[MAUREEN TOWNS]
And so, I said to her, “My God, Allie, you look like you’re hurting.”
[VERONICA]
Beautiful.
[MAUREEN]
Like, “This must be so hard for you, and I’m so sorry to see you hurting. And I love you and I know you’re going to get this figured out and you’re having a hard time tonight. Let’s have a cuddle.” And so I just crawled into bed with her and gave her a cuddle. And my God, it changed everything. She felt seen, she felt heard, she felt held. She felt —
[VERONICA]
Accepted.

Hey girl, imagine a life where you feel supported, connected and understood. I get it. Being a mom is hard, especially when you’re spinning so many plates. We exhaust ourselves trying to create the perfect life for our family. You deserve to enjoy your family without the stress perfectionism brings. On this podcast, I provide practical and relatable life experiences. I teach women quick and easy to use strategies to help them reclaim their identity. Re-ignite their marriage and enjoy their children. If you’re ready to be challenged, then pull up a chair, grab a pen and paper because it’s about to go down. I’m Veronica Cisneros, a licensed marriage and family therapist and this is the Empowered and Unapologetic podcast.

Welcome to Empowered and Unapologetic. I’m your host, Veronica Cisneros. Today’s guest is a relationship mentor with over 25 years of nursing experience in both public and private health care across Canada. After experiencing mental illness and addiction with her own children, she founded Maureen Towns Consulting to help families struggling to care for their own loved ones. Her work with parents inspires them to rediscover themselves within chaotic and challenging situations. She is the host of the Broken Open Podcast and the author of Broken Open: A Mother’s Journey to Survive Her Children’s Addiction and Mental Illness. So please help me by welcoming Maureen Towns. Hey Maureen.
[MAUREEN]
Hey, thanks so much for the intro and having me on.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. I’m super excited to have you on. So a couple things that, when I was doing my research, like doing all of the backend stuff, couple of things that came up is holy Molly, has this woman gone through so much and her family. And what I loved about your story was you weren’t holding anything back. Like a lot of times when I work, I don’t know if you know, I’m a therapist.
[MAUREEN]
Yes.
[MAUREEN]
A lot of times when I’m, I’m working with families, they tend to go to this place of, “Well, this is just a problem. We just got to get rid of it and be done with it. It’s causing me a great amount of shame in our family. Like I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with my daughter, but like fix her. “And I’ll be here in the waiting room, or I’m going to go get my Starbucks. And it’s like, “Oh, hell no. Hell no, ah-ah. Nope. That’s not the way this is going to go down. Come into the office, bring your ass in here because we’re all going to be best friends at the end of this. You’re going to love me and hate me at the same time. Maybe not best friends, but we’re definitely going to be at a whole another level.”
[MAUREEN]
Yes.
[VERONICA]
What I loved about you was, I watched your interview with your daughter, Allie, and I also listened to your podcast episode with her and it’s like, “Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. If parents, I actually shared it on my Facebook group is yes, of course, if parents could listen to this and take a step back from how they want to be perceived as a mom and just really get into it and listen and connect, the value they would get from it. Because it’s not only our daughter’s struggling, it’s not only our son’s struggling, our families’ struggling. We got to be open and honest about it. And I’m like going on, like, because I think you’re a complete bad-ass —
[MAUREEN]
No, no, it’s good.
[VERONICA]
But I’m just [crosstalk] I do, I do. I’m telling you like a big fan of, you don’t even know me, but like, it’s just like, holy, holy crap. So can you, before I get into all of it, can you share with us your story. And I want to highlight you imagine the perfect life for your child, but mental illness had other plans. So can you start by telling us what all that means and what’s your backdrop.
[MAUREEN]
Yes. So thank you for the compliments about my discussion with Allie. I have to be honest with you about that though. I certainly didn’t start out that way. If you would had an interview with us seven years ago, it would have been a different story. I spent a lot of time and energy presenting to professionals, just like you and trying to appear very, very sane and almost justifying and rationalizing where I was, because I was terrified, honestly. I mean, the book’s called Broken Open for a reason. I broke open to this way of being, I mean, I had to learn the hard way that the façade of having it all together and the effort that I was putting into trying to manage, not only what was going on, but others’ perceptions of what was going on in my home was just, it wasn’t working.

I had to let it go. I had to try something different and that’s the story of Broken Open. It’s the story of me open on the backdrop of my kids’ mental health and addictions issues. So going into, I would say the issues with my kids, I mean, I was a doer, like I’m a doer. I like to stay busy, I like to manage things. I identify strongly as a strong problem-solving, fun —
[VERONICA]
Yes, yes, all round.
[MAUREEN]
You know, I get stuff done, I get stuff done and that’s what I’m about. And I always managed, like I managed the family. And so that worked really well until it didn’t work. And so when it started not working and signs that it wasn’t working was when my second son of four kids, all in about a six year period, so they’re all pretty close together, and my second son, when he was 18, it was becoming undeniable that this kid was changing and that he was not thriving. He was going downhill quite quickly in his last year of high school and it became apparent the year after he finished high school. So he finished high school in June and by September, October, it was pretty apparent that he wasn’t doing okay. I probably wouldn’t have said it that way. I would have said he was a pain. I would have said he was disruptive, I would have said he was unmotivated, lazy and that’s not the way he used to be. And so we needed to do something. And so we ended up booting him out of the house, actually like you know, some, he just needs some experience in the real world and how hard it is, and then he’ll come back and straighten up.

Because, you know, we thought we tried everything and then it became apparent that he had a substance use issue. I couldn’t say addiction, substance use problem, maybe he’s addicted to lying. Maybe that’s what it is. I can’t say drug addict. Anyway, so we did an intervention. We sent him off to drug treatment, which was a gong show. We didn’t do any work on ourselves really, then he came home from drug treatment relapsed, and then we started the cycle of him in and out of our home and us feeling defeated, hopeless, kind of crazy, devastated, fearful. And then my oldest son had a psychotic break and my youngest child started self-harming and it was all kind of happening at once. You know, we would, I was prescribing it the other day to someone.

Like, I used to be an emergency room nurse and there were times when I’d be getting ready for bed at 11:00 PM and I’d feel like I’m being pulled back into the emergency department, dealing with a crisis in our home. You know, my son’s back on the porch crying, saying, “I can’t do this anymore. I need your help.” My daughter’s cutting her self in her room and it’s serious. My other son’s having a suicide attempt or you know, using again, even though he has a risk of psychosis and never returning to a normal baseline, like it was just —
[VERONICA]
Nonstop.
[MAUREEN]
It was nonstop. And so I just got more and more frantic and fatigued and scared and would lay awake at night, tried to go over like, “Okay, so if I, okay, so this is what’s going on.” And my head would go to, “Why is this happening? What did I do? Like, how did we screw this up so badly?” Like, you know they said, what happened here?
[VERONICA]
This can’t be us.
[MAUREEN]
This can’t be happening. And what are we going to do about it? Maybe if I just come at it from this angle or try it from this way, then this, then this happened knowing him, and then I’ll go and then we’ll do that and then this’ll happen. Like it was just a hamster wheel of stress, I would say. And so this went on for quite a while and we would take one step forward, three steps back, two steps forward, three steps back. A couple steps forward, we’d have a reprieve, “Ah,” and then bang something else would happen. So it just, it was chaotic for years.
[MAUREEN]
And so the story is the story of recovery for me in the way that I parented and learning how to look after myself and learning how to separate, like make the distinction between, “What’s me and what’s them? What can I manage? What can’t I manage? How do I rebuild a broken relationship with my kids after so many years of chaos? How do I, what does mothering even look like in the context of this kind of mental health and addictions? How do I regain my sense of freedom that I’m so angry that I feel like I’ve lost? How do I regain my sense of self when I feel like I’ve become someone I don’t even recognize anymore, I’ve become someone that’s behaving in ways that aren’t really aligned with my values. I’m getting angry and sarcastic?”

Well, yes, I just felt like I was losing myself ultimately, because I was and so learning how to be different is what the book’s about. And yes, I pulled together bits of my own experience, bits of leadership development training that I’ve done and then add some work in the recovery world in 12 steps, and I’ve pulled it all together into, “This is what I’ve learned. This is what I wish I’d known. Hopefully you can prevent some of the missteps that I took, if this is your story, if you identify with it.” And yes, that’s what the book is. So that’s my story.
[VERONICA]
This book came at a really good time. Right now, our office is getting so many calls on self-harm, addiction and it’s attempted suicides, suicidal kids 13, 14 years old, you know, “My daughter attempted suicide yesterday or my daughter, I found all these marks on her. I don’t know what to do.” Nobody prepares us for that. Nobody prepares us for this. And I think with motherhood already, there’s already this level of expectation to be this PTA status mom, and you have to look this way and you have to be this way. And you know, if your kids, if there’s something wrong, if they’re jumping on the couches, that’s obviously your parenting and it totally sucks as a mom.
[MAUREEN]
Not enough sports
[VERONICA]
Not enough sports. Like, I mean, we could go on and on. It’s totally your fault. You suck as a mom if your kids, you know are eating unhealthy, like same thing, like it’s your fault your kid’s gained weight, or it’s your fault your kid isn’t performing at their best. And so we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as parents to do everything, which means going back to what you were saying, having the answers for everything, having the answers for things that we’ve never experienced, we were never prepared for. And one thing I find too, when parents come in with their kids who are suffering from addiction, who are suffering from self-harm behavior, it’s like, “Fix this problem, fix this problem. Nobody in the family can know about it.”
[MAUREEN]
A lot of secrecy.
[VERONICA]
You know, a whole hell of a lot of secrecy. “Nobody can know about it. We don’t know what to do. Fix her.” And that’s where I believe we get it all wrong. And the only reason I know this is because of the training that I’ve had. Had I not had the training, I would be in line with them, fix the problem, make them stop. And I sit with my clients and I’ll tell them, “I can understand. I can understand right now it’s like, what the hell is happening? This can’t be us. This can’t be us. You know, how did I miss it? How did I not catch it? Why?”
[MAUREEN]
I did all the things. [crosstalk].
[VERONICA]
Bingo. “I checked all the boxes. How is it that my daughter’s cutting in the other room and now I lie awake at two o’clock in the morning wondering if I should check on her again to see if she’s breathing or if she’s hung herself in the room?”
[MAUREEN]
Yes. She could have hit an artery and bleed out. Like I’m going to find a blood bath in there in the morning. Like, I was so scared. She was, every time she’d cut, she’d get deeper and deeper and I was really terrified that she was going to inadvertently, like I, even, when I finally got to the point where I knew that she didn’t want to die. This was a coping mechanism for her and, “Oh my God, she’s going to hit an artery and die. This is not okay.” And I did all the things, like there was no abuse in our home. There was no, nobody got raped. There was no molestation from the neighbor. There was no, like, why is this happening? Where’s the trauma? And so every time I saw something that linked addictions and mental health to trauma, I got quite defensive and quite upset about it because I mean, we’d really worked hard to create a home that was loving and accepting and intelligent people and there was opportunities and there was money and we we did all the things. And so what was, you know I was home with the kids most of the time when they were younger, one of us was there. And how did we end up here? I mean, I remember jokingly saying to my ex-husband, you know, “Stupid people raise good kids. What’s our deal. Like why isn’t this working?” I agree with you like, if, they’re the problem, so when we first sent Ben off to drug treatment which I said was a gong show, which is a disaster —
[VERONICA]
I believe you. I hate to say it, but I’m going to tell you right now, I believe it and we’re going to get into that too.
[MAUREEN]
We chose a bad treatment center, but anyways, that aside, you know, it’s worth reading about, it’s kind of funny. It’s kind of funny now, but I thought if he comes home, just fix them, just send my kid back. And what I wanted was somebody who could function, like send my kid back functional, send my kid back so that he’ll get an education and, or a job, I don’t even care which, and learn how to support himself and launch effectively. Like, I don’t care. I don’t have dreams of being a lawyer. I’m not fixated on anything like that. I just need a kid who knows who can look after himself someday.
[VERONICA]
Yes, pretty please. Pretty please,
[MAUREEN]
Please. Yes, because that’s not where we’re heading and that’s what was terrifying. I’m going to have this kid on my sofa, draining my bank account, exhausting me, wreaking havoc in my home until he’s 60.
[VERONICA]
Yes. So how do you get out of that? How does a parent get out of that? Because you’re spot on with coming to the therapist and saying, presenting as well as you can so you look sane because there is that component where you’re like, “I need you to know that I’m not the problem. I don’t know where the hell this came from and I’m on board with whatever you’re going to tell me to do and I’m going to be active in this therapeutic process.” And then you have therapists, I’m going to call them out. You have a therapist that can’t stick out of their ass, that goes straight to the book versus, “Wait a minute, mom, dad, how are you guys doing?”
[MAUREEN]
Oh my God, I would have loved that question. I ached for that question.
[VERONICA]
How are you? This isn’t your fault. This isn’t your fault.
[MAUREEN]
I’m so grateful to hear that you say those kinds of things to parents. I wanted that so badly because really what I was defending against had nothing to do with a therapist. It had to do with me, my own fear that maybe it really was me. Maybe I really had screwed this up and that maybe there really was something that I should have and could have done differently. And so I was worried about someone else confirming my worst fears, which is that it’s me. And so I wanted so badly some validation that I was a good mom, and then I was working really hard. And then I had an atypical kid and that normal parenting techniques, like just being consistent and having consequences. Of course didn’t work with these kids. These aren’t kids who respond to that and I want, and so the crazier I felt the more I worked at trying to appear sane. And every time I was called into the office I felt a little traumatized, I have to say, because I have to give the history, the insane history of what was going on in our, you know, have there been any stresses or changes in your home? Are you kidding me? Which day do you want to talk about it? So every time I had to recount that stuff, I was embarrassed, I was ashamed, I was watching the therapist acutely for —
[VERONICA]
Any signs.
[MAUREEN]
The confusion, the look of overwhelm, like all of it, I was dialed right into. And so it took something out of me emotionally, every time I did it and I dreaded it, like I dreaded it. I dreaded a trip to the emergency department for going over it one more time. I dreaded every intern that we had to face because I had to tell the story again. And you know, the lack of consistency, I mean, we have a great healthcare system in Canada, but it’s got some problems and one of the problems is consistency because it’s a lot of patchwork stuff. And so every time we went in, we’d have someone new and away we’d go again and, oh my gosh, it was a lot. It was a lot. And so how did I get out of that? I think that it was going to a program, well, first of all, ultimately we took our kids to a recovery program in which family participation was mandatory. So if you weren’t willing, that was —
[VERONICA]
That’s a good one. That’s important.
[MAUREEN]
So I’ll do anything. I’ll do anything at this point. You want me to cook a Turkey? I’ll cook a Turkey. You want me to clean the toilets? I got it. You know, you want me to show up twice a week for meetings? You got it. And having to do that, go to family treatment and then having to meet and spend time with other parents who have been through the same thing and come out the other side, you’re like, “Oh,” you start to develop like, “Okay, okay, okay. Okay. I know. Okay, I get it. This isn’t working.” And you’ve got someone calling you on your crap, because I had a great victim story. Like I was good at, “Oh, let me list my list of hardships for you because what I want you to do is say, holy, Maureen, you’ve been through a lot. Wow, you’re doing a remarkable.” That’s what I wanted. So I would list my hardships and I would get called on that perspective a little bit. And I’d think, oh, it would get point it would be pointed out to me that there was options in my thinking. There was another way of being that perhaps living with me wasn’t very easy. And it wasn’t, and that was hard to look at.

It was hard to look at how, you know, I’d worked so hard to be strong and it was being perceived as not feeling and terrifying. I worked so hard at problem-solving and it was perceived as controlling and intrusive. I worked so hard at holding it all together and people just, and I was somewhat unpredictable. I was erratic because I would try things from this angle and this angle, and some days I’d have the energy for it and some days I’d be exhausted. And it got to the point where, man, I must have been weird to live with because you never knew what you were going to get. Like, you might get me on my game, you might get me really centered and grounded that day and stuff rolls off my back like a duck, or you might get me sighing and angry. You just never knew. And so, I had to look at that. I had to look at, “Okay, so what am I like to live with and what does freedom look like?”
[VERONICA]
Beautiful.
[MAUREEN]
And the message that your kids might not be okay and if you’re willing to do the work that we’re putting in front of you, you’re going to be okay no matter what happens to them. I was like, “I cannot really believe you and I don’t want to accept the idea that my kids might not be okay, but I really do want freedom.” So it was a long, it didn’t happen overnight. It was a long chiseling away at the hard shell to get in there and convince me that it was okay to try something different despite my fear. It was hard to let go. Even when I recognized that my behaviors weren’t effective, it was still hard to let them go.
[VERONICA]
Well, because it’s something that you knew, is something you were familiar with. And it was something that, it was trusting the dysfunction because it showed up on time every day and so you’re like, “All right.”
[MAUREEN]
Yes. Like at one point there was a story of talking about self-harm. I so understand that this is a crisis for people. You know, they’re forced to sit in discomfort and we don’t know how to do it. And we’re forced to sit in unpleasant emotion. And so we’re frantically trying to find a soothing.
[VERONICA]
A hundred percent.
[MAUREEN]
So we’re using substances, behaviors, cutting, mental health issues are exacerbated. Dysfunctional relationships are blown up. Like you can’t hide from this stuff anymore. And we don’t know how to handle it. So I remember with my daughter, at one point, my kids were doing, my boys were doing well in recovery at the center and my daughter was not addicted to anything, but she was self-harming and she had borderline. I wanted the treatment center to, I thought they should start a program for self-harm.
[VERONICA]
Yes, it falls under addiction.
[MAUREEN]
She’s not the only sibling self-harming. So let’s go. So I went in there to talk to one of the clinical directors one day about, you know, they need to start a program for her to solve my problem. And I had looked at, we were running a recovery home. So we were, the part of the program was that it wasn’t inpatient. So the kids would go into treatment during the day and then they would be sent home with parents at night. And so there was a whole criteria around running a safe recovery home. And it included an alarm on their door, mattresses on the floor, no blind cords that they can choke themselves on, alarms on the windows, and so I thought, “Well, that’s what I’ll do for my daughter. I’ll set up a room for her, I’ll put a mattress on the floor and alarm her door and that way then I’ll know that when she goes into her room at night, she’s not going to accidentally hit an artery and kill herself.”

And I went in and talked to one of the directors there and I remember saying to her, “This is what you need to do and this is what I’m going to do. Like, I’m going to set up a recovery room for her and then you should run a day program.” And she said, “Yes, we’re not going to do that and what you’re describing is not normal and it’s no way to live and you need to accept that she may die.” And I was like, “No, I don’t because it’s unacceptable.” But it sunk in. Over the next few days, it started to sink in and I thought, “She’s right. I do need to accept that I can’t control the outcome here because if she wants to chew through her arm, she’ll chew through her arm. Like I can take razors out of her room and paperclips and all the things but if she’s needing to do this, she’s going to do it. So it really is out of my control and I’ve proven it to myself time and again, that I can’t manage this. So I really do need to accept that.” And so, okay, doesn’t mean I resign myself. It doesn’t mean I don’t try. It just means you do all the things Maureen, you look at, what does, like, what are you willing to do? What’s reasonable and then you let go.
[BREAK PROMO]
If your child is struggling with the thoughts of suicide and they need someone to talk to for support, the Lifeline network is free and available 24/7 across the United States. Call them at +1 800-273-8255. If you are seeking a therapist, please contact us to schedule an appointment. We will pair you with the therapist that fits you and your family’s needs. You can reach us at one +1-888-263-7124. We are serving those that live in California.
[VERONICA]
So Maureen, with that, our listeners right now who have kids who are cutting or struggling with addiction, at no time is Maureen giving up on her daughter or her self at no time. It might sound like that because this is something completely foreign to you. However, this is also part of the process. It has to be part of the process because if not, then the problem stays there. The cutting continues. You know why? Because now your daughter’s going to look at you thinking, “I did this to my mom.”
[MAUREEN]
Yes, exactly.
[VERONICA]
“I need to fix my mom. I know I’m the problem. I need to be fixed. So I need to change,” which only feeds into their distorted thinking. Builds up even more.
[VERONICA]
That’s right. And the problem isn’t the cutting.
[VERONICA]
No, not at all.
[MAUREEN]
But that’s what I’m fixated on. And the problem is not the using of the drugs and the alcohol that I’m fixated on. That’s what I’m trying to control when I’m trying to manage. And so to dig a little deeper, the problem is my daughter’s got a lot of feelings which she doesn’t know how to handle and so do I. So I need to start to notice that, I need to start to label those feelings. I need to be honest about them. I need to own them. They’re not anybody else’s fault. Nobody else needs to fix them. There’s nothing wrong with them. I can have them and I need to learn how to validate her feelings. And so when I learned how to, and this this is a skill, but I’m a problem solver, so I never wanted to do this. I always want to fix the facts of the story, fix the problem rather than connect to the feeling behind the story. But when I learned to, you know I’d go into her room and this happens in the book you know, I opened her door one night and for some reason I was in a different, I would think I was looking after myself. So I could show up as a whole person and not just be reactive. And so I opened the door and there she was cutting and I just had such empathy and compassion for her struggle rather than frustration at the behavior. And so I said to her, “My God, Allie, you look like you’re hurting.”
[VERONICA]
Beautiful.
[MAUREEN]
Like, “This must be so hard for you. And I’m so sorry to see you hurting and I love you, and I know you’re going to get this figured out and you’re having a hard time tonight. Let’s have a cuddle.” And so I just crawled into bed with her and gave her a cuddle. And my God, it changed everything. It changed everything. She felt seen, she felt heard, she felt held, she felt —
[VERONICA]
Accepted.
[MAUREEN]
Accepted and no shame, like the shame associated with it all. Like it just, oh, the poor little thing. And so, yes, so that was a turning point for us. It was like, “Man, when I learned how to say, man, it must be really tough to be experiencing what you’re experiencing and you’re the only one that can change it. But I’m your mom and I’m here to cheer you on and support you and absolutely I see you and I hurt when you hurt, but don’t worry about that. That’s my feelings. You don’t have to fix it. Like I’ll handle that. It’s mine and I’m here to support you when you’re ready for something different.”
[VERONICA]
Yup. The ladies, what Maureen just did, golden, a hundred percent golden. It’s golden. It’s so hard for us to do. I’m a mom, I’m a mother of three and my kids, I have an 18-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 10-year-old. And you know, they all drive me crazy in different ways and they’re so different. My Aubrey, my Aubrey internalizes everything, doesn’t know how to deal with her emotions. So although I think I’m doing an amazing job, I’m going to get it wrong. I don’t care how many parenting classes I can teach, I don’t care how many books, how many degrees I have, I’m going to get it wrong. And I’m okay with saying that.
[MAUREEN]
Well, you can’t get it right all the time. So this is what I concluded as well, is that my, so trauma, back to the trauma, I was looking for this trauma. Where’s the trauma? And when I learned that trauma isn’t what happened, it’s the ineffective processing of the feelings around what happened, I was like, “Oh.” And my son came home from, he was in a drug treatment again at one point and he came home, he was doing some therapy and he came home and said, “Mom, I had this revelation today. I was remembering this time in grade two where I was playing baseball at recess and I slid into home base and Jimmy banged my head off home plate.” And I’m like, “Okay, I didn’t know that happened.” At least I don’t remember that story and if I did know the story, I probably would have been a little bit dismissive and played it down a little bit because I know Jimmy. Jimmy’s a nice kid. I’m sure Jimmy didn’t mean anything by it. Like I would have —
[VERONICA]
Invalidated.
[MAUREEN]
Invalidated —
[VERONICA]
Not purposely.
[MAUREEN]
No, no. You know, very much, here’s another perspective, a little bit of suck it up, a little bit of chin up big guy, tomorrow’s another day, but it’s all very invalidating but the message for me, and there was a whole bunch of little things like that that happened that was like, “Oh wait a minute. You know, I don’t know everything that goes on in my kid’s day and I don’t know how it’s landing for them. And some of it can be very traumatizing and I can’t know all of it.” So there’s, and it’s so complex, like how all of this stuff plays out. Like there’s the genetics, there’s the, how attuned was I to them as an infant? How stressed was I when they were in utero? You know what else happened in the home? How distracted was I? Of course we were busy. We had four little kids in six years, we both worked. Like it was crazy, and so how can I, you can get it right and you still can’t prevent/solve all of that.
[VERONICA]
No. And if you stay there, if you are to stay there, if you are to live by that lie, I’ll call it a call it a lie because it’s a lie, if you are to live by that lie, your kids will not know how to process this. They will not give themselves permission to process, which turns into anxiety, which turns into depression later on in adulthood. This is why we have this. It’s all across the board. It is crucial. It is so crucial that we’re able to acknowledge that, “Okay, yes as a mom, we’re taught, we’re conditioned to believe we have to have all the answers and it’s okay if we don’t.”
[MAUREEN]
And society really endorses that. I mean, we have a society, mommy should be able to kiss it and make it all better. We do have, and I’m guilty of this too, we see something going on with a family and I think, “Oh, something’s going on behind closed doors.” Well, you don’t know. And the idea that good mothers and good parenting equals well adjusted kids, and that’s not always true either. And so there’s a whole lot of shame that goes with and fear of being judged and it’s legit. I think it’s changing. I do. I think people are getting more vocal and shining a light on what’s going on behind closed doors to understand like this stuff doesn’t discriminate. This stuff happens everywhere and it is really complex. And man, we have such a mother blaming culture. We just really do. And if a good mother is selfless and puts her own needs last, that was another thing that was hard to get my head around that I needed to learn how to look after myself so that I could show up grounded, responsive, able to validate, cheer my kids on. Motherhood is a limited role. I thought it was an everything role. It’s a limited role and we try and do everything and you can’t. You’re a sinking ship if you’re trying.
[VERONICA]
Yes, yes. And not only that, but you’ll lose yourself in that process. I have like 50,000 questions to ask you. So, and I want to make sure I respect your time, what are you, above everything that we’ve just discussed, what do you wish you would have known? What do you wish, like if you can go back, let’s say if you can go back to when it was trauma in the ER in your house, when everything, your son’s suicidal, your other son’s contemplating relapse or in his addiction, when your daughter’s cutting, like when all, when it’s just nonstop, what do you wish you would have told yourself? What advice would you have given yourself in that moment if you could go back in time to that day that it was like shit hit the wall?
[MAUREEN]
Overall, I wish I had known that I wasn’t alone and that I shouldn’t try and do it alone. I need to find my people. I need to find my people, people who understand this and find what’s possible and let them walk with me through the process. That’s because I felt pretty alone, overwhelmed and alone. And I wish I’d figured it out earlier that being a mom and being a case manager are two different things. And I have no business trying to be my kids’ therapist or a case manager. I’m just the mom and so what is that? And where do I stop and they start? Like, how do I separate that? How do I take responsibility for my own feelings and let them have theirs? So, and I think all of that comes from, really the solution for me started when I met people that got it and that could show me that there was another way to do it, gently, “Gently Maureen, one day at a time, one step at a time.”

This goes for, I want to make sure I add, this goes for professionals too, finding my people.

Oh yes.
[VERONICA]
Making sure you have a therapist that isn’t shaming you or isn’t judging you, making sure you have a therapist that gets it, like completely gets it, is educated and —
[MAUREEN]
Shop effectively. Be a consumer or a responsible consumer of help.
[VERONICA]
Yup. Psychiatrist, treatment programs. the program that you were sharing, it’s a partial hospitalization program. You know, kids go in half day and then the rest they’re able to stay at home, which then they titrate down to an intensive outpatient program. They go a little bit less and then they go —
[MAUREEN]
Yes, that might be, it wasn’t part of the public system here.
[VERONICA]
Really?
[MAUREEN]
No.
[VERONICA]
So we have that here in the states. You know, you would go, what it looks like is if your child is suicidal, threat to themselves or others, we put them on what’s called the 51,50 and they go into residential treatment and they’re there for a couple days, sometimes a week, depending on their level of severity. And then it’s recommended that they step down to a partial program and they’re there so many days out of the week and they do involve family, which is very important, do group therapy. I used to work for one. They do group therapy, family therapy, they educate family separate from the teens and then they bring the family and the teens together in a group, educate them, provide them with support, reassurance, validation skills, and then they titrate down. And then it’s when you go to a therapist and you already have the skills and your therapist reinforces those skills.
[MAUREEN]
Perfect.
[VERONICA]
It helps you make connections. There’s not like a program that does all of those things, but that’s just to educate those that are listening. Those are the steps you want. You want to make sure you’re able to go through that process because if you go straight to therapy and you don’t have a good therapist, —
[MAUREEN]
You can do, you can chat about stuff forever and you’ll never get anywhere.
[VERONICA]
Never get anywhere, yes.
[MAUREEN]
And I love what you’re saying about the program, the reintegration into the parenting role and the family dynamics. You have to, you can’t take someone out of a system, change them and put them back into the same system the way that it was and expect them to stay changed. We’re going to make each other all very sick again. I use the word sick and well, but I, and so yes, you have to change the system. You have to educate the family. You have to, like we have to relearn how to be with our kids without trying to manage them, you know, how to look after ourselves when we’re scared, instead of trying to look after them when we’re scared. We had to learn all that. And so I love that you described that as part of your system in the states. The program here was called the Alberta Adolescent Recovery Center. I’m in Alberta, Canada and it’s pretty unique here. I think there’s lots of probably outpatient programs, but nothing that was this intensive or this long, this was about almost a year.
[VERONICA]
Oh, wow. That’s great.
[MAUREEN]
We needed it. Our family was off the rails. And so yes, we really needed that kind of support and help. So it was, but I love what you’re saying, you have to support the family. You need help by then, like, oh my gosh.
[VERONICA]
Well, and you’re in this state of such desperation too. Like, “Listen, I’m not a bad parent. I just want to help my kids stop judging me. Let’s put the pen down for a minute and just hear me, hear what I’m saying so I can help my daughter or tell me what to do so I can help and really listen to what I’m saying. Please, please listen to my daughter, please help my daughter.” You do go into this state of like, just yearning for that help and being so desperate. And when you do have the right support, when your therapist is able to see the family, not judging you, not trying to pinpoint that you guys are the issue, just really understanding, listen, “All I got to do right now is arm you with tools, help you sit in the discomfort, help you recognize, help you identify triggers. We’re going to do this together. You’re going to love me and hate me sometimes at the same time, sometimes at different times and I’m in it with you.

[MAUREEN]
Oh man. That’s so good and I walk with you through this. And I do talk about it in the book because I mean, everywhere, you raise a really good point, where you live the system is a little bit different than where I live. And for that reason, I’ve tried to articulate in the book things to look for no matter where you are, things to look for and questions to ask and ask yourself and to ask your proposed professional.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely.
[MAUREEN]
Be a responsible consumer. Not all therapists or therapies are created equal. And listen, like, do your fact-checking and listen to your gut? Like, how does this feel for you?
[VERONICA]
Do I trust them?
[MAUREEN]
Yes. I remember sitting in my daughter’s psychiatrist office. She’s a lovely lady, nice lady. Like she really did help us out, but I do remember the day that she was diagnosing Allie with borderline personality disorder and she opened up the DSM and she sort of slid it across the table and asked Allie to read these nine criteria. Did she identify with anything? And I couldn’t see. I was trying to see like what is she looking at over there? And I couldn’t see it and Allie said, “Oh yes, yes, that’s me for sure.” And she’s like, “Okay, you’ve got borderline personality.” I was overwhelmed. I just started to cry and I just sat there and cried. I sat there and cried and I felt invisible. Sobbing in the corner.
[VERONICA]
Yes. What does this mean?
[MAUREEN]
What is this? Now we’ve got a new diagnosis and a new problem, like really, really?
[VERONICA]
And that’s a heavy diagnosis too.
[MAUREEN]
It can be. I’ve learned a lot about it. Yes. It can be very, you know what, but a beautiful diagnosis too. I mean —
[VERONICA]
Yes, absolutely.
[MAUREEN]
Artists and our poets are borderline.
[VERONICA]
Yes.
[MAUREEN]
These are feeling people. These are expressive people.
[VERONICA]
Yes, but all of that has to be explained because when you look, and what I mean by heavy it’s, the criteria you’re looking at you’re like, as a parent, you’re like, “Okay, wait a minute. What?” Yes, it fits, but like, “Can somebody please sit with me so I can process what all of this is and I can make adjustments and understanding, maybe even ask some questions?” And when you don’t have that, yes, it can be overwhelming.
[MAUREEN]
And when you run into an untreated person who’s been diagnosed with borderline, it’s a nightmare.
[VERONICA]
A hundred percent.
[MAUREEN]
So that’s where that’s a heavy diagnosis. There are some biases and some prejudices and some scary stuff goes on with that diagnosis. Not with my own kids, my own kids have done a lot of work and they’re so lovely.
[VERONICA]
Yes. They are. Your daughter’s amazing.
[MAUREEN]
She is.
[VERONICA]
I think also knowing that going back to, with the therapist, you can’t treat borderline personality disorder with just everyday therapy. It requires dialectical behavioral therapy. It requires cognitive behavioral therapy and really having a therapist that is familiar with that diagnosis, otherwise back at shooting at nothing.
[MAUREEN]
No, there’s a lot going on with borderline, but anyways, I’ve got a soft spot for BPD, for sure.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. So when I did work at the partial hospitalization program I ran groups. And so that was my group. I have a high level of respect for those that have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. So yes, I agree. I agree, very, very creative, very much misunderstood. So yes, Maureen, thank you so much for being on. This has been amazing, amazing.
[MAUREEN]
Thank you. Thank you.
[VERONICA]
Where can we find you?
[MAUREEN]
Well, my website is maureentowns.com and you can find pretty much everything there. My links to social media are there, my links to buying the book are there. And the book really is a combination of a memoir. Like it’s a bit about, I use my stories as the backdrop, but really there is some, it’s meant to be helpful. There are some reflective questions and tips and points in there for, for people who are experiencing some adversity. And I’ll do a free consult with anyone, like anyone can reach out and you can book that through the webpage as well. I’m happy to chat with anybody, and if I’m not able to help you, I can usually put you on the road to defining some effective treatment. And thank you too, for what you’re doing. I’m so grateful, honestly, that you’re out there advocating for mothers and women too. You know, we’re trying to have it all.
[VERONICA]
Yes, yes, we are.
[MAUREEN]
And the expectations are high and the pressures are high and it’s complicated, man. Like it’s a tough job, but very doable and lovely. And I really appreciate what you do too, in terms of how are you doing with the parents? Thank you for that because my heart is with those who are trying to support people with mental health and addictions, and there’s a gap there for a lot of us in terms of meeting our needs and supporting the people who support. So thank you for that work.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely. Absolutely. This has been amazing. I felt like I can stay on here for like ever because it’s just, all the information. You guys, I can’t stress it enough. Get her book. She covers over the six steps to recognize and codependency and parenting, which is very, very important. We all need to know that. She does give a whole lot of useful, resourceful information. And your story is so relatable and can open the eyes of parents, especially if you know, right now you’re finding that your teens are struggling. Get this book because you will find not only understanding, but also getting so much clarity and insight as to what’s going on and how to help your team, how to help your family. So Maureen, thank you again.
[MAUREEN]
Thank you so much, Veronica.
[VERONICA]
Absolutely.
[MAUREEN]
Take care.
[VERONICA]
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