Lisa Katona Smith Family Consultant
Interventionist
Speaker
Author

There’s a moment in Chapter 2 of Parallel Recovery® that still makes me pause, because it reveals something most families don’t mean, but often do. We hand our heavy coats to the very people who are already struggling to stand upright.

Not intentionally.
Not carelessly.
But because we are scared and we don’t know what else to do.

For years, I thought my job as a mother was to carry everything for my son — the fear, worry, pressure, consequences, hope, and the future. And because I was carrying so much, I didn’t notice that I had quietly asked him to carry something that wasn’t his: my need for him to be okay so that I could breathe.

He already had his own coat — one made of pain, confusion, shame, dysregulation, survival.
And there I was, adding mine to his shoulders.

When I finally recognized this, it stopped me cold.

The Coat Isn’t What We Carry — It’s What We Hand Off

A subtle but crucial shift in thinking: It’s not just about the weight we carry. It’s about the weight we give away.

Our fear.
Our need for a certain outcome.
Our desire to avoid pain.
Our grief.
Our sense of responsibility for everyone’s feelings.

These burdens, or coats, belong to us.
But when our person is struggling with substance use, we often hand them off without realizing it:

• By needing them to get better so we can feel calmer

• By trying to arrange their life to ease our anxiety

• By requiring their change so we can “go back to normal”

• By hoping they’ll carry our fears along with their own

Not because we are bad parents or partners or siblings. But because we love them. And because we weren’t taught another way.

I remember sitting in a family program, participating in a mirroring exercise. My husband was asked to introduce me as if he were stepping into my shoes.

He began with, “My name is Lisa, and I like things just so.” Everyone laughed. I didn’t. Not because it wasn’t true. But because I realized how often my desire for order, calm, predictability (my “just so”) had become a coat I was asking others to put on.

Especially my son.
Especially in his hardest seasons.

I thought control was love. I thought arranging the world around him was protecting him. I thought avoiding discomfort was helping all of us survive.

But what I learned is this: Control is not love. Empowerment is love.

The Parable That Changed How I Love

In my book, I share a Hasidic parable about a king who banishes his son, regrets it, and sends messengers to bring him home.

The son refuses to return, and the messengers return empty-handed. The king keeps sending them with no success.

What struck me most was this: The king changed his mind, but he didn’t change his strategy.

He kept trying to make his son come home — handing him the heavy coat of the king’s regret, the king’s loneliness, the king’s unfinished emotional work.

The son already had his own pain. Eventually, the king learned the only path that would ever reconnect them: He met his son where he was, without asking him to carry anything more.

That is Parallel Recovery®. That is the work families learn to do. That is the work I had to learn myself.

December Is the Season of Heavy Coats

I don’t think it’s an accident that this analogy fits December.

This is the season when we:

• Brace against old family patterns

• Hope this year will be different

• Try hard to “keep it all together”

• Feel responsible for everyone’s emotional weather

• Carry coats that belong to five different people

And because of all that rawness, we often hand off our coats without seeing it. We hand over our expectations, and our hopes. We hand over our fear of conflict, and our need for peace.

The people we love feel it. Especially the ones already carrying more than we can imagine.

This is not a call to abandon your person or detach emotionally. It is an invitation to carry what is yours — gently, lovingly, bravely.

Here are three ways to begin:

1. Ask yourself: “Whose need is this?”

If the answer is yours, then it belongs on your shoulders, not theirs.

2. Change your posture from control → empowerment

Instead of “You need to…” try: “I’m here with you while you figure it out.”

3. Practice the smallest act of self-leadership 

A boundary.
A pause.
A deep breath before responding.
A moment of honesty: “This is mine, not yours.”

These are the shifts that allow healing to grow on both sides of the relationship.

As you move through December, through family gatherings, triggering moments, uncertain emotions, and the weight of hope, I invite you to ask yourself:

What coat is mine?
What coat have I been handing to someone else?
And how can I gently take back what I didn’t mean to give away?

This is how we begin “sharing the burden of change”:
Not by carrying their coat, and not by asking them to carry ours, but by standing side by side with the weight that belongs to each of us.

With tenderness and presence,
Lisa