From Fixing to Empowering Adult Children: Letting Go, Self-Discovery, and Soul Recovery

In this episode I speak to the intricate and emotional world of parenting adult children, especially those navigating their own battles with mental health and addiction. It's a tender topic, one that resonates deeply with my personal journey - as a mother watching her sons face life's harsh trials and the necessity of letting go for the benefit of everyone involved.  In our time together, I'll share with you the pains and joys of releasing our children into the world, of seeing them not just as our 'kids' but as the adults they are growing into. I'll speak about the difficult path to detachment, the role our own healing plays not just for personal peace but for empowering those we love, and the societal perspectives that have shifted dramatically in how we envision independence for the new generation. I will explore the balance between caring and controlling, between influencing and accepting, and ultimately, how every step we take in our Soul Recovery can free us from suffering and lead us towards a life filled with happiness and health.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:47

For this episode. I'm talking about our relationship with our adult kids, and this could be kids who have mental health issues, who have addiction issues, or just adult kids that were having trouble letting go. It can be really painful to watch your adult children struggle, and it's even harder today than it ever was in terms of how much money it costs and the cost of housing and everything that goes with being an adult now, and so it can be harder to let those kids go. But part of Soul Recovery is learning how to change the way that we see it, to change our perception, and to start to turn the attention to ourselves and realize that we can be part of the situation that is keeping them from really excelling in their adulthood, even if excelling means that it's painful and difficult. It's their journey and we're learning how to let them go. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:50

Welcome to the Recovery your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recovery your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and Soul Recovery to help others transform their lives as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our interchange and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome back to Recovery your Soul. I'm Reverend Rachel and I thank you for coming and spending your time with me today. I know that your time is valuable and the fact that you're here listening to this maybe you're on a walk or driving or doing some chores or just taking care of yourself by sitting and listening I appreciate it. I know that this relationship is really, really precious actually, and I see you out there, and I think that's the part that's so amazing and cool about this community really is when we do the support group once a month and we have 40 or 50 faces on the Zoom and they're from all over the world actually and we get to connect and through the Facebook page, we're connecting and sharing with each other a thousand people. We're really here to be in community and so thank you for being part of this community. I really, really am grateful that you're here.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:32

One of the things that you've connected with me many of you is learning how to be present with your adult kids, and I think about this all the time, because I'm still in the process of learning how to be healthy and not codependent and not enabling of my adult sons, alex and Bodie, who are 27 and 25 years old and who are still working on their own addiction issues and still recovering from the dysfunction of being raised in an alcoholic home, just because I'm six years sober and have been doing my sole recovery work really diligently for the last five years. That was after that they had really had all of their childhood with me, and so there's a lot to unpack as a family. And this work that we're doing now really can go back and change the past. It can heal the past, but I'm not responsible to heal Everyone's past. I'm responsible to heal mine, and from that place is where the sole recovery power comes, that we're empowering ourselves to do our own work and through that we're handing it over.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:43

And I'm thinking a lot about this because somehow I had this vision that came to me around how things have changed so much over the last 50 years right, 50 or 60 years. I'm actually in this whole thing about how the world has changed so much just in 100 years. I'm currently in a book group and we're reading a book that's around the 1930s and you think that's a long time ago and the truth is the 1920s and 1930s were not that long ago. 100 years ago was not that long ago and it has changed drastically, radically, incredibly, since then. I think going to Indonesia and seeing this more simplified way of life where there's no fanciness that we have in our homes, that we just expect big kitchens and bathrooms and TVs and showers and toilets that you sit on and flush and just things that we take for granted, that you look and you think that's closer to potentially what it was like 100 years ago. We've just so changed. But you know what? Our minds are trying to catch up and sometimes they catch up in a way that is leaning out of healthiness and into this other place of trying to control or fix or make it be a certain way.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:08

I was thinking about this concept that was around, let's say, the 50s or the 60s, and that I can't imagine that adult children, at the age that my kids are, 25 and 27, would go back to their home of origin and be treated like quote unquote kids in the same way that I have done for my kids. I think that there was much more emphasis back in those days of people pulling their bootstraps up and going and making their own way and becoming young men and women and making lives for themselves. And I'm not saying that I want to go back to the past and there should be the old days or any of that. I'm just saying that it's interesting to see that we've had this real shift from this expectation that young adults fly, that they become their own. You know why? Because people didn't have anything to give them. It's not like you could even have someone be continuing to live off of you, because there just wasn't that much to live off of. And generally, if families stayed together, they stayed together and worked together. They had a family business together. You were on the farm, you became a working person, you handed down the business and you became a shoemaker, like the other person was a shoemaker or you were on the store. That always been the family store.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:40

But as we've moved into more and more wealth and more and more free time and more and more technology, we're actually stunting the release and the letting go of our children. And recently I had a Facebook post that came to me that was a reel from Oprah Winfrey's show and I don't know who the person was that she was interviewing. But she was saying that really we want as parents, we want our jobs to become that we're irrelevant, and I thought that was so fascinating and I reposted that on my story because it breaks your heart to think that maybe that you're irrelevant to your children, but what we want them to become is self-supporting, self-loving, well-balanced, emotionally balanced adults that can go and be out into the world. But that isn't easy because we had this whole shift in, specifically, I think, the last 30 or 40 years where life got more complicated and it did get more complicated. If you're ready for soul recovery, as a spiritual coach I can support your healing to help make real changes that will bring you a life of peace, happiness, connection and abundance. You can also work in smaller groups by taking a deep dive in a Zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Find others on the Soul Recovery Path, once a month for the free Zoom support group or daily on the private Facebook page. Visit the website recoveryyoursoulnet to book coaching sessions with me or find all the information you need about soul recovery dates that are coming up and how to register for those groups and workshops To support the podcast and the community. Check the links in the show notes to make a small monthly donation or a one-time donation of your choice. That will make a huge impact to support this community and the Soul Recovery mission. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 9:54

I also think about. I was listening to a Ram Dass episode recently, and this is a lecture that he gave, I believe, in the 70s, so like a long time ago, right 50 years ago he was saying that when he was a kid since he was born in the 20s, I think, when he or the 30s I'm not going to get my dates right. Anyway, he was born a long time before. He said. When he was a kid, the school's issues were running in the halls and people talking at a turn, and now the school's issues were drugs and violence. And now the school's issues, now, in 2024, are profoundly more serious than ever, ever, ever before. So it only makes sense that we're moving into this place where we're trying to protect these children, we're trying to protect our young. That's what we do as parents.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:55

And yet I'm looking at my own relationship with my boys and how I interacted with them in my dysfunction of being an alcoholic first and foremost, and then next how I tried to save them from their pain and suffering when I felt like things were really unmanageable and out of control and I didn't like the way that it was going. I didn't like the way that Rich and I had differing views on how we should parent and what discipline looked like, what boundaries looked like, what rules looked like, and we had a lot of upset around that. And so I was swinging that pendulum and triangulating and trying to accommodate, for my own perception, the way that I saw it. And then, as the wheels really came off the Harrison bus and things started to really go bad, with the kids with school and Alex having legal issues and school issues, and both of them were dabbling, or more than dabbling, in drugs and alcohol, and we ended up sending Alex to rehab at 16 years old. I can see now how desperately I was trying to keep them from falling, because that's my job as a parent is to keep them from falling.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:19

And yet I learned that and it took me then that next step to realize that I got so scared in that time period that this dream that I had about what it was going to be like to have a family. What I wanted my sons to become really just got messy, and I clutched and I clawed and I continued to enable and I people pleased and I manipulated and I did everything that I could to try to keep them from their pain. And their pain was already theirs, it had already been part of their upbringing, which is what happens to all of us. None of us escape our childhood without something, and so now I look at this work that I've been doing in my soul recovery experience for the last six years since I got sober, but really the last five years because that's when I really started going to Elinan meetings. That's when I really dug into my own recovery and had worked the steps and was past the part of just clawing my way through sobriety and white knuckling every day and was past the part where my brain was foggy and moved into the job.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:47

Most of you probably know this story, since you've listened to my stories. I was an office manager at a home care agency. I got sober, my sponsor told me I had to stay at that job for one more year and clean up my side of the street, and I did that in that year, but it also was still not great for me or for them for me to be there either. And so after a year almost exactly to the year I was swooped up by a headhunter and given a job that was healthy, mundane, peaceful and easy. Thank you, spirit, for that job.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 14:30

And I just spent six months really intensely starting what maybe some of you are doing right now, which is deeply engrossing myself in podcasts and spiritual books and recovery, and one of those things I've suggested this a couple of times is I think it's still on Spotify there was a playlist that was old Elinan speaker meetings, ancient from tapes that had been put onto digital, and I started to just decompress from all of this tight ball of interwoven emeshment that I had specifically with my kids. That was the beginning of this process of truly understanding and letting go and beginning the detachment process, and it wasn't long after that I started to realize that the spiritual path was going to be the answer for me, that the more that I leaned into my spiritual journey, the more that I could release this almost obsession with having my fingers stuck into my children's lives and trying to fix what was so uncomfortable and so unhappy and it still was. That was the interesting thing that Bodhi had gone off to college and he was doing his own thing and was still having some issues that were of concern. But Alex still lived here around us and worked for Rich and they had fights and we had to kick him out of the place that he was living and he was homeless and I was pained to have my child sleeping in his car that I personally had to be the one that helped make that choice for him, to make that transition, since he wasn't paying his rent, since he wasn't working, since he was choosing drugs and alcohol instead. But this detachment, this realization that I needed to let my kids fly just baby steps was starting to happen.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:44

Now I bring up this whole concept around what it used to be like, that parents didn't baby their kids forever. And again, the times are totally different. But ever since I've been thinking about this, I've been realizing it's me that has decided that they can't handle it, that somehow that I chose that they can't handle it, that I need to be the one to save them, to keep them from harm, to keep them from difficult times. Now the other thing that I realized is I had kids in my late 20s and I thought I was so mature then, as most of us do, and we're in our 20s. You think you've already lived a lot of life and the truth is, you know, 20 some years is a lot of years, but compared to what I know now, another 20 some years later, I realized that all of my beliefs of what I thought that my family was going to be like, that I thought my children were going to be like, that I believed was going to happen, were based on very limited information in life of what I had had so far. And even though I'd had heartache, even though I'd had hardship, some part of me believed that I personally was going to be the lucky one that never had to go through that again and I would just meet Prince Charming, get married, have kids and have the life of my dreams.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 18:16

Interestingly enough, now that I've done the sole recovery work and I have truly healed and let go of the past, I've released so much resentment, so much pain, so much grievance, so much blame, so much shame. I am looking at my past and I'm seeing what I think I always wanted. I'm not seeing the hardship in the way that I used to feel it, deeply feel it I'm seeing more of these human beings who came together and I'm remembering more of the beautiful times together, really connecting to our loving family that we had. Remembering the kids when they were little and getting them out of the bathtub and scooping them up in their towels on the couch and reading them stories while they're all wrapped up in wet, wet hair, and getting them ready for bed and watching them play and fight, sometimes even. Those are the memories that are really starting to stick and it's interesting because those memories are sticking.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:27

But I'm also releasing them to the men that they are becoming and, as you know, since you listened to the podcast, that doesn't mean that those lives that they're living are what I had anticipated or hoped that they would be, and I've said recently that they're both doing better than they've probably ever done in their adult lives and yet it isn't perfect. It's far from perfect, as a matter of fact, and when I talk to them and they move past that surface level of you know I've got everything because they don't want me to worry, and when they move into what might be really going on with them, which includes them sharing with me, they're continuing battle with what level of use are they going to have in drugs and alcohol? And, knowing that they would like to do better, they'd like it to look different. But it's hard to quit. It's hard to be a young adult and not continue to participate in this way. That sometimes it's unmanageable, that sometimes it's not the fact that they can share these things with me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:38

I'm honored, really, because I want them to be able to share whatever they can with me and, at the same time, this work that I've been doing, that I hope that you're able to glean and hear and access through these podcasts, and especially those of you who are working with me that were deeply working the nine steps man, am I impressed with the work that you guys are doing. My heart is full with the amount of incredible, incredible transformations that have happened with those of you who I've been working with. I mean, I'm honored to be part of this process with you, but I find that this part of me can now be more in the sense of what I would have imagined life was like in those earlier times, when your adult men show up and they're sharing their life with you and not that it's a kid on the other line in a FaceTime call or a phone call that I'm feeling like I need to protect or fix. And again, the difference between me and Al-Anon or any other programs is this is just me. And again, take what I say that you like and please leave the rest. And I am not speaking for any particular organization at all. I'm just me, gathering all the stuff up from all the places and figuring out what works for me.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:12

I think it's so important to be able to have a voice, but that voice that I share with them is not controlling anymore. It doesn't have an outcome with an attachment that says if they don't pick this thing, then I'm not going to be okay. An example is Alex called the other day and we hadn't actually talked for quite a while. Alex and Bodie and Alex's girlfriend had come in December, so that was really the last time we really spent time together. And then we've had a couple phone calls, but we hadn't actually had a deep conversation for a couple months, right.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 22:53

So this is the progress that I'm making as well, which is I'm letting him have his experience and we're touching in and having some connections, but I'm not making sure that he's okay for me to be okay and I miss him. So part of me misses talking to him, but I'm really trying to do this practice of letting him be exactly where he is. So we happened to call the other day and we had a FaceTime and we had a long, probably almost hour conversation where he really just shared his heart and I watched myself in a new way that was using the tools that I have been learning and showing to you as well about almost like watching him have these experiences, watching the movie and being really invested in the movie, really caring deeply about what he's saying. But I witnessed that, instead of that knot that used to get in my stomach, that was like ooh, he's going through this situation, or he's battling his addiction situation like this, or he needs to make these changes in his life for this those judgments that I think that if he did those things he would be better. I was much more able to let him share and share and share and share and then comment back from a place of love, from a place of oh. I'm really glad that you can see that. That sounds like that would be a really positive thing to do. What are your plans around that? Do you have any action steps set up? Not from a place of control, like, oh, I got to make sure that I make him do that or I help him do that, but really as if I was talking to a friend, as if I was talking to my best friend, what would I say to her? So that little switch of seeing them as men.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 24:57

The other situation that just happened is Bodhi, as you know, last year broke his collarbone in a one-wheel event and had to have surgery. And it's a year later and he just had the metal plate taken out actually this morning and he lives in a van. So he was talking about how didn't know how he was going to be able to recover as well with this surgery, to keep it all clean and keep it all together in the van. And at first he said I was thinking I would fly home and spend a long weekend at the house and just be with you guys. And then I said you know what? Your dad wanted to go to Santa Cruz in December and when we got sick, that it got canceled. So we've got some points so we can fly out and get a hotel and he can do the trip that he wanted to do and take care of you.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:52

And it's interesting because in all of that, I feel like what's happening in my sole recovery is I'm working on being my best self, and my best self has solutions right. So it's not about not having ideas or having solutions. I didn't tell him that's what we're going to do. I said what do you think about that? And his answer was oh, that would be great. I would love for dad to come. And then I do the part that I'm good at, which is organizing, getting things figured out, coordinating. But it's from this place of health, it's from this place of being able to be present for people in a time of need, but not being responsible for. So there is some part of me that is curious about what's going on with him and with Rich and whether he's okay and what they're doing. Mostly because I'm curious, which is very different than thinking that it's my job to fix or to make sure that they do whatever, and to let this go to truly be in the place where it touches me, and I notice it, and I notice the part of me that used to want to continue to treat them like children, including my husband, if you listen to the mothering episode. We can sometimes continue to mother our partners. When you let go of the mothering and you start to move into a friend, peer respect role, you're allowing them to pick up the ball. You're allowing them to be responsible for and do for themselves.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 27:34

I recently went to a masterclass for a woman, christine Lange, that will be coming up in an interview on the bonus episodes. I'm so loving the bonus episodes interviews that I've been doing, which now every other week I'm going to be offering an episode. That is around one of these amazing interviews, and she has a lot of expertise around energy and in this masterclass she was really talking about how we need to protect our own energy and how we can really be conscientious of not taking on other people's energy. And she said, just like in soul recovery, the importance of people being responsible for their own healing and their own energy and that if we're constantly trying to clear the way for them energetically which is what I was doing, not only with my desire to have everything be calm and quiet and peaceful, but also with my actions. She also said the same thing that I've heard over and over in so many places and that I share with you that we're robbing them of their ability to do for themselves, we're taking it from them and that we need to keep the attention on ourselves, turn the attention to ourselves.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 28:59

And so, as I look at this space of feeling so much healthier with my adult sons and having concern and sometimes having heartache and sometimes a little bit of worry but not the worry that used to keep me up at night, not the worry that clenched me in a way that I couldn't breathe or function or think of any other thing I don't really think of them as much as I used to, and when I do, it's more of a. My heart feels warm and I feel grateful that they can have this experience of whatever it is for them. And it also means that it's going to be hard. And so Bodhi's going to be with his dad for a couple of days and they're going to have whatever weekend they're going to have. And you know what he's going to choose, how he's going to do his recovery, and he's going to choose whether his recovery includes partying or not partying.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 29:58

I am not responsible for any of that, and Alex is on this path where he's really healing deeply from the woundedness and the pain that he had in growing up and that woundedness, that pain that we all have in our souls is generally why we use some sort of substance or behavior as an addictive way to try to keep us from our pain. So the more that I take care of myself and show up in a healthy manner with them, the more I'm giving them permission to take care of themselves and heal themselves and I'm treating them like adults. I'm, to the best of my ability, not seeing them as my quote unquote kids that need my attention, that need me to mother them. I'm seeing them as young men who are out in the world doing what it takes, and sometimes that means it's going to be hard. You know, it's been baby steps and sometimes I work with people and they say how did you get here? I want to be where you're at. Well, I've been working this really hard for five years and I'm better today than I was a year ago. I'm better today than I probably was six months ago.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 31:20

So it's really about just honoring yourself and having grace and understanding that every day is a new day. Every day, the choices that you make of what you think and feel and believe, and the words that come out of your mouth and the thoughts that are in your head create the reality in which you live and the way that you choose to see it. Every day. If you make a choice and a decision to move into a healthier direction, to make a healthier choice, to choose spiritual journey, to use these tools and principles to just move up the ladder one step, you are being successful. You are doing it. You are working on healing yourself and, through healing yourself, you indeed are going to affect your family in positive ways, your friends, your family, your coworkers, the world. If you have kids and they are still your quote unquote kids, I encourage you to start to do this work for yourself, because it's around freeing yourself from your suffering and being able to truly step into a spiritual path that will provide you a happy and healthy life. Again, I always offer that if you need assistance or want to work the steps with me, or to even just talk about this in a single session, I'm here. Go to the website recoveryoursoulnet. Check it out. I would love, love, love, to support you on your Soul Recovery journey. Until next time.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 32:55

Namaste, thank you for listening to the Recovery, your Soul podcast. If you loved what you heard here. Every Friday we have a bonus episode and you can access this by becoming a subscriber through Apple Podcasts for only $3.99 a month, or become a Patreon member On this platform. You can choose $5, $15, or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with On both of these subscriber platforms is an entire catalog of back episodes intended to inspire and support you on your Soul Recovery journey. I really want to invite everybody to attend the free once a month, every first Monday of the month support group.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 33:39

This is on Zoom. Everyone is welcome to attend and by giving a like or a review and sharing this with your friends and family really helps us to share the Soul Recovery message with even more people. We are on social media. We are on all the platforms. I am on TikTok. You can listen to guided meditations by Rev Rachel Harrison on Insight Timer. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for being part of the community. To find out more about Soul Recovery and everything that's being offered, visit the website wwwrecoveryoursoulnet. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.