Dawn

Momma Bear who advocates for adolescents, the addicted and those in recovery.

The Truth About Wilderness Therapy With ‘Forest for the Trees’ Filmmakers Mark Strauss & Vince Dixon

Stories about wilderness range from life-saving transformations to devastating failures, and often, the loudest voices online lean toward fear and controversy. That’s why I’m so excited to be joined by filmmakers Mark Strauss and Vince Dixon, co-directors of the upcoming documentary Forest for the Trees: The Truth About Wilderness Therapy. With lived experience of loss, addiction, and healing in their own families, Mark and Vince share why they felt compelled to create a film that tells the whole story: the good, the bad, and everything in between. As a parent who’s walked this road myself, I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear someone say, “Let’s look at the whole truth.” Because when you’re facing impossible choices for your child, what you need most is understanding, not judgment.https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/162-the-truth-about-wilderness-therapy-with-forest/id1641911938?i=1000729305056

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Surviving Teen Addiction: One family’s path through the wilderness and recovery with Dawn Mccord

Stories about wilderness range from life-saving transformations to devastating failures, and often, the loudest voices online lean toward fear and controversy. That’s why I’m so excited to be joined by filmmakers Mark Strauss and Vince Dixon, co-directors of the upcoming documentary Forest for the Trees: The Truth About Wilderness Therapy. With lived experience of loss, addiction, and healing in their own families, Mark and Vince share why they felt compelled to create a film that tells the whole story: the good, the bad, and everything in between. As a parent who’s walked this road myself, I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear someone say, “Let’s look at the whole truth.” Because when you’re facing impossible choices for your child, what you need most is understanding, not judgment.https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/161-surviving-teen-addiction-one-familys-path-through/id1641911938?i=1000728027189

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Success is Subjective: Special Parent Series: Episode 214 with “Dawn”

For the entire month of May, in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Joanna is bringing you a special parent series, where she interviews parents whose children have overcome a variety of mental health challenges. Having grown up as an only child, Dawn didn’t know fully what she was in for when she and her husband brought two boys into the world. When her boys were teenagers, they began experimenting with drugs and alcohol.

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Chasing Carson

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Experimentation is what most teens do. Our son started with marijuana the summer before his freshmen year of high school. The beginning of his Sophomore year he  purchased Xanax on the street to share with friends. He took them all and was high for 48 hours. We immediately did everything we could to get him into our local recovery center. This was the first of many trips to rehab. He would have weeks or months of abstinence, then go on a bender which could last a couple of weeks until a crisis happened that would land him back in rehab. This seemed to be the routine all through his high school years. He did well in school; played football and baseball. He worked. Had great friends and he had his “using” friends. He seemed to keep it together until he couldn’t. October 18th, 2019 changed his life forever.

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What Friends Do: Kitchen Chats–Breaking The Stigma Of Adolescent Addiction

Aimee sits down with Dawn McCord, author of “Chasing Carson: A Family’s Journey through Adolescence, Addiction and Recovery.” Dawn’s son Carson struggled with addiction during his high school years, ultimately leading to a drug overdose. On the episode, Dawn speaks candidly about the shame and stigma that often accompany addiction. She also shares how her friends offered support by just showing up when she needed it most, and how she’s helping other families in a similar situation not feel so alone.

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NetFlix’s Outer banks season 3

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Season 3 has not disappointed. I still love the Goonie-esq vibe the show’s creator has instilled… pause…wait for it….there is a “but” coming……BUT, I am perturbed…Like season 2, the creators have written into the script the suggestion that Kiera’s parents have had it with her and are suggesting she go away to a wilderness “camp”. This season isn’t any better than last in representing wilderness therapy. It is shows like this that haven’t done their research or if they have, they portray only one side, which is the side that shows these long term programs in an abusive light. Look, I do not discount that abuses have happened in years past. There have been known conversion or boot-camp type programs. Those programs are shut down now or are few and far between. This is why I recommend Educational Consultants who have vetted programs, but more importantly the families need to do their own research. From our experience there are many versions of the story. There are the parent’s perspective, the adolescent’s perspective and then there is the onlooker’s perspective who has no experience in any of what is going on in that family but feels the need to pick a side. Let’s break it down a bit, shall we?…….. Since I am a parent of a child who has struggled and has left his home so that he would not die, let’s start with the parent’s point of view…..In regards to the show Outer Banks, Kiera’s parents were “Freaking Out!!!” Over the past 3 seasons, they have seen Kiera change friend groups from Kooks to Pogues, she has been participating in underage drinking, she has not come home at night, she has skipped school or refused to go, and as season 3 starts we find out the teens have been missing for over a month! What parent wouldn’t be besides themselves?!?! Seriously, our job as a parent is to keep our kids alive. It is the natural order of things. When your kid starts engaging in riskier behavior and stretches boundaries beyond the normal teenage rebellion, Parents Will Freak Out! The parents themselves will become irrational. They will make decisions that could be rash. It’s not out of hate, but out of love…..all to save their child. In the show, we don’t see any other previous interventions to help Kiera. We only see that the parents went from 0-100. They got out the “big guns”….They “gooned” their child. They had people come take Kiera away against her will. Let’s switch and look at this from Kiera’s view point, now. Kiera knows she has pushed the boundaries to the breaking point. She has rebelled to the point that she can’t see the difference between risk and reward. I am not blaming her because that is what teens do….They live in their 6 inch bubble and can’t rationalize how their actions could affect others and that they themselves could be hurt or die. Their need to be with their friends outweighs any consequence. In the scene where Kiera is “gooned”, she stands in the driveway talking to herself as she figures out how to tell her parents that she needs to leave again and go to South America to help her friends. A truck from the “program” pulls up and 2 men manhandle her into the truck and take her away. Can you say Traumatized with a capital T?!?! At this point, I turned Netflix off and thought about canceling my membership….! I know….I know…. I am exaggerating. I won’t cancel Netflix! Do you see what I am trying to get at? In today’s climate of being able to say, do or portray anything on TV, movies, social media etc., just know that what you see is not always the truth… it’s an exaggeration. Why would anyone do that? not represent the truth? Well….probably to be more dramatic so that you can be sucked in to believing what you are seeing or reading. Did Netflix and the creators of Outer Banks intend to throw the adolescent/young adult therapeutic programs under the bus and make something that saved my son’s life seem seedy???? I don’t know….Maybe if they were to actually have a movie, series or documentary depicting the real truth than maybe we would know the answer. So Netflix……call me….I have a real, very gritty and truthful story about the “Troubled Teen” industry that saved my kid’s life!

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Stories from the Field: Demystifying Wilderness Therapy

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I had the honor of being on Dr. Will White’s long running podcast. We discussed our journey through adolescent addiction and what lead Carson to wilderness therapy. I encourage you to listen to our conversation. https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/storiesfromthefield/Dawn-MCord.mp3?dest-id=803158

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Stories From the Field: Demystifying Wilderness Therapy

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This Fall, Dr. Will White ran a series on Young Adults. A couple weeks shy of Carson’s 3 year sober birthday, Dr. Will interviewed him. I invite you to listen so you can hear Carson’s perspective on his journey through addiction, wilderness therapy, sober living and what he is doing now and where he wants to go. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/carson-mccord-former-wilderness-therapy-student-and/id1440862416?i=1000581539189

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To Love or Not to love?

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  In my certification course to become a Family Recovery Coach, part of my homework was to reflect on how I/we added love (or if we did) in contributing to Carson’s recovery. Wow! Well, yes….duh! Right?! I’m his mom, Sloan is his dad, of course we loved him! After, reading through the chapter from the book Balm: The Loving Path to Family Recovery (which my course work is through), I meditated and reflected on what was really being asked. Below is how I chose to answer. It was quite a revelation. ANSWER: When our son’s started experimenting in their teen years, I/we still had the idea that it was bad choices on their part because they were teenagers and that is what teens do, they rebel and push the envelope. As one son’s experimentation turned into regular use, I/we still felt he could ”control” it. He could choose to drink or drug. So we disciplined as though that were the case. Bad kid, Bad choices v/s Good kid, Good choices. After his first stay in an adolescent inpatient program, we learned that addiction is a brain disorder/disease/mental health disorder. When we came to that realization, we looked at his behavior as a symptom not a malicious intent. This really helped me change my attitude from angry and frustrated to being more loving and kinder. I believed he couldn’t help it. That he wasn’t doing it on purpose. Especially when we started catching him high or trying to get high more often. We started to see a pattern of “abstinence (baseball season), purchase just a little something (reward for being abstinent), to full on bender where we constantly chased him or ran interference (3 weeks usually), to crisis (catastrophic behavior, jail, overdose), finally rehab. Each time he went into rehab it was for a longer stay but never enough till we moved him out of state. I think we, as a society, do not want to embark on a loving path to help our struggling loved one  because of generations of being told that love is enabling. “If we love, it will encourage his use.” “If we punish then we are not contributing, we are setting boundaries.” “If we take our love away then they will want to get sober, right?” NOOOOOOOOO!….Just writing that last sentence and reading it back sounded ludicrous! Substance Use Disorder has a lot of shame and stigma around it….The user feels so bad for using because it is bad for them and they know it so they say, “I am going to stop!” “I’ll never drink or drug again!” Until, 2 to 24hrs or weeks of rehab go by and they lose their resolve which then they slip/relapse. When they wake up from that they feel like shit physically and emotionally and the cycle starts again. It’s maddening! Sooo, what if we change our attitude on how to relate to someone with a Substance Use Disorder? What if by looking at them through the lens of love, we then develop compassion, empathy and grace which then when projected on to our loved one or someone afflicted they feel that love?…..Then maybe just maybe there will be a shift and they will feel worthy of getting sober? Did we love him into recovery? Yes! Absolutely! Was it always “rainbows and skittles” (to quote Carson)? Nope! Is loving someone with the disease of addiction easy? Nope! Is it worth it? Yep!:)

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