CLASSICS REVISITED: An Interview with Meme EnglishCLASSICS REVISITED: An Interview with Meme English
Coming Up for Air — Families Speak to Families about Addiction
Meme English joins the hosts to talk about the complicated realities of family life when addiction, trauma and child welfare systems collide. The conversation focuses on kinship care, generational trauma and how families can balance safety with maintaining meaningful connections.
30:55•10 Jul 2026
Family Trauma, Kinship Care and Keeping Connections Alive
Episode Overview
- Family systems affected by substance use are highly complex, with children, parents and grandparents all carrying different needs and histories.
- Many parents who lose custody due to substance use have significant trauma backgrounds and limited access to appropriate therapy.
- Kinship placements with grandparents can help children stay with familiar people, but may also add layers of guilt, conflict and divided loyalties.
- Maintaining some form of safe connection between children and biological parents, even after termination of rights, can reduce secrecy and future distress.
- Post-pandemic shortages of therapists and treatment options make engaging in the long-term work of trauma recovery even more difficult.
“Most of the parents who are now involved with substance and have lost their kids due to substance use are trauma survivors.”
What common struggles and victories in addiction recovery show up inside families? This classic conversation from *Coming Up for Air* puts a spotlight on the messy, emotional reality of substance use when children, parents and grandparents are all caught in the same storm. Guest Meme (Mimi) English, a former family therapist and expert witness in child welfare cases, shares what she’s seen in more than 120 court-involved families.
You’ll hear how substance use, poverty, incarceration and mental health issues all collide, and why she says simply “taking the kids away” rarely solves the deeper problems. Mimi talks through kinship care, grandparents stepping in, and the painful split when one grandparent is compassionate while the other is “done” and blaming. She describes how children are often stuck in the middle as adults argue, judge and sometimes bad‑mouth each other right in front of them.
As she puts it, “Most of the parents who are now involved with substance and have lost their kids are trauma survivors,” and many have never had proper therapy or support. Host Kayla Solomon brings a therapist’s lens to trauma, explaining how complex trauma can look like multiple other mental health conditions and why treatment is slow, demanding and hard to access, especially after the pandemic.
Together with co-host Laurie McDougall, they stress the need to keep connections alive between children and parents when it’s safe to do so, even if parental rights are terminated. You’ll get a clear sense of just how non‑black‑and‑white these situations are: competing needs, generational trauma, overstretched systems, and social workers who may lack clinical training.
Yet there’s also quiet hope in stories of parents in solid sobriety, supportive recovery households, and families who manage to hold safety, boundaries and love in the same hand. If you’re part of a family affected by addiction, this episode may help you feel less alone and spark questions about what “doing the right thing” really looks like for everyone involved.
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