Life's Longing for Itself

When other parents ask me how my son and I came out shining after a brutal 16 months—one that tested every ounce of love, patience, and faith—I share with them the two things that worked.

First, I fully embraced Kahlil Gibran’s poem On Children from The Prophet [abridged]:

"Your children are not your children.

  They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

  They come through you but not from you,

  And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

  You may give them your love but not your thoughts,

  For they have their own thoughts.

  You may house their bodies but not their souls,

  For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

  You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.

  For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."

And second, I had to become the Alpha and Omega Evelyn from Everything Everywhere All at Once. If you haven’t seen the movie, it’s about stepping into your highest self, letting go of what isn’t yours to fix, and taking full responsibility for your own beliefs and actions—because when you do, the world around you begins to shift. 

My experience with my teen has been one of my most soul expanding experiences and has made me into an entirely different being for the better. As tough as it was, I am grateful to have experienced it.  Maybe my journey can help yours feel a little less impossible.

 The Sudden Shift

Eighth grade was his first year back in the classroom after the pandemic. He was pulling away, but that seemed normal. Other sports parents and I laughed about how our kids made us drop them off a block away to avoid the horror of having parents.

But something changed at the start of freshman year.

• He dropped his sport, right after medaling at Nationals.

• He sold his electric guitar, oh how girls swooned at his recitals.

• He dismantled his 12-foot Lego world, a masterpiece built over years, and sold it all for a pittance.

• Our home, once filled with packs of kids pillaging our fridge, fell silent. His friends stopped coming over. He retreated into his room.

I was worried.

I found him a therapist

Had him tested six ways to Sunday

Hired a teen specialist to coach me.

We even worked with a world-renowned family systems therapist - so sharp he saw through our bull.  We joked we needed a therapist just to handle those sessions.

Still, nothing was crossing the divide with my son.

Sophomore year, things spiraled.

He was failing every class, skipping school, and hanging with a new crowd.

At parent-teacher conferences, teachers subtly hinted: Get him out of this school and away from that crowd.

My teen therapist told me not to push. "Push" he said, "and he'll only run faster towards them"

Argh.

Then I discovered he was selling vapes and smoking pot.

Help!

I scoured options. Most teen programs focus on eating disorders, suicidal ideation, or hardcore addiction—not kids like mine, who seemed lost in themselves.

A friend discovered a weeklong Malibu retreat designed to help teens reconnect through nature, art, and community. It was $9,000.  I was desperate. I sent him.

He went.  But the director said he needed a “higher level of care”—and recommended a $120,000/month rehab for hardcore kids.

I chose a $45,000/month therapeutic residential program instead.

After 45 days of running circles around his therapists 3 times a day, he decided he was done.

He did things to get kicked out.

They fell for it.

They recommended - surprise - another "higher level of care."  A Wilderness program.

By this point, I had spoken to 100+ programs, consultants, and parents who had spent hundreds of thousands on rehabs, only to see their kids cycle through more programs, deeper addictions, and eventual legal trouble.

The truth was clear:

On the kid side - if a kid doesn’t want to change, no program can make them.

On the parent side - most programs are places to safekeep a "problem". The good programs? They're really about changing parent behavior.

The most valuable thing I got for my $60,000 ordeal?

A $10.47 book: Parent Effectiveness Training P.E.T.) by Thomas Gordon.

It broke down what was his problem to solve, what was mine, and how to communicate without pushing him further away. 

Another gem: Anatomy of Peace by The Arbinger Institute. 

If you are have kids, use these as your bible.  They might just save your family and let your teen years sail by with a lot more grace.

The Breaking Point

As I’ve never been a teenage boy, I turned to trusted male friends for perspective. My friend Samuel said simply, Love him. Bring him home.

So I did.

He agreed to therapy, family sessions, a new school, and getting a job. The rules were simple:

• Don’t do anything illegal.

• Go to school.

• Be respectful.

It worked… for four weeks.

Then at 4 AM, I woke to music blasting, every light on, and my son acting erratic. Mumbling, pacing, running in and out of the house.

He’s on drugs.

In his moments of stillness I told him how much he is loved and epic stories about his Ancestors. At 7 AM, he crashed. I realized all the cash from Christmas—$1,000—was gone.

When he woke up at noon, he had the sense to FaceTime his therapist and confess: He had taken the money and inadvertently ingested a heroic dose of mushrooms.

Because he was honest, I kept him at home. He got a job, paid back the stolen money, and things looked better.

But my Spidey sense was tingling. I scrambled with his therapist to find a way to guide his earnings toward a legitimate investment or business.

Then, one night, the house woke up to a gunshot.

In his room, I found multiple firearms. He had decided his business would be arms dealing.

That was it. I dropped him off at his Dad’s while finalizing a boarding school.

On The Run

On the way to his Dad’s, he kept insisting, I just want to do what I want. He had a job selling coupons, and was pulling in $1,000 a week. Big money for a teen, but kind of a cul-de-sac. I spent the weekend with a trusted friend questioning everything. Is sending him away the right thing? Should I just let him live on his own?

Stumbled across this 2 year old note the night he ran…

Then his Dad called. He ran away.

Panic. Police. Private investigators. Lawyers. Flyers everywhere. Calls with missing children agencies.

A month passed. The darkest time of my life. I was concurrently dealing with significant health, a house deciding to implode (see my blog "How to get your house fixed…”) and work challenges, but my missing son was front, right and center. I’d wake up crying at 3 AM. I kept myself clear with daily gratitude practices, meditation, walks and chanting Om Namo Guru Dev Namo to quiet my mind.  Everyone was reliving their deepest fears and wounds through this situation.  Some pushed their criticisms and judgements on me.  Some shared their hero journeys with me.  And gratefully, some just gave me a shoulder to cry on and grabbed a handful of Missing posters to hang. I shut out all the fear, clung to the hero journeys, and followed my intuition in each present moment. 

Then, a lead. A guy at a gym recognized my son. When I arrived, he hesitated before saying, I felt bad calling the police, but when I ran away, my parents didn’t even look for me. Your son’s lucky he has you.

My team of pros said get him to a “safe” place ASAP!  The police frustratingly refused to take him into custody since he wasn’t breaking any laws. He came home voluntarily. We talked. He swore he wasn’t in a gang, just wanted freedom.

At 2 AM, a Transport team arrived to take him to a therapeutic boarding school.

He tased them and ran.

They followed him patiently—for hours—talking to him about life choices. At 5 AM, it came to a head and he asked to speak to me:

"If you keep pushing, I’ll take this to a level you’ll really regret."

If I let him live on his own, he agreed to go back to school, work with a coach (not a therapist—we were done with that), and stay out of trouble. At dawn, we searched for the things he had tossed while running. Then, I let him walk away.

It was my most courageous and grief stricken moment.

The hardest moment of my life

The Spin Cycle

Weeks passed. Silence.

Then, slowly, signs of life. He was back in school. Got a coach. Would only reply to my texts with a thumbs-up.  I let all my grief, frustration, anger, confusion, regret, blame, loss, longing, anxiety, jealousy, sorrow flow through me. My team held space for me when I’d burst into tears in a meeting.

The woman who took him in—a lady with lots of pets who needed extra help —eventually kicked him out for being disrespectful. He went missing again.  He dropped out of school. He'd surface.  We went through a few of these agonizing spin cycles.  I just kept showing up and holding space.  I only took action on things that aligned to the guiding principle, "Will this make our relationship better?".  By this time I let go of ALL expectations—no small feat given my upbringing, where anything but Ivy League makes you (imagine heavy Asian accent) a Disappointment.  But really, who cares if he doesn’t finish high school now? If he blows off his coach? If he skips the dentist? Eventually, he’ll figure it out and he's the one who needs to care.

Then, at one of my darkest moments, a text from a stranger:

"You don't know me, but I feel sorry for you. Your son is okay. He’s just selling coupons and hanging out.  We think he should go home."

And through fits and starts, with lots of patience and grace…he came home. We started connecting in ways, unimaginable only days earlier. He decided to attend an elite prep school and made the Dean's List his first semester (a balm to my inner-Tiger-mom). His lessons learned? I thought I was Big Time until I had to pay rent. Street hustling doesn't pay. And, There are a lot of things out there that if you do them, your future is over. Whew! Life lessons well earned. I wept for weeks with relief.

What I Learned

• The teen rehab industry is just that—an industry. I let our own path unfold, step by step. Sometimes working with pros was good, sometimes it wasn't.  Feeling into each moment and owning my fears led to the fastest growth for both of us. Be courageous. My favorite quote: "If you only do what you can do, you will never achieve more than you already have." —Shi Fu, Kung Fu Panda

• No amount of therapy, coaching, or money can force change. The kid has to want it. Let them forge their own path. Work on your own communication skills and hold space for them. In my darkest moments, my good friend Sharon would remind me, "We don’t know what skills will be needed in the future, but I bet your son does—because he’s following what calls to him now." And she was right, his teachers say that his work raises the bar for his classmates and has this deepness that makes them go WOW.

• Stay in a positive state. If you can't, work on your beliefs. Do your work. Everything you are experiencing is happening for your growth. Shift your reality first.

• Love is powerful. Let that be your center. Be vigilant and don't let fear be your center.  Love yourself and your healthy boundaries. Love your kid as they are and their unique journey. It is more than enough.

He’s still figuring himself out. We’re still figuring us out. We still have WTF you-can't-be-serious moments.  But as the Alpha and Omega Evelyn says, "though all this noise…I still want to be here with you. I will always, always, want to be here with you"

In any situation find the joy…and the joy will find you.