losses at times like even Chris we had talked about like um my daughter this summer has decided to stay at uh in her college town in Fort Collins and uh DOC come home and like I both feel uh deeply devastated um because I like being around her and uh just really excited for her that she’s found um a way to make a home for herself that isn’t in our house and like um in realizing like that’s how it’s meant to be even if it is painful to be you actually bring up something that’s really synonymous with the book and Brad Reedy talks about and I won’t try and quote it because I won’t come in anywhere close but he says when we when we paddle away from the harbor we have to expect that we won’t see the shore for a while and that’s the journey I think you guys are talking about embarking on and that can be incredibly scary so how was it for you Lisa when you begin to paddle away from the shore which is our loved ones and go out and then you look around and I don’t see the solution inside I don’t see the end in sight my loved one may or may not still be struggling I think a lot of parents can relate to that but how did you feel in that situation what did you do to manage it and move through it well after I like fought it yeah I think it’s paddling away from you know the the safety of our loved ones and our family and the control that the perceived control that we thought we had and like I’m gonna build this boat and it’s going to go on in this Direction that’s how it’s going to go right like of course I know the boat’s gonna go but it’s gonna go this way um and our boat was not going that way um it was going to really not a good way um but also I had to paddle out so that I could hear myself um and and quiet the commercials and some of the professionals and um you know the the social media people that my friends my uh my own family of origin and how things had been done and you know who we are as people and how we do this and I had to get quiet to hear myself so that I could hear like behind my North Star um and you know kind of just realign with my own value system and my own self and then say okay so now I can paddle back and feel confident in um hearing the chatter seeing what’s going on around me allowing other people to do things differently and knowing for sure that this was how I was going to navigate forward um because I had some time I really loved the way that you explained that too and in the chatter oftentimes can feel community based as well you know he talks about it a lot in the book when he said he was just had so much shame to even talk about some of these things with other parents he felt like he was all alone and then the way he was actually dealing with it then it probably sounds similar to the way you’re dealing with it it’s often a different way to parent a more open-minded way to parent a more Progressive way to look at things of which a lot of parents who aren’t dealing with similar issues aren’t making those types of decisions and so what did you do from a community-based perspective because I just have to know for I have to believe that the viewers that are watching right now like their parents are experiencing a tremendous amount of Shame how do you move through that in community aligned with community and staying safe throughout that process well I think it’s super important to find a safe group of people um I I believe it helps for those same people to have lived experience similar to you because particularly when you’re talking about mental health struggles or substance use struggles kind of all the same um it’s
it’s its own unique challenge um that isn’t isn’t embraced in a lot of other areas and I remember I was a teacher for up many years and I remember sitting with a parent once who was just distraught because her child was not she was they were not doing well in a lot of things and um I just I had no answers because there was a lot of things that weren’t going right um but I remember saying it can be and I was in the middle of my own Journey so without sharing I just said it can feel extremely isolating when you have a child who’s struggling and just that like that person could tell that somehow I knew like I had personal experience with the isolation and pain and struggle that they were going through and I think it’s really important to find safe spaces like that um I think it’s important to find people who can give you space to hear your own voice find your own voice ask you hard questions [Music] um about your intentions about your expectations about you know how or why you’re engaging a certain way and then offer support without offering the solutions just being able to say this is going to be bumpy and it might be long and I’m here to walk with you I love that too it almost exercises a little bit of the power of now because I think a lot of parents when we get into these processes whether it’s youth or adolescents going to a Wilderness Camp or people checking in to treatment programs we believe we’re isolated all alone and not a lot of people can relate and that could be very very disconnecting and so I love I love what you said there as far as safety goes because we can go into certain rooms and probably not as safe to share that information and so time and place set and setting become really important but you reminded me of a part in the book as well where he brings his one of his daughters out to the Wilderness Camp and I think parents sometimes when they send their loved ones to Peaks recovery or an adolescent treatment program we believe things will never be good again this is bad and I love I love to bring in the power up now because we actually don’t know if these things are bad until we walk through them and he brought his one of his daughters I think she was 11 or 12 years old he brought her out for a week-long intensive at one of the the campsites that all the client the kids were out at and the kids were sharing openly about emotions and feelings and thoughts and insights and opportunities and when they got back in the car to head out he said he said how was your week she said that was one of the best weeks I have ever had and he’s like why he’s like I’ve never been around people that are my age that can share so openly about who they are what they are where they want to go presently attuned and so in the midst of crisis in the midst of something that oftentimes sets up to be like oh my gosh here we go these young people are actually gaining a tremendous amount of insight of which their other peers aren’t seeing and his daughter found a tremendous amount of gratitude out of that and so I kind of want to highlight you know do you believe today that everything you walk through was absolutely of value considering where we sit today
I would not have chosen this patch sure um and I have chosen to be intentional around um you know the opportunity to learn amidst the fire um and I want to go back to something that you were talking about
I think it’s really important in looking for support to understand what you’re looking for and be really clear and honest with yourself about what it is that you need do you need to remain in um
kind of the ownership of victimhood of your circumstances or do you truly need support and there are people to this day that that are not um privy to my story even though I speak it loudly um if I meet them in you know the grocery store and they ask a question they are not um somebody who I feel safe giving that whole story to I might give parts of it um or even if they know to be honest with you I don’t share it because they aren’t my people and they aren’t the people that will support me they’re the people that will keep me unhealthy sure um and then I have Lanes of people that that care about my son and I will share bits and pieces but that’s his story to share um and then I have people that are my people that I have shared how it has affected me and they don’t even have details of my son’s story um and as soon as I get asked questions of details um you know we’ll you know what substances was using like like details even family members to be honest with you I will I’ll shut it down and just you know let them know that this isn’t this isn’t a place that I’m gonna go because it’s not healthy for me um to to look back and go back to those places um that I’m looking forward so I just kind of wanted to clarify that yeah I think it’s important your safety lanes that you understand that there’s different Lanes yeah um and what you need out of those different Lanes um I mean I was talking to Jason yesterday about some other stuff and he said I hope you have support and I did I said I have I have my people right I have my people I go to um that do support me and that I can say you know this this is hard this is hard for me and I I’ve fallen Fallen back into some patterns that I’m not super proud of or whatever but um and those are you know those are for my private healing places but um yeah anyways I got lost in your other question because I wanted to Circle back to the planes of safety I think it’s really important because I think sometimes when we’re overloaded with intensity and crisis like we’re just we’re just dying to dump it on someone or dying to share it with somebody and sometimes that can be counterproductive yeah you go into places and exacerbate the shame or exacerbate the pain so I’m grateful that you actually circled back and brought that up because it’s it’s really really important um because I’ve gone into you know I’m an old 12 stepper and so you just kind of share with whoever’s sitting in front of you and I’ve been hit with a hammer because of it or one that I didn’t see coming and so safety and being mindful that and creating community in a safe Lane of which to share this stuff with different people I think not only counterbalances it splits at 50 50. but keeps the healing Journey moving forward and when you’re searching for that for yourself I think you you recognize it because you’re receiving it hopefully and then you’re able to then model it and be that safe space for your loved one for your person um because you understand what it feels like to have had that safe space given to you that it wasn’t about somebody my safest people did not try and fix it yeah yeah I mean my safest people were acknowledged that this was a really scary thing
um you know and then can you know another Lane wanted more details and those people weren’t safe so um you know when I was able to then create safe spaces for my own kids um it is you know I’m sorry that you’re going through this it’s really hard and I work really hard to not jump into the fixing mode yeah and just full stop yeah yeah full stop I struggle with it sometimes too I want to repair I want to fix I want to do especially with six and seven year olds like and then what oftentimes comes out of me is like you’re not hurt let’s go right yeah you’re not hurt let’s go yeah you know but that’s putting your experience on exactly exactly yeah so I’m going to ask a tougher question as we as we get ready to wrap things up and both individually for each one of you what was it that was really important for you to work through so that you could show up with clarity and the greatness of which I watch you guys show up with as parents on a daily basis what was it because in Brad reedy’s book he basically says for the viewers out there if you have a struggling loved one take great care of yourself go Inward and you talked about it on the front end so what what does that look like Jason um
I think you know for me um I mean it probably took me all the way to my kids were teenagers probably well into their teenager Ness to realize that any like hot buttons I had around my kids were my hot buttons not their hot like it feels like they’re pushing my buttons but for me it actually is I’m just they’re exposing my button you know and this isn’t necessarily my example or whatever but like you know like if if you’re really hung up on manners or something like that it’s about usually it’s about you’re revealing my own shame that you might think that I’m a bad parent if my kids don’t have good manners around you or whatever um and I you know I probably still bump into that from time to time too where it’s like you know what I’m I’m having a I’m having a moment where I’m feeling some judgment from other people or whatever and so I um if it hits that spot it’s it’s like I feel embarrassed about maybe something my kids are doing and also I’m like wait that’s my stuff like because we all have we’ve talked about this before we all have all of us have I’m a bad parent shame um and I don’t care how hard we work on it um uh it still exists and it’ll still flare up from from time to time and when we experience shame we immediately want to hide it like we want that’s our initial reaction is to hide it and so how we try to hide it usually is through uh control like get back and you know like stop um but really if slowing that down and being like okay you know what actually this is revealing um a button in May um and probably it’s actually a place that like um my kid needs to be in a relationship with me and I need to be in a relationship with them because if I’m bumping into a shame spot there’s probably something going on there or whatever um you know I think about like for me even that happened recently like my my son who’s in his early 20s like he laughed and then covet happened and the world seemed like it was going to end for a little while I don’t know if you all remember I don’t know if you had covered where you’re watching but like uh yeah right um and so he moved back home and and back into the basement and um and I always had to put that modifier like no he launched but like he came back because of code and like that’s right that’s me yeah that’s my bump right there it’s not his I don’t have to modify it like that’s true yeah no thank you for that’s yeah amazing insight how’s that striking yeah it’s similar I’ll use some different languages but really it’s about releasing my kids from an outcome that I need um and and I have to remind myself that of on kind of on a regular basis yeah um you know that their success I actually with groups that I work with and people I work with I am conscious of saying I’m super careful using the word pride I I don’t use it myself personally with my own children because if I’m gonna own that I gotta own the other stuff too and that’s not mine to own and I spent a lot of years working on that so I also I’m not going to own the the awesome things I can own Pride that my kids are walking into their true selves um but it needs to be about them and I check myself on a regular basis with that one so I would say it’s really about releasing my kids from my expectations of who they should be and the outcome of what I would like that to to look like um with everything what they say how they dress their mustaches they’re mustaches and Tattoos yeah I love it yeah you guys bring up such good points like it’s we need to release our shame and that’s the hot buttons whenever I have a hard Edge I even notice it with Garrick being in here earlier I’m like just sit down you know it’s it’s difficult one of the things that was really difficult for me was as I’ve had an opportunity to move through my experience with a therapist and with others I started to realize in my uh certainly in my developmental years my adolescence I never had the opportunity to just be a kid touch stuff to throw things to mess stuff up to spill stuff on the floor and just never really had that opportunity any time I was doing behaviors that are primarily associated with just being a kid it was you can’t do that clean it up or you spill something you got to do it and so I found myself when I started having kids of having those really hard edges and then I it was my shame showing up in that moment and I had to do a really really deep dive on my adolescent experience specifically my childhood trauma and began to repair some of those roots for myself so they don’t inform the way that I parent my kids and there’s actually not a lot wrong with I’ve realized it being in Target if a six-year-old wants to touch the candy bars or touch some toys there’s actually not a lot wrong with it but in my world view it was this thing that was that’s not what adults do you know right so I’ve had a lot of those experiences a lot like your yourselves and have this opportunity to reflect and I’m just grateful to be able to be in a room today with parents that are in the process of their healing and Recovery Journeys because I think that’s what you guys have kind of dialed in so profoundly for our viewers today is that we actually need to embark on alongside our loved one or preemptive to our loved one a healing Journey for ourselves and what that can do for the individuals that we love and care about so much so if you all don’t have anything else to share I’m going to wrap it up here I think it’s a great spot to wrap up I appreciate you all coming on the show today if you want to check out the book I thought it was really really cool and it actually didn’t even speak to me he didn’t talk a lot about the developmental years that my kids are in which is six and seven talked more about teens and young adults but it really creates some really valuable insight into the journey or the path forward and it doesn’t have to be as scary as I think we’re making it out to be and to Lisa’s point in Jace’s point when we find community and we can walk and anchor when we can walk with them and anchor into that strength and that connection it makes it much more easy to deal with it’s not easy makes it much much easier to deal with totally right the only piece I’ll add to what you just said is um you know the more the more you invest in the relationship with your kids like the more delightful it is to be with them right like it’s it just becomes more and more fun and even if they go through Seasons where they’re less fun to be around like there still is that Bond and moments of delight anyway where um you can really enjoy them and that makes a lot of things makes hard conversations easier it makes uh yeah makes it it just helps kind of build um I don’t know the lore of your family like I mean we can like my kids are obviously older now but like we can talk through some of our big events of like um issues from childhood and like we can talk about and even joke about it because it’s just part of our family story that we all now can kind of still Delight in because our relationship has made it through it’s the journey yeah it is right it’s and if if you aren’t conscious and intentional that this is a journey you miss it yeah into divorce from the outcome too yeah is really really important it’s isn’t about what I need yeah and my my kid’s not going to give me what I need right you know and letting go of what that what that outcome might look like and where it’s going to be and what career path and all of that stuff can be really efficacious for that healing process and he talks and I’ll end with this he he talks about a lot in the book you guys kind of made me think about it but he talks about a lot in the book how we um how parents sometimes when kids go to treatment for substance use why quit drinking and then Joey came home and he drank and I am so upset at him right now because I stopped drinking right yeah and actually I didn’t stop drinking for myself which is a great thing if we want to do that for ourselves but it has we have to own that it can’t be about our person and so I’ve gotten into that a lot of times to produce change in my children I’m going to change for myself and it just doesn’t work out very well that way yeah so well thank you both for just a tremendous amount of insight I know the viewers are absolutely going to love this show specifically parents of loved ones which we work a lot with and I look forward to having you all on the show again thank you all very much for tuning in questions please please flood us with your questions comments questions at findingpeaks.com we’d love to bring those up in an episode create an episode around your questions we just want to show up for you and your loved ones so thank you all for coming on the show Jason Lisa always a pleasure having you until next time please find us on all of your available social media Outlets podcasts Spotify Apple music Tick Tock Instagram Facebook if I missed anything I’ll get it next time until then