Beth Syverson found out her son Joey was addicted to drugs when he was in crisis at age 15. Now 3 years later, Beth is an outspoken advocate for compassionate boundaries and the need to destigmatize addiction and mental health issues.

Beth and her son created Safe Home Podcast in August 2021, while he was in recovery, as a way to help transform their pain into something that could help other families. Beth and Joey have talked about their own journeys in the podcast episodes, plus they’ve interviewed all kinds of inspiring guests — a man who recovered from a 3-decade addiction to meth, a mom who sent her teen to wilderness therapy, a cannabis scientist, a genderqueer musician, and an adoptee in reunion with her birth family, to name a few. Casie Fariello was our guest for Episode 19, where she explained the great work that Other Parents Like Me does.

When Beth isn’t working on Safe Home Podcast or speaking on the topics of adoption, trauma, and addiction, she is a music director at a Unitarian Universalist church, and she teaches college music classes to intellectually disabled students. She lives in Southern California with her wife Jan, 2 dogs, and 4 horses.