Families of Addiction

Support for Parents and Siblings of Addicts


10K
Happy clients to date
20+
 Years of Coaching Expertise
ICF Certified
Guidance by ICF-Certified Expert Coach

Guiding You Through the Storm

Discover a Clear Path

Find Community

Build Resilience

Empower Your Journey

Working with me means gaining access to a wealth of resources, personalized coaching, and a supportive community. Together, we will navigate the challenges of addiction, empowering you to find hope, strength, and a renewed sense of purpose.

Charting a New Course

My journey began in the depths of despair, as I faced the overwhelming challenges of parenting an addicted child. I felt lost and alone, unsure of where to turn for help. It was a time of darkness, but also a time of searching for answers and support.

Through my own journey, I discovered the power of community and the importance of having a support network. I connected with other parents who understood my struggles, and together, we found strength in sharing our experiences and supporting one another.

As I navigated the complexities of addiction, I realized the need for compassionate guidance and expert advice. I sought out resources and coaching that helped me gain clarity and confidence in my role as a parent, empowering me to support my child's recovery while maintaining my own well-being.

This transformation inspired me to become a coach and advocate for other parents facing similar challenges. I wanted to share the knowledge and insights I had gained, to help others find hope and healing on their own journeys.

Today, I am proud to offer the Hopeful Horizons Program, a comprehensive support system for parents of addicts. Through personalized coaching, a wealth of resources, and a supportive community, I am committed to helping you navigate the challenges of addiction with hope and strength.

Discover a clear path

Our Hopeful Horizons Program empowers you to discover a new path amidst the challenges of addiction. Through personalized coaching and a supportive community, you will find the strength to face each day with renewed optimism and resilience.

Start Your Journey

Build Resilience

Building resilience is key to navigating the ups and downs of having an addicted child. Our program equips you with the tools and strategies to strengthen your emotional resilience, helping you to cope more effectively and maintain your well-being.

Find Community

Connecting with others who understand your journey can be incredibly healing. Our supportive community offers a safe space to share experiences, gain insights, and find comfort in knowing you are not alone.

Gain Clarity

Gain clarity and confidence in your role as a parent through compassionate guidance. We help you understand the dynamics of addiction and provide actionable steps to support your child's recovery while protecting your marriage and maintaining your own mental health.

What do people say about us?

Don't just take it from us!
   
Michael Johnson
Working with CompassPoint has been a transformative experience. The support and guidance I received helped me find hope and strength during a very difficult time.
   
Richard Miller
The Hopeful Horizons Program provided me with the tools and community I needed to navigate the challenges of having an addicted child. I am so grateful for the compassionate coaching and support.
   
James Jones
I can't thank CompassPoint enough for the clarity and confidence I've gained. The resources and expert guidance have been invaluable in helping me support my child's recovery.

FAQ

What is the Hopeful Horizons Program?
The Hopeful Horizons Program is a comprehensive support system offering personalized coaching, resources, and a community for parents of addicts.
How can CompassPoint help me?
CompassPoint provides resources, support, and coaching to empower parents of addicts, helping you navigate the challenges of addiction with hope and strength.
What kind of support does CompassPoint offer?
CompassPoint offers personalized coaching, a supportive community, and a wealth of resources to help parents of addicts find hope and healing.

Recent Blog Posts

Latest insights from the Coach

Addiction is a Family Issue: Why Everyone Needs Support

When we think about addiction, we often focus on the person struggling with substance use. We ask: What treatment do they need? How can we get them to stop? When will they finally choose recovery?
These are important questions, but they miss a crucial truth: addiction is never just one person's problem. It's a family issue that affects everyone in its path.

The Ripple Effect of Addiction

Addiction doesn't exist in isolation. Like a stone thrown into water, it creates ripples that spread outward, touching every relationship and every person connected to the individual struggling with substance use.
Family members often experience their own profound pain: the constant worry that keeps you awake at night, the financial strain from repeated crises, the emotional exhaustion of trying to help someone who isn't ready, and the grief of watching someone you love become someone you barely recognize.
Parents blame themselves, asking what they did wrong. Siblings feel neglected or resentful. Spouses struggle between loyalty and self-preservation. Children grow up learning to walk on eggshells, becoming hypervigilant to mood shifts and chaos.

The Toll on Family Wellbeing

The impact on families is real and measurable. Family members of people with addiction experience higher rates of anxiety, depression, and stress-related health problems. They often neglect their own needs, cancel their own plans, and put their own lives on hold.
Many develop unhealthy coping patterns of their own. Some become overly controlling, trying to manage every aspect of their loved one's life. Others enable destructive behaviors, hoping that one more chance will be the turning point. Still others emotionally withdraw, building walls to protect themselves from further pain.
The financial burden can be devastating. Families drain savings accounts for treatment, cover unpaid bills, post bail, or replace stolen items. The emotional cost is even higher: broken trust, damaged relationships, and the loss of family traditions and stability.

Why Family Healing Matters

Here's what many families don't realize: your healing matters just as much as your loved one's recovery. This isn't selfish. It's essential.
When family members get support and begin their own healing journey, several important things happen. They learn to set healthy boundaries that protect their wellbeing while still showing love. They stop enabling behaviors that inadvertently support the addiction. They model what healthy coping and self-care look like. They become emotionally stronger and more resilient, better equipped to support recovery when their loved one is ready.
Perhaps most importantly, they reclaim their own lives. Addiction may be part of your family's story, but it doesn't have to be the only story.

You Can't Control Their Recovery, But You Can Control Your Own Healing

One of the hardest truths for families to accept is this: you cannot force someone into recovery. You cannot love them enough, control them enough, or suffer enough to make them stop using.
What you can do is focus on what you can control, which is your own response, your own boundaries, your own wellbeing, and your own healing journey.
This means learning about addiction as a disease rather than a moral failing. It means finding support from others who understand what you're going through. It means going to therapy, joining support groups, or working with a coach who specializes in families affected by addiction. It means practicing self-compassion instead of self-blame.

Breaking the Cycle

Untreated family trauma doesn't just affect you. It can affect future generations. Children who grow up in homes affected by addiction are at higher risk of developing addiction themselves, not just because of genetics, but because of learned patterns and unhealed trauma.
When you do your own healing work, you're not just helping yourself. You're breaking cycles that may have existed in your family for generations. You're showing your children that it's possible to face hard things, to set boundaries, to ask for help, and to choose health even when it's difficult.

Moving Forward Together

Recovery is possible for people struggling with addiction. And healing is possible for their families, regardless of whether their loved one chooses recovery or not.
If you're part of a family affected by addiction, please hear this: you deserve support too. Your pain is valid. Your needs matter. And reaching out for help isn't giving up on your loved one. It's one of the most powerful things you can do for yourself and for your family.
Addiction may be a family issue, but so is recovery. And so is hope.
If you're struggling as a family member of someone with addiction, you don't have to navigate this alone. Support, guidance, and healing are available. Taking care of yourself isn't selfish—it's necessary.
Loving someone with addiction is one of the most heartbreaking experiences a parent can face. You watch your child struggle, and every instinct tells you to help, to fix, to save them. But addiction doesn't follow the normal rules of parenting, and the strategies that worked when they were young often backfire spectacularly now. Here are the five biggest mistakes well-meaning parents make, and what to do instead.

1. Enabling Under the Guise of Help

This is perhaps the most common and devastating mistake. You pay their rent "just this once" so they won't be homeless. You cover their car insurance because they need transportation to get better. You give them money for food, knowing deep down it might go toward drugs or alcohol.
The painful truth is that addiction thrives when consequences are removed. Every time you rescue your child from the natural consequences of their choices, you're inadvertently teaching them that someone will always be there to catch them. You're also delaying the moment when the pain of addiction becomes greater than the fear of change.
What to do instead: Learn the difference between help and enabling. Help supports recovery and holds your child accountable. Enabling removes consequences and allows the addiction to continue. Offer to pay for treatment directly, drive them to support meetings, or help them research resources, but don't cushion the fall that might finally motivate them to change.

2. Making Their Addiction Your Identity

When your child is struggling with addiction, it's natural for it to consume your thoughts. You research constantly, monitor their behavior, lose sleep, cancel plans, and let your own life shrink around their crisis. You become a detective, a warden, and a constant worrier. Your relationships suffer, your health declines, and you lose sight of who you are beyond "parent of an addict."
This mistake doesn't just harm you. It also sends your child the message that they are the center of the universe, that their choices dictate everyone else's wellbeing, and that they don't need to take responsibility because you're taking it for them.
What to do instead: Maintain your own identity and life. This isn't selfish; it's essential. Attend support groups like Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, see a therapist who specializes in family systems and addiction, nurture your other relationships, and engage in activities that bring you joy. Your child needs to see that life goes on, and they need you to be healthy and strong, not depleted and resentful.

3. Believing You Can Love Them Into Sobriety

If love alone could cure addiction, no one with a devoted family would ever struggle. But addiction is a complex disease involving brain chemistry, behavioral patterns, trauma, and often co-occurring mental health conditions. Your love matters immensely, but it cannot override the powerful grip of addiction.
Many parents exhaust themselves trying to prove through sheer force of affection that their child is worthy, valuable, and loved enough to get better. They give more chances, express more devotion, and sacrifice more of themselves, believing that if they just love hard enough, their child will finally choose recovery.
What to do instead: Recognize that your love is necessary but not sufficient. Your child needs professional help, structured treatment, peer support, and often medication. Love them fiercely, but also set firm boundaries. Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is step back and let professionals intervene. Your role is to be supportive, not to be the cure.

4. Keeping Secrets and Protecting Their Image

Shame thrives in silence, and many families instinctively hide their child's addiction from extended family, friends, and community. You make excuses for their behavior, cover up their absences, and protect their reputation. You do this partly to protect them, but also because addiction carries stigma, and you fear judgment.
This secrecy isolates you exactly when you need support most. It also prevents your child from experiencing the full weight of how their addiction affects others, and it deprives them of a community that might otherwise rally to support their recovery.
What to do instead: You don't need to broadcast every detail, but consider being honest with trusted people in your life. Say "My child is struggling with addiction, and we're navigating this as a family" when appropriate. This opens the door to support, resources, and understanding. It also helps chip away at the stigma that keeps so many people suffering in silence. Your vulnerability might even give someone else permission to seek help.

5. Refusing to Set Boundaries for Fear of Losing Them

This is the mistake that keeps parents trapped in toxic cycles for years. You're terrified that if you say no, set a limit, or enforce a consequence, your child will cut you off, end up on the streets, or worse. So you allow disrespectful behavior, tolerate lying and stealing, let them live in your home while actively using, and accept treatment you would never accept from anyone else.
The irony is that boundaries, when set with love and consistency, often strengthen relationships rather than destroying them. And the lack of boundaries teaches your child that their addiction can continue without real cost.
What to do instead: Set clear, reasonable boundaries and communicate them calmly. These might include "You cannot live here while actively using," "I will not give you money," or "I will not engage with you when you're intoxicated." Most importantly, follow through. Your child may be angry, may threaten, may even temporarily distance themselves. This is excruciatingly painful, but boundaries create the space where change becomes possible. And they protect your own wellbeing, which matters too.

Moving Forward With Love and Limits

None of these mistakes make you a bad parent. They make you human. They come from a place of deep love and desperate hope. But addiction requires a different kind of love than you've given before: one that combines compassion with boundaries, support with accountability, and hope with realism.
Recovery is possible, and many people do find their way back from addiction. Your role isn't to drag them there, but to make it clear that you'll be waiting with open arms when they're ready to walk that path themselves. In the meantime, take care of yourself, seek support, and remember that loving an addicted child doesn't mean sacrificing yourself on the altar of their disease.
You cannot save your child from addiction. But you can love them, set healthy boundaries, take care of yourself, and be ready to support them when they're ready to save themselves. Sometimes, that's the hardest and bravest kind of love there is.

When Love Hurts: Understanding the Difference Between Enabling and Supporting Your Adult Child with Addiction

If you're reading this, you're likely caught in one of the most painful experiences a parent can face: watching your child struggle with addiction. You love them fiercely. You'd do anything to help. But lately, you might be wondering if your help is actually helping at all.
The distinction between enabling and supporting is one of the most difficult concepts for parents to grasp, not because it's complicated, but because it requires us to act in ways that feel deeply unnatural. It asks us to sometimes step back when every instinct screams at us to step in.

What Enabling Actually Means

Enabling doesn't mean you're a bad parent or that you don't love your child enough. It means you're doing things that inadvertently make it easier for your child to continue using substances without facing the natural consequences of their actions.
Enabling removes the discomfort that might otherwise motivate change. It's paying their rent after they spent their paycheck on drugs. It's calling their employer to make excuses when they're too hungover to work. It's believing the same promise to get clean that you've heard twenty times before, without requiring any actual steps toward recovery.
The cruelest irony is that enabling comes from love. You're trying to protect your child from pain, from homelessness, from losing their job. But addiction is cunning, and it will use your love as fuel to keep burning.

What True Support Looks Like

Supporting your child means helping them move toward recovery while allowing them to experience the consequences of their choices. This is where it gets hard, because support often looks nothing like what we imagine "being there" should look like.
Support might mean paying for rehab but not paying off their drug dealer. It means offering to drive them to a twelve-step meeting but not giving them cash "for gas." It means keeping your door open for conversations about treatment while closing it to someone who's actively using in your home.
Support is saying "I love you, and I can't watch you destroy yourself. When you're ready to get help, I'll be here to help you find it." And then holding that boundary even when they rage, manipulate, or break your heart with their pain.

The Practical Differences

Here are some concrete examples:
Enabling: Paying bills they should be responsible for, allowing them to live at home with no rules or expectations, giving them money without accountability, making excuses to their employer or family members, bailing them out of legal consequences, tolerating theft or verbal abuse because "they're sick."
Supporting: Helping them research treatment options, driving them to appointments or meetings, attending family therapy or Al-Anon for yourself, setting clear boundaries about behavior you will and won't accept, allowing natural consequences while remaining emotionally available, taking care of their children while they're in treatment, celebrating their milestones in recovery.

The Boundary Between

Sometimes the line between enabling and supporting runs right through the same action. Letting your child live with you could be either one, depending on the circumstances.
If they're living with you while actively using, contributing nothing, and you're afraid to set rules because they might leave, that's enabling. If they're living with you while working a recovery program, following household rules, and you've agreed on a timeline and expectations, that's support.
The difference often comes down to these questions: Is this helping them move toward recovery, or helping them avoid the consequences of addiction? Am I doing this because it genuinely helps them, or because it reduces my own anxiety and fear? Does this preserve their dignity and encourage responsibility, or does it infantilize them and remove accountability?

Why It's So Hard for Parents

We're biologically wired to protect our children. When your baby cried, you fed them. When your toddler fell, you picked them up. These instincts don't turn off when your child becomes an adult with addiction.
There's also the fear, and it's legitimate: What if they die? What if my refusal to help is the thing that pushes them over the edge? These fears keep many parents trapped in enabling patterns for years.
But here's another fear to consider: What if your helping is the thing that allows them to avoid hitting bottom? What if the soft landing you keep providing is the reason they never find the motivation to get sober?

What You Can Control

You cannot control whether your child gets sober. You cannot love them into recovery. You cannot monitor them closely enough, create enough consequences, or remove enough obstacles to force sobriety.
What you can control is yourself. You can stop participating in the chaos. You can educate yourself about addiction and recovery. You can attend Al-Anon or Nar-Anon meetings for families. You can work with a therapist who specializes in families affected by addiction. You can set boundaries that allow you to maintain your own wellbeing and other relationships.
You can stop making your entire life about managing their addiction.

The Long View

Some parents fear that setting boundaries means giving up on their child or abandoning them. It's exactly the opposite. Enabling is what allows you to look away from the reality of their addiction. Support means loving them enough to stop protecting them from the truth of where their choices are leading.
The most loving thing you can do might be the thing that feels the most unloving in the moment. It's letting them experience the full weight of their decisions while making it clear that your love isn't conditional, but your participation in their active addiction is no longer on the table.
Many parents who finally found the strength to stop enabling report the same thing: it was the hardest thing they've ever done, and it was the turning point. Not because consequences automatically lead to recovery, but because it shifted the entire dynamic. It put the responsibility back where it belonged, with the person whose life was at stake.

You Deserve Support Too

Finally, please hear this: your pain matters too. Your exhaustion, your grief, your anger, your fear—all of it is valid. You're not required to sacrifice your entire life, your marriage, your other children, your health, or your sanity on the altar of your addicted child's disease.
Getting support for yourself isn't selfish. It's necessary. Whether through Al-Anon, therapy, or support groups for parents of addicts, connecting with others who understand this specific hell can be lifesaving.
You didn't cause your child's addiction. You can't control it. And you can't cure it. But you can learn to live your own life while leaving the door open for them to find their way to recovery. That's not abandonment. That's love with boundaries. And sometimes, it's the most powerful form of support you can offer.

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The Crucial Importance of a United Front in Marriage When Addiction Affects Your Child

When a child struggles with addiction, parents face one of the most heartbreaking challenges imaginable. The stress, fear, and helplessness can be overwhelming. In these dark moments, one factor can make the difference between a family that weathers the storm and one that fractures under the pressure: whether parents can maintain a united front.

Why Unity Matters More Than Ever

Addiction is cunning. It doesn't just affect the person using substances—it ripples through every family relationship, often exploiting any cracks in the foundation. When parents aren't aligned in their approach, an addicted child may unconsciously (or sometimes consciously) play one parent against the other, seeking the path of least resistance rather than the path to recovery.
A united front means presenting consistent boundaries, consequences, and messages of love. It means your child can't get permission from one parent after the other said no. It means that whether Mom or Dad answers the phone at 2 AM, the response will be the same.

The Challenges to Unity

Maintaining a united front is easier said than done. Parents often have different perspectives on addiction itself. One parent might see it primarily as a disease requiring compassion and treatment, while the other views it as a series of choices requiring accountability and tough love. The truth is that addiction is complex—both perspectives hold validity—but these differences can create painful divisions.
Common conflicts include disagreements about whether to provide financial support, whether to allow the child to live at home, how to respond to relapses, and when to involve law enforcement or treatment facilities. One parent may want to "rescue" while the other advocates for "tough love." Both approaches stem from love, but without alignment, they can work against each other.

Building Your United Front

Commit to private discussions: Agree that you'll never contradict each other in front of your child. If you disagree, table the decision until you can discuss it privately. Present a unified decision once you've reached consensus.
Educate yourselves together: Attend family therapy sessions, join support groups like Al-Anon or Families Anonymous together, and read about addiction as a team. Shared knowledge creates a common language and understanding.
Identify your non-negotiables: What are the absolute boundaries you both agree on? Perhaps it's no drug use in your home, or no lending money. Start with where you align and build from there.
Find compromise on the gray areas: You won't agree on everything. One parent might be willing to let your child return home under strict conditions while the other wants them to stay elsewhere. Can you find middle ground—perhaps a trial period with clearly defined expectations?
Check in regularly: Schedule weekly conversations about how you're both doing and whether your approach needs adjustment. Addiction is a marathon, not a sprint, and your strategy may need to evolve.
Support each other's pain: Remember that you're both grieving the child you knew and the future you'd imagined. Make space for each other's different coping styles while maintaining your shared boundaries.

When Unity Feels Impossible

Some parents find themselves so divided that maintaining a united front seems unreachable. If this describes your marriage, consider seeking help from a family therapist who specializes in addiction. The goal isn't for one parent to "win"—it's to find a path forward that serves your child's recovery and preserves your marriage.
Sometimes professional guidance can help you see that you're not as far apart as you think. Other times, a therapist can help you establish a framework for making decisions even when you don't fully agree.

The Message Your Unity Sends

When you stand together, you send your child several powerful messages: that the addiction won't destroy your family, that certain boundaries are immovable because they come from both parents, and that you love them enough to stay strong even when it's painful.
Your unity also protects your marriage. Addiction has destroyed countless marriages, not just because of the stress it creates, but because it drives wedges between partners. By prioritizing your partnership and maintaining your united front, you're not just helping your child—you're ensuring that your marriage survives this trial.

Moving Forward Together

No parent is perfect, and no united front is seamless. You'll have moments when one of you weakens, when exhaustion wins, when you slip back into old patterns. What matters is that you keep returning to each other, keep recommitting to your shared approach, and keep remembering that you're on the same team.
Your child's addiction didn't happen because you failed as parents. But your united response might be exactly what helps them find their way to recovery. Stand together, love fiercely, maintain your boundaries, and remember that you don't have to face this alone—you have each other.
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