The Day I Said No: A mother's painful journey of loving a daughter through addiction and the recovery community support that followed

June 29, 2026

Tammy Adler Foeller, Author, Founder & Executive Director, OpenDoor Women's Recovery Alliance

Sandy Rivers, Subject Matter Expert

There is a pain that comes with watching your child disappear into addiction that I cannot fully put into words. I have tried. I sat with it, prayed through it, and wept until I had nothing left. And still, language fails it.

It is not grief exactly, because she was still alive. It is not fear exactly, though fear was often there, coiled and waiting. It is something that lives beneath both. It is a specific, excruciating anguish, one known only to parents who have watched their child succumb to the agonizing disease of addiction.

That is what happened with my daughter, Stephanie.

I watched her change, physically, and in every other way. The daughter I knew, her laugh, her face, her personality, her beautiful blue eyes…. slowly replaced by something dark the disease had put in her place. I didn't know how to process what I was seeing. I didn't know what to do with the pain. I only knew it was the heaviest thing I had ever carried. And I didn't want anyone to know. So, I carried it in silence.

The Day Everything Broke Open 

There came a day, one I will never forget, when she was in Fort Lauderdale, using illicit drugs again. Homeless. No money. No car. No job. No friends. Nothing. 

It still takes me to my knees when I envision it.

I was on the other end of a phone call, broken open myself, finally understanding something I had fought against for years.

My help had become harmful. Every hotel room I paid for. Every dollar I sent. Every rescue I mounted. All of it had kept her from something she needed more than me. Something greater than anything I could provide. She needed to surrender… in a way no one else could for her.

And I, too, needed to surrender.

By the Grace of God, I said "No."

No, I would not send money. No, I would not pay for a hotel. No, I would not rescue her one more time. I told her I loved her. I told her that my "helping" was hurting her. And then I hung up the phone. I curled up into a ball. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I couldn't function. I became completely despondent. 

Cried for Three Days

I cried because I knew how this story could end. I knew the statistics. I knew the epidemic was real. I knew that a young woman alone, homeless, in active addiction, with nothing, is vulnerable.

I was not naive about what I had done. I had made the hardest decision of my life, and I had to live inside the uncertainty of whether it was the right one. That is a loneliness I would not wish on anyone.

Three days went by. Silence. Pain. Planning her funeral in my mind. And then I received an unexpected phone call. It was my beloved Stephanie. She had detoxed from heroin by herself. She had found a safe place to stay. She told me she wasn't going to use that day. She had never said that before. I knew things were different.  

It wasn't another treatment program that changed everything. It wasn't the director who told me I was letting her die by not sending her back to treatment, something I now understand as manipulation to pay for more treatment. 

Stephanie detoxed on her own. Then she found sober living. 

And then, slowly, painfully, courageously, she built a community. Real relationships.People who showed up for her. A life, constructed piece by piece, within a network of human beings who cared about whether she made it. That was what saved my daughter. No information. Not another intervention. No more treatment.

I remember praying desperately for someone, anyone, to step into Stephanie's life and help her find her way back. I prayed for a stranger who would care, who would see her humanity beneath the addiction, who would walk beside her when our family felt exhausted, afraid, and out of answers.

OpenDoor Women's Recovery Alliance: Recovery Community Support 

Another mom and I were desperate for our daughters to stop using drugs. We endured the suffering that comes when a loved one is drowning in the depths of addiction. Both of us knew the heartache and loneliness of having daughters addicted to drugs. Two beautiful girls from the suburbs. From "good" families, "good" neighborhoods, "good" schools, "good" upbringing. Both our families suffered in silence. And in isolation.

Yet, it is these secrets that unite us in a friendship of shared pain. Shared uncertainty. Shared sadness. Shared isolation. And while our beautiful daughters were spiraling in the depths of addiction and all the ugliness that comes with it, we had each other to dig out of the solitude and darkness. And we were trapped, unable to help them. And scared not to help them.

We decided we wanted to do something for our community suffering from the opioid crisis, besides focusing on our own pain. We reached out to another mom for guidance. She, too, had been impacted by addiction and has dedicated her life to our community. Her son was a college student who was kidnapped and murdered by two young men high on crack.

There are no words in the world to describe that kind of piercing pain. No words.

Instead of defining this third mom as a victim herself, she has spent her life serving children like the ones who murdered her son. She has tirelessly embraced children who are growing up in neighborhoods riddled with guns, drugs, violence, neglect, and abuse in Columbus, Ohio, as well as Steubenville, Ohio, and Cleveland, Ohio. She not only offered us guidance, but she also became the third founding member of OpenDoor-Columbus.

Soon after the three of us committed to helping our community, I had a chance meeting with Tina Husted, who introduced me to the Open Table Model ™of Change. This Model has been used across the country for just under 20 years, but was not being utilized for people in recovery from addiction. OpenDoor-Columbus became a licensed user, and we became pioneers in providing Tables to women in this population.

Every week, our volunteers step into the lives of women they did not previously know and choose to walk alongside them with consistency, compassion, accountability, and hope. They become the strangers that frightened mothers pray for in the middle of the night. The people who show up. The people who stay. The people who remind women that they are still worthy of love, dignity, and connection as they rebuild their lives.

I want to tell you about one woman, I'll call her Maria. Maria came to OpenDoor out of the justice system,  unemployed, without support, carrying felony convictions that had sealed doors shut all around her. She had nothing waiting for her, no safety net. No community. No reason, from the outside, to believe things could really change.

Today, Maria lives with other women in recovery. She works in the recovery field. She is preparing to become a volunteer with OpenDoor — to be for another woman what someone was for her. She got her driver's license back. She bought a car. She had her felonies expunged.

Doors that addiction and the justice system had closed permanently, they are open again. That is what unconditional support can do. That is what the recovery support community does. I know, because it is what the community did for my beautiful daughter, Stephanie.

Read: Prescribing Dependency: The System Behind America's Opioid Crisis 

Where Is My Daughter Today?

My daughter is married. She has two beautiful children and a husband who loves her. She has made her home in Florida, building a life I once thought I would never see. What were the lessons learned?

When my heart aches because I miss her, and it does, the way a mother's heart always aches across the miles, I stop. And I thank God. For the courage He gave me to stop enabling. For the community that wrapped around my daughter when I could not. For her sobriety, which she fought for and earned and carries with grace. How would you handle it differently now that you have more experience? Enabling has become a derogatory term, and you were fortunate that it turned out the way it did. What message can you give other families? Is there learning you want to share? If your service had been available to Stephanie, how could it have helped?

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Read Tammy's bio by clicking her icon at the start of this article.

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