Loving Your Adult Child Through Addiction and Recovery
When everything you want to do is wrong.
Stay with the Moment is a father’s honest account of loving his adult son through the cycle of addiction and recovery, learning to let go of control, and finding his way back to his own life.
Written for parents facing similar struggles, it’s a story about love, fear, boundaries, and learning to live with uncertainty without losing yourself along the way.
The Complete Book — Available Now as a Free Download
The Twenty-One — Lessons Learned
Twenty-one lessons from four years of loving my son through addiction and recovery.
The lessons are only the beginning. The complete story is in Stay with the Moment.
Download The Twenty-One free.
Featured moment
Somebody’s Daughter
J.S. Ashworth
An excerpt
I finished my book today. Then I went out to run an errand. Outside the store was a young woman. Maybe in her mid-twenties. Her purse was on the bench by the door. She kept going down onto the ground, trying to get back up, knocking the purse off, her phone sliding out onto the pavement. She had urinated on herself. It was brutally hot. People were walking past.
I called 911.
A fire truck came. They checked her over. Eventually they left. She stayed. I bought her a bottle of water and some orange juice. I went over and talked to her. She told me she’d recently been in jail. She said she’d just gotten out of the hospital.
She told me she was trying to get clean. I don’t know her story. I don’t know what was true. None of that is really the point. I looked at her and said something I don’t think the man I used to be would have said.
“Listen. You’re not a bad person. You’ve just got to deal with this problem.”
She looked at me and said: “Thank you. You’re so kind. Most people don’t care.”
Years ago I might have been one of those people walking past. Today I looked at her and saw somebody’s daughter.
And I saw my son.
The Music Behind the Message
Stay with the Moment. Let Tomorrow Arrive.
Sometimes music reaches the places words cannot.
Two original songs about loving without losing yourself, finding peace in the present, and allowing tomorrow to arrive in its own time.
Download MP3: Stay with the Moment
Let Tomorrow Arrive
The book
This is not a book about fixing the person you love.
It is about your own life, which does not stop.
I don’t have the answers. Almost everything I did came from what a father is supposed to do. Most of it didn’t work.
The twenty-one lessons tell you what I learned. The book lets you walk beside me through the learning.
You can walk beside their path.
You cannot walk it for them.
What these pages hold
Six Themes Explored in the Book
- Loving Without RescuingThe difference between helping and taking the struggle away.
- Boundaries and RecoveryHolding a line with love, and why it matters to recovery.
- Fear and UncertaintyLiving with what you cannot know or control.
- Remembering YourselfYour life, your health, and your needs still count.
- Family and RelationshipsPartners, siblings, and the whole family system.
- Staying With the MomentLetting today be enough, and letting tomorrow arrive.
Stay connected
The Journey Continues.
The book is finished. The journey isn’t.
Life continues, bringing new moments, challenges, and unexpected lessons. I’ll share some of those moments here—the experiences, reflections, and everyday stories that remind us we’re all still learning.
If you’d like to follow along, you’re welcome here.