Holding Both: Grieving What’s Been Lost While Choosing Hope in Families Facing Addiction

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He was wearing shorts and flip-flops in February. I stood by the door and watched him leave – my son, heading who knows where. The door closed behind him, and for a moment, my whole house snapped into color. I could hear everything again – the birds, the wind, the hum of the street outside. It was like waking up in the middle of my own life.

I didn’t have the words for it then, but what I was feeling wasn’t just fear. It was grief.

Not the grief the world makes room for – the kind that brings casseroles and cards. This was the quiet kind. The kind that hides in plain sight. My son was still alive, but the version of him I knew, and the version of our family I’d imagined, were both gone.

That’s what ambiguous grief feels like. It’s the pain of losing someone who’s still right in front of you. It’s love and loss in the same breath.

Naming the Grief That Has No Conclusion

Families affected by addiction live with this kind of grief all the time. We just don’t always know to call it that.

There’s no ceremony, no formal goodbye, no space to mourn. But inside, we feel the same heartbreak, the same longing, the same disbelief. We ache for what used to be – the laughter at dinner, the easy conversations, the simple belief that everything would be okay.

And because our person is still alive, we feel guilty for grieving at all. We tell ourselves it’s selfish, or that we should just be grateful. We whisper things like, at least they’re alive.

But grief doesn’t wait for permission. It shows up anyway. Naming it doesn’t make it worse, it makes it real. And real is where healing starts.

The Waves We Live In

Grief doesn’t move in tidy stages when addiction lives in your home. It comes in waves – sometimes gentle enough to wade through, sometimes strong enough to knock you flat.

I used to brace for the next one, digging my heels in, trying not to be moved. But the waves always came. They always pulled at my footing. I learned, slowly, that you can’t outmuscle grief. You have to move with it.

When you let the wave lift you, even for a moment, you stop fighting the truth of what’s happening. You can still breathe. You can still love. You can still find small pieces of solid ground.

When Hope Hurts

That’s what tragic optimism looks like in families: acknowledging what’s broken while still believing in what can be rebuilt.When your loved one struggles with addiction, people don’t always know what to say. They reach for easy hope: At least they’re alive. Everything happens for a reason. God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.

But hope like that can land like a punch to the gut. Because sometimes this is more than we can handle. Sometimes we don’t feel grateful. Sometimes there is no silver lining.

That’s when toxic positivity becomes a kind of gaslighting. It tells us to be okay when we’re not. It tries to polish pain into something pretty.

What I’ve learned is that grief doesn’t need a silver lining. It’s love that needs a place to land.

Choosing Meaning Without Pretending

The kind of hope I found over time wasn’t the “everything will work out” kind. It was quieter. Sturdier. It was choosing to live with meaning while also living inside what was hard.

Psychologists call it “tragic optimism.” I think of it as hope with its sleeves rolled up – hope that shows up and does the work.

It doesn’t deny tragedy. It stands inside it. It asks, What kind of person do I want to be in this?

For me, that meant finding ways to keep my humanity intact, even when I couldn’t change the outcome. It meant choosing compassion over control. It meant setting boundaries with love instead of anger. It meant being honest about what I’d lost, and still daring to look for what was left.

Sometimes that looked like small rituals: journaling about what I missed, writing an unsent letter to my son, or simply saying the truth out loud — this hurts because I love him.

Those small acts didn’t fix anything, but they gave my grief a home. They turned pain into presence.

When Families Choose Both

In my work with families, I see it again and again: parents and partners trying to hold love and loss at the same time. Some are afraid that naming grief sounds like giving up. Others hide behind forced optimism because hope feels safer than heartbreak.

But families are the first recovery community. When we share the burden of change – when we grieve honestly and choose meaning anyway – we become the kind of community that models and sustains recovery.

We can teach our person that love doesn’t mean denial. We can show our loved ones that boundaries and compassion can live in the same space. We can live recovery, even if the person we love isn’t ready yet.

That’s what tragic optimism looks like in families: acknowledging what’s broken while still believing in what can be rebuilt.

Holding Both

If you’re carrying your own ambiguous grief, the ache of watching someone you love disappear into addiction, please know this: your grief is real. You don’t have to minimize it or “at least” it away.

Grieve the milestones that never happened. Honor the loss of the life you imagined. Let the wave move through you. And when you can, lift your head and notice what remains – a smile, a breath, a glimpse of peace.

Recovery isn’t just about sobriety. It’s about finding intention in the middle of uncertainty. It’s about holding both – grief and love, pain and joy, heartbreak and hope.

You can’t stop the waves, but you can choose how you meet them. And sometimes, that choice alone is enough to keep you standing.

Lisa Katona Smith. Speaker, and author. Inspired by her personal experience navigating a family member’s addiction, and motivated by the limitations of traditional support models, she created Parallel Recovery®—a structured, compassionate framework that gives a voice to the untold side of recovery and redefines how families support a loved one through substance use disorder. Through coaching, curriculum development, and professional training, Parallel Recovery guides families nationwide in reclaiming peace and purpose, rebuilding connection, and advancing sustainable change. With over 20 years of professional experience, and in her characteristic warmth and clarity, Lisa continues to advocate for a family-centered healing process that fosters the relationships needed to support addiction recovery. Her forthcoming book, Parallel Recovery: A Guide for Those Who Love Someone Struggling with Substance Use Disorder was released September 2025