In a church basement in the southernmost Twin Cities area, a teary-eyed mother held her smartphone. on the air and played a recording of his daughter Serena's last heartbeat before a drug overdose killed her at age 23.
One by one, about 20 parents listening to Serena's heartbeat rose from their chairs and gathered in the center of the room, wrapping the grieving mother in a big hug and speaking words of support. They all had children who were in the midst of addiction or recovery, or had loved ones who had died from substance abuse.
"I felt like I had come home to a safe place, like landing on a soft cloud," said grieving mother Deirdre Johnson of Savage. "I could breathe again."
In the center of the circle was Pamela Lanhart, a family recovery coach who lost her 24-year-old son Jacob to a drug overdose in the fall of 2021. Lanhart has turned her grief into activism and now finds herself at the forefront of a movement that challenges entrenched views about how family members should respond to the opioid epidemic. They have abandoned the idea that people addicted to drugs need tough love and harsh consequences, and have instead adopted a strategy of unconditional empathy, love and support.
More than 3,000 people have joined workshops and family support groups run by Lanhart's nonprofit, Thrive Family Recovery Services, which has gained a passionate following among parents looking for ways to stay in touch with children in recovery or still using. They point to grim statistics, including a nearly tripling of overdose deaths in Minnesota during the four-year period ending in 2021, as evidence that the old approach is failing to save lives.
"It's become very clear that shaming and punishing people doesn't work," Lanhart said. "This is a disease, and we would never shame a child of ours who was dying of cancer, would we?"
On a warm spring afternoon, the mood was upbeat as a dozen parents filed into Hometown Church, in a wooded subdivision of Lakeville. They sat in a tight circle, each holding a thick lesson book of advice on communicating with loved ones struggling with substance abuse. The circle continued to widen to accommodate the new arrivals, while Lanhart placed a box of tissues and chocolates in the center.
Lanhart broke the silence by asking everyone to describe their "personal earnings" for the week. There was applause when a mother announced that her son had reached the three-year mark in recovery from opioid addiction. Another of her recounted how friends from her dance class surprised her with hugs after learning that her son was struggling with substance abuse. "It was like a prayer was answered," her mother, Lynda Cannova, said of the hug.
Yet the specter of anguish looms over each of the group's Thursday night meetings.
Even in their happiest moments, parents have acknowledged living with the awareness that, on any given day, their children could die from the increasingly powerful pills they are being given. sold online and in the streets. Several of the parents had children who used fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is cheap to make and even 100 times more powerful than morphine. Fentanyl poisoning has become the leading cause of death among Americans ages 18 to 49, according to a Washington Post analysis from national death data.
"These days, it's irresponsible to say, 'Let that person hit rock bottom before you get help,'" Lanhart said. "With fentanyl, 'bottoming out' usually means death."
By the time she started attending Thrive support meetings, Johnson had already accepted the possibility that her daughter Serena might not live to be 24. Earlier this year, her daughter overdosed seven times in 10 days as she moved from her sober homes to the streets. Sometimes Serena would disappear for weeks. johnson sometimes use a location tracking app on your phone to rescue her from a dangerous house or hotel room, he said.
"There were times when Serena would call me at 2 or 3 in the morning and say, 'Mom, come pick me up,' and I would drop everything and come over, no questions asked," Johnson said. "Other nights she would just pray to the Lord to take care of her, wherever she was."
Then, on the night of March 11, Serena collapsed on the bathroom floor of a treatment center in Minneapolis after taking fentanyl. She was resuscitated with Narcan, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, but she was pronounced dead two days later. As a final act of kindness, Serena donated her organs for transplant, saving at least four lives, her family said.
Within 48 hours of her daughter's death, Johnson was back in the circle of support in Lakeville, where she felt comfortable sharing her grief. "I keep asking myself, 'Why am I still going?'" Johnson said. "What the others said really struck me, which was, 'We need you here to show us what it's like to be on the other side of our worst fears.'"
All the parents in the group talk about constant stress, living through days and nights of anguish as they struggle to maintain relationships. Some expressed exasperation that their adult children's mental and emotional well-being seemed to stop at the age they started using, making it difficult for them to do basic tasks: preparing meals, scheduling doctor appointments, completing job applications.
Much of Thrive's weekly sessions focus on practical ways family members can communicate with loved ones trapped in addiction and too ashamed to talk about it. They do frequent role-play exercises in which they practice asking open-ended questions about their children's lives and avoiding scolding or shaming language. They share advice on ways to control your anger, such as taking long pauses before reacting to chaotic situations.
"The opposite of addiction is connection," Lanhart said. "When we say things like, 'Don't talk to me until you're sober,' it has the effect of disconnecting us from our loved ones, and that chases them back to the drugs that are killing them."
Cannova has lost count of how many times her 42-year-old son has overdosed.
For much of the past six years, she has lived in constant fear and uncertainty, her days dictated by whether her son was abusing drugs. Like many members of families torn apart by addiction, Cannova feared she was being too permissive and reacted to her son's substance use by kicking him out of her home. But that approach backfired: Her son ended up sleeping on the streets and in emergency shelters for months, where she sought stronger opioids to relieve her crippling anxiety and other psychiatric disorders, she said.
"There was a time when my attitude was, 'It's my way or the highway, and you have to face the natural consequences of your actions,'" Cannova said. "But then who do they turn to? You have to maintain a loving connection even if that connection is limited."
Holly Marshall, one of the Lakeville support group members, described checking on her 30-year-old son in his bedroom every hour when he was abusing drugs, to make sure he was still breathing. "There were stretches when I let her [substance] It used to consume me, when I couldn't eat and couldn't sleep because I was so terrified," she said. "Now I've learned to communicate with him exactly where he is, which means he knows he's loved."
For support group members, the weekly meetings can be exhilarating and exhausting, especially for those who are working to rebuild broken relationships.
On an April night, some of the parents looked exhausted as the conversation came to a close and they held hands in the center of the room. Heads bowed and eyes closed, they took turns chanting words meant to guide them through the difficult days ahead.
"Patience," declared one mother.
"Kindness," said another.
Then, after a moment of silence, some of the parents uttered the same word: "hope."
