“What do I do?” the mother asks me. “My son wants to come home for Christmas.”
She sits before me, a friend from the effects of addiction on our families.

It is near-impossible to tell her what to do. I am not a therapist – just one mother with one son. Still, our stories are so similar.
What I do is listen and offer my own story, or as Al-Anon says, my “experience, strength and hope.”

There is always hope. For her and for all the mothers I meet.

She reminds me of the summer when Jacob was early in recovery. Our family vacationed in Rehoboth for years. Sitting on the porch just steps from the ocean, watching happy families walk by in the evening headed for bumper cars or 100 flavors of ice cream, made us happy, too.

Jacob was living in Florida then. He was learning what life would be like without drugs.
We were, too.

When he asked if he could join us, I summoned all I had learned from professionals and trusted parents and said, “Yes, but only if you are sober. If you are not, please do not come.”

“I will be there,” my son said.

As promised, he showed up clear-eyed and clean. Flashes of his humor kept us laughing. The twinkle in his hazel eyes that he seems to save just for me returned.

Later that year, a relapse followed. But for that moment, for those shimmering seven days by the sea, he was ours. He was himself.

The mother listens. She thinks carefully about what to do next.

If her son doesn’t make it home for this holiday, maybe he will for another.
Or for the next one.

Because there is always hope.