You're listening to the about a subject that is very near and dear to my heart and it's children.

Now, for some of you that might not have kids, I still want you to listen. I think you'll find some things

helpful here because we're going to be talking about boundaries, we're going to be

talking about bonding, and we're going to be talking about monitoring. And if you do have kids, no matter what their age, this

episode is incredibly important.

For some reason, when I was married to a good man who struggled with addiction,

I was incredibly eager and ambitious to learn about how he could get sober, but I, for whatever purpose, I still haven't figured it out couldn't quite handle figuring out ways to help my kids who are living with their dad using drugs and using alcohol and smoking and going

out and not coming back home and lying and us fighting under the same roof, it just felt like too much.

It was like, let me just fix your dad.

Let me figure out how to get him sober.

And then all our problems will go away and will be a happy family and life will be good and he can be present for you and he can start coming to your soccer games and he can play with you after work and coming home on time and he can be sober during weekends.

So I think that's the motivation behind why I put in all that effort into trying to get him sober.

But looking back on that now, now that I'm out of that relationship and I'm remarried and I'm in a very healthy happy environment.

I can see I was mistaken that all that energy that I put towards trying to get my husband better came

from a really unhealthy place for me and also should have been that energy should have been put into my kids.

And you know I've been doing this podcast and building this community for about 10 years now.

And I can tell you I've heard that that's a really common mistake that a lot of us make. Looking back on it, we think, oh my goodness, why did we put all that energy into somebody who doesn't even care or want our energy, who, you know, ultimately their destiny is their own to create.

Whereas we have these youth, we have these dependents, these kids who are genuinely looking up to us to help us raise

them and teach them right and wrong and be their safe spot and you know monitor them and bond with them and yet

they often get overlooked and so if you are in a situation right now where you're in a relationship with a loved one who's struggling with addiction, which I guarantee you probably are because you're there's no other reason to be listening to this podcast or joining our

community then I would suggest listen take an honest look like get real with me get real with yourself and say where's my energy going is it going towards fixing solving loving trying to make better the addiction and the person that's struggling

with addiction or is it going towards yourself if you don't have any kids, which is where all of your energy should be going and all of

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