How a Foster Mom Changed Her Mind on Addiction: Christina Dent's Life-Changing Realization

“The addiction is not who you are. This is not your identity. You are a person first and you are loved by God.”

For years, Christina Dent viewed addiction the way many of us were taught to view it: as people being simply too lazy, too selfish, or too indifferent to stop. Then she became a foster mom—and what she saw changed everything.

When Christina met the birth mother of one of her foster sons—a woman struggling with addiction—she expected to encounter someone aloof, detached, and uninterested in her child. Instead, she encountered a mother who deeply loved her son but was trapped in cycles she could not break on her own.

That experience shattered Christina’s assumptions and launched her into years of research, advocacy, and conversations that radically changed the way she understood addiction, trauma, recovery, shame, and punishment.

That has led to a nonprofit called End It For Good and the award-winning book Curious: A Foster Mom’s Discovery of an Unexpected Solution to Drugs and Addiction. And today, Christina and I explore exactly what she learned and how it can especially help family members who are struggling to love someone with an addiction.

In fact, this conversation is deeply personal for me. That's because I get vulnerable about my own sister, my regrets over how I treated her addiction, and what it looks like to move from seeing addicts as adversaries to seeing them as image bearers in desperate need of true healing, truth, and grace.

This is one of the most nuanced and important conversations we’ve had on the podcast, and I'm excited for you to hear it.

Get Christina's book: Curious
Website: End It for Good
Get Gospel-centered addiction recovery resources and help: veritasrecovery.org
Follow me: @jonseidl
Order my new book, Confessions of a Christian Alcoholic

We explore:

— Why punishment and shame alone cannot heal addiction
— The difference between addiction as a “moral failure” and a “moral compass failure”
— How trauma, shame, and self-hatred fuel destructive cycles
— Christina’s foster care story and the birth mother who changed her perspective forever
— Why many families become adversaries instead of partners in recovery
— The role the church has played in misunderstanding addiction
— Why practical tools, therapy, treatment, and community matter alongside spiritual healing
— How churches can become places for Gospel-centered recovery instead of outsourcing it
— The devastating impact fentanyl has had on relapse and overdose deaths
— Why people in recovery are often some of the bravest and most compassionate people Christina has ever met
— The importance of helping people “run toward the light” instead of merely focusing on darkness

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