The book
Stay with the Moment
Loving Your Adult Child Through Addiction and Recovery — When Everything You Want to Do Is Wrong
by J.S. Ashworth
About the book
What Do You Do When Everything You Want to Do Is Wrong?
When your adult child is struggling with addiction, how do you know when you’re helping—and when you’re making things worse?
You love them. You want to protect them. You want to fix whatever is wrong.
But what happens when love isn’t enough?
Stay with the Moment is one father’s account of four years spent trying to save his son, and the difficult realization that loving someone and rescuing them are not always the same thing.
It is a story about fear, hope, money, boundaries, marriage, family, and learning how to support someone you love without losing yourself.
Through twenty-one lessons learned along the way, J.S. Ashworth shares what worked, what didn’t, and what he is still learning.
This isn’t a book about how to fix your adult child.
It’s about how to stop losing yourself while loving them.
Stay with the Moment.Let tomorrow arrive.
Inside the Book
A father’s journey from trying to fix everything to learning how to live alongside what he cannot control.
Part One
Beginning
Before addiction, there was a son.
Meet the boy, the young man, and the family before addiction changed their lives. Discover how something so serious can enter a family gradually, even when everything once seemed to be going right.
Part Two
Understanding
When helping becomes rescuing.
Explore the difficult lessons of addiction: what parents didn’t cause, cannot control, and cannot cure. The search for treatment, the money spent, and the painful realization that providing safety and support cannot guarantee recovery.
Part Three
Responding
Learning to act from reality rather than fear.
When every unanswered call feels like an emergency, how do you know what to do? This section explores fear, the instinct to prevent every fall, and the difference between supporting recovery and making addiction easier.
Part Four
Releasing
You can love someone without losing yourself.
A father’s account of reaching his own limits. Learning that boundaries are not punishments, that another person’s decisions cannot become your entire responsibility, and that your own life still deserves attention.
Part Five
Reflecting
Remember the people who are still there.
Addiction affects more than the person experiencing it. This section looks at the other children, the marriage, the friendships, and the community that can quietly disappear from view when one person’s crisis takes over a family.
Part Six
Accepting
Keep the hope. Know the truth.
Learning to see the person beyond the addiction, rebuild trust through actions, and allow a good day to be a good day. Accepting that you can love someone completely without knowing how their story will end.
Stay with the moment. Let tomorrow arrive.
A Spoken Introduction to the Book
I Don’t Know How This Ends
A father’s journey through fear, love, and learning to live with uncertainty.
In the author's words
A Glimpse Inside the Book
Every chapter begins somewhere. Here are the opening words of each, a small glimpse into the story that follows.
Part One
Beginning
1.Meet My Son Before You Meet His Addiction
“Before addiction, my son was the kind of person you noticed. When he was about four, he loved airplanes…”
2.When It Shows Up in Your Family
“I wish I could tell you there was a moment when I knew. A phone call. A discovery…”
Part Two
Understanding
3.Didn’t Cause It, Can’t Control It, Can’t Cure It
“We were about a year into this before I first heard the three C’s. Someone told us about Nar-Anon…”
4.Where Love Ends and Rescue Begins
“Love and rescue are not the same thing. But when it is your child, they can feel exactly the same…”
5.You Cannot Spend Someone Into Recovery
“I know exactly how much money I spent trying to help my son. Two hundred and fourteen thousand, seven hundred and five dollars…”
6.The Search for the Right Solution
“I approached addiction the way I had approached almost every other difficult problem in my life. I assumed there was an answer…”
7.A Safe Place Is Not the Same as Recovery
“Something happens to you when your child is finally somewhere safe. You breathe. You sleep…”
Part Three
Responding
8.When Fear Feels Like Fact
“There were real crises, and I need to start there. Otherwise, what I’m about to describe will sound irrational…”
9.Stop Breaking Every Fall
“For years, whenever my son began to fall, I tried to catch him. That’s what fathers do…”
10.Support Recovery, Not Addiction
“Support recovery, not addiction. It sounds obvious. Then try doing it…”
Part Four
Releasing
11.I Was Disappearing Inside His Addiction
“For a long time, I believed the problem in our family was my son’s addiction. It took me much longer to see what was happening to me…”
12.The Moment I Couldn’t Hold Any More
“One night, I got in my car and drove to the nearest truck stop. I pulled in, and my body was shaking…”
13.Boundaries Are Something I Do
“We had talked about boundaries many times before. We had threatened them, made them, and changed them…”
Part Five
Reflecting
14.Your Other Children
“I have two children. For about four years, I mostly parented one of them…”
15.Your Marriage
“There is something else I wish someone had told me much earlier. Remember your marriage…”
16.Your Community
“For a long time, we didn’t tell people. You put the brave face on, because that is who we had always been…”
Part Six
Accepting
17.Don’t Hold Their Past Against Them
“Meet my son again. Not his addiction. Him…”
18.Dad, Read Your Damn Book
“Seven weeks ago, my phone went off at three in the morning. It was his house manager texting me…”
19.Keep the Hope. Know the Truth.
“I wish I could end this book by telling you how everything turned out. I can’t…”
Looking for more? Read the reflections written alongside the book.
The Twenty-One Lessons Learned
Four years of lessons. Shared freely with anyone who might need them.
You can walk beside their path.
You cannot walk it for them.
From Stay with the Moment
Stay connected
The Journey Continues.
The book is finished. The journey isn’t.
Life continues, bringing new moments, challenges, and unexpected lessons. I’ll share some of those moments here—the experiences, reflections, and everyday stories that remind us we’re all still learning.
If you’d like to follow along, you’re welcome here.