Linda Easto

Family Recovery Coach

Qualifications and experience

Linda has 25 years’ experience of supporting an addicted son. For 18 of those years, she was flying solo, initially not understanding what she was dealing with. She researched and educated herself about addiction but recognised she needed support as her mental health was being affected. In July 2013 she found Burton Addiction Centres Family Group, and this is where her recovery started as she had become addicted to her addicted son. Here she learned about enabling, co-dependency, boundaries, the importance of her self-care, and how to support her addicted son in the right way. Her passion to help others in her situation was born from her lived experience and lack of community support for families. In 2021 a community recovery charity, Better Way Recovery in Lichfield, asked Linda to facilitate a weekly Family Support Group for them, which she continues to do. It was at one of Better Way Recovery events in 2022 that she met the owner of The Lighthouse, who asked her if she would provide Family Support via Zoom for The Lighthouse in Southend -on-Sea. In 2023, Dilemma Charity was set up to support families with addicted loved ones in the Lichfield and Tamworth, Staffordshire area. There are currently 3 peer to peer support groups each week, and the families are taught how to support the addict in a different way, a way that works, how important self-care is, why boundaries are important, how to stop enabling the addict, what co-dependency is, why you need Plan B, why the addict needs consequences, and much, much more. Linda is also a qualified Health and Wellbeing Coach.

Working with addiction

Supporting her son through 25 years of addiction, Linda experienced all aspects of addiction – drug addiction, alcoholism, prescription drug addiction, and at times all 3 together. She quickly recognised it was like having two people in the same body – her son, and the addict. She learned to respond differently to whoever she was presented with. If it was her son, her response was completely different to if it was the addict. The hardest thing to learn is to detach with love because detaching with love means you have to go against your human instinct to nurture and care for someone who is ill. The illness of addiction can only be treated by professionals as the addicts need therapy and long term support.

Working at the lighthouse

Linda has worked at The Lighthouse since 2022, and facilitates a 12 week rolling program via an online Family Support Group every Monday evening. The program educates and supports families through their journey of supporting an addicted loved one. Each week a different subject is covered to teach families how to support their addicted loved one in a different, and why their self-care is so important. Subjects include What is Addiction?, Enabling, Boundaries, Consequences, Co-dependency, feelings and emotions, supporting the right way and more.

Hobbies and interests

Linda’s interests are self-development, reading, drawing and painting, watching movies, health and wellbeing.