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© 2026 Hopestream: Parenting Kids Through Addiction & Mental Health
Description
When your teen or young adult is misusing drugs or alcohol, you need more than just tactics—you need hope, healing, and a path forward for your entire family.
Hopestream delivers expert guidance and emotional support for parents navigating their child's substance use and mental health struggles. Hosted by Brenda Zane, Mayo Clinic Certified health coach and CRAFT-trained Parent Coach who nearly lost her son to addiction, this podcast goes beyond "how to get them into treatment" to address the full ecosystem of this journey.
Episodes features:
- Leading addiction, prevention, and treatment experts
- Real stories from families who've been there
- Evidence-based strategies for helping your child
- Self-care and coping tools for parents
- Deeper conversations about finding meaning, joy, and even unexpected blessings through the hardest times
Whether you're dealing with a teen or young adult's drug use, alcohol misuse, or co-occurring mental health challenges, Hopestream offers the comprehensive support other parenting and addiction podcasts miss. This is your safe space to heal, learn, and discover you're not alone.
New episodes weekly. Join us between the episodes at hopestreamcommunity.org.
311 Episodes
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ABOUT THE EPISODE: If you've been waiting for the right moment to bring up the idea of getting your young adult some support, and you're not sure how to do it without blowing up every landmine between you, this episode is for you. Joanna Lilley, therapeutic consultant and host of the podcast Success is Subjective, is back on Hopestream, and she's pulling back the curtain on what it actually looks like to help a young adult move toward help. Joanna works exclusively with the 18 to 29 crowd, an...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When your child's phone becomes their constant companion, you might dismiss it as typical teenage behavior. But Duane Osterlind, LMFT with nearly two decades specializing in sexual addiction, shares an urgent reality: the average first exposure to online adult material is now 10 years old. This conversation illuminates why younger people are seeking help in their early twenties after years of private struggle that began in childhood. Duane offers perspective on ...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: You've been waiting for your child to say they're ready to get help. You've imagined that conversation a thousand times, rehearsed what you'll say, held your breath every time they seem close to opening up. But what happens if that moment arrives and you're under-prepared? What if that precious window closes before you even realize it was open? In this solo episode, I'm diving into a CRAFT procedure that often gets reduced to logistics when it's actually about something far...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When your child transitions from treatment back into everyday life, the real work begins. Alex Zemeckis and Cannon Kristofferson, co-founders of The Grounds Recovery and Mare's House, know the terrain intimately—not from textbooks or theories, but from walking that precarious path themselves. Now, years into their own recovery journeys, they've built a rock solid sober living ecosystem that helps young adults navigate the delicate nuances of early sobriety while building su...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: If you’ve ever felt uncertain about what your teen or young adult might be using—and how easily accessible today’s substances have become—this episode is a must-listen. I sat down with Sebastian Martin, Executive Director at New Life House, a long-standing sober living program for young men, to unpack the alarming rise of so-called “gas station garbage”—substances like Kratom, kava, 7-0H, and “Feel Free” tonics that are marketed as harmless but can create dependency and ser...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When Jennifer Ollis Blomqvist discovered Motivational Interviewing (MI) in a Swedish women's prison 25 years ago, she found more than a therapeutic technique—she discovered the antidote to professional burnout and the foundation for every meaningful conversation in her life. Now an MI expert and trainer who works with everyone from incarcerated individuals to parents navigating their children's substance use, Jennifer brings a refreshing perspective on how this eviden...
EPISODE DESCRIPTION: "When elephants fight, it's the grass that suffers." This African proverb stopped me mid-scroll during a walk, and I saw my family's addiction story with some pretty painful clarity. While my ex-husband, husband and I stomped around trying to wage war on our son's substance use and high-risk lifestyle, we completely missed who was getting trampled beneath our giant, well-meaning feet. This week's raw and honest solo episode unpacks the heavyweight champion of family confl...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When your journey with a child's substance use stretches into its second decade, you enter what we loving call "warrior mom" (or parent) territory – a place where endurance meets wisdom, and self-preservation becomes an art form. Today's conversation with Hopestream co-founder, Cathy, honors these battle-tested parents who've been navigating their adult children's challenges for ten, fifteen, even twenty years or more. This isn't an advice-filled episode - because more advi...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When Jan Winhall landed her first job running a group for incest survivors in a psychiatric ward, she discovered something revolutionary: the young women's self-harming behaviors weren't signs of pathology – they were brilliant survival strategies orchestrated by dysregulated nervous systems. This revelation launched a 45-year journey that would transform how we understand trauma and addiction. Today, Jan brings her Felt Sense Polyvagal Model to parents navigating the bewil...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When your child's struggles shatter every paradigm you've held about communication, consciousness, and connection, where do you turn? Today's guest, Betsy Hicks-Russ, found herself navigating this exact terrain as the mother of Joey, a 32-year-old non-speaking autistic man whose journey would ultimately revolutionize her understanding of human potential. Through her discovery of The Telepathy Tapes—a groundbreaking podcast documenting telepathic abilities in non-speaking in...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: There's a certain shift that occurs when you stop charging at your child's substance use and instead learn to back in quietly, treats in hand, like Rocky Kanaka (Sitting With Dogs) approaching a terrified shelter dog. In this conversation with Cathy, you'll discover how this counterintuitive approach, born from watching a man give positive affirmations to traumatized pit bulls, might actually hold the key to reconnecting with your own frightened, defensive teena...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Author and therapist, Nicole Runyon, LMSW, witnessed something that reshaped her entire career: loving, intact families were producing children with trauma-like symptoms typically identified in severe abuse survivors. As a therapist watching teen after teen struggle with paralyzing anxiety and digital-age depression, she recognized she was working too far downstream. The revelation was both sobering and hopeful—these weren't organic mental health crises, but environmental c...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Your 3am Google search spiral feels beyond frustrating when you're usually the one with answers. In this week's solo episode I acknowledge the unique exhaustion of spinning your wheels while your child struggles, and offer a concrete 8-step menu of ways to move from wishing into actionable planning and hope. If your existing parenting toolkit isn't working to create positive change in your family this episode will offer ways to rethink and recharge. The best news is, ...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When your child doesn't believe they need help, finding a path forward can feel nearly impossible and is exhausting in every way. Dr. Xavier Amador offers profound hope through his LEAP method—a neuroscience-backed approach born from both his clinical expertise and the raw reality of loving family members with schizophrenia. Dr. Amador's journey began with seven transformative days at his brother's side, where traditional confrontation failed spectacularly. His brother, bri...
EPISODE DESCRIPTION: If you've ever found yourself tiptoeing through your own home, rehearsing conversations to avoid triggering an explosion, or even putting a lock on your bedroom door for protection—you're not alone. Today's conversation with Dina Cannizzaro, Hopestream's Director of Education, confronts the uncomfortable reality so many parents face: how profoundly we normalize dangerous situations when our child struggles with substances. Dina brings battle-tested wisdom from parenting h...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: When a young person you love is struggling with substances or challenging behaviors, the instinct to fix everything can feel overwhelming. In this illuminating conversation, marriage and family therapist Todd Sarner brings decades of attachment science into sharp focus, and offers a roadmap for parents navigating the turbulent waters of adolescence. Drawing from his training with Dr. Gordon Neufeld and other attachment pioneers, Todd reveals why our kids' most hurtful...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: In this episode Cathy and I discuss unique skills from the business world that can be applied to our relationships - especially one with a struggling teen or young adult who is misusing substances and has mental health challenges. I share a surprising learning I picked up from reading a book about hostage negotiation (you may even be able to relate to that kind of situation) and we dig into why it’s important for parents not to take your child’s actions an...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: If someone in your life has an unhealthy relationship with drugs and/or alcohol, you likely already know my guest for today’s episode - Amber Hollingsworth. Amber hosts the wildly popular YouTube channel, “Put The Shovel Down,” with nearly 1 million subscribers. Amber and I sat down to talk about her addiction-riddled family of origin, and the best advice she gives family members from her two-plus decades in the field of addiction counseling. We cover what to do if pa...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: Trevor Hanson had accumulated a pretty good life - from living on a beach in Hawaii, to getting a great job at Tesla and engaged to be married. One year later, he was unemployed, his engagement and his jaw were both broken, and he was living alone in the Reno desert. Trevor suffered depression, nightmares, and suicidal thoughts before deciding to seek therapeutic help. He developed a real appreciation for the process of therapy – but he also had ideas about how it could be ...
ABOUT THE EPISODE: We've all been there. A tense or heated conversation where something flies out of your mouth that you don't really mean, or you inflict your 'help' when it's not wanted or needed. You might, at times, find yourself solving a problem that has nothing to do with you, or you give well-intentioned advice to someone who will never, ever take it. Enter our favorite Hopestream tool...the Lip Clip. A metaphorical device that prevents you from jumping in when you should really stay ...
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