Why You Have to Connect Before You Correct — and How to Break Generational Patterns

If you have a daughter and a relationship that feels like it is missing something you can't quite name, this episode of Hopestream may be the conversation you have been waiting for. Brenda Zane talks with Lacey Tezino, founder of Passport Journeys and author of Therapy After Mom Died, about adoption, reunion, generational patterns around alcohol, and the single insight that changed how she parents: you have to connect before you correct. A reunion nobody was prepared for Lacey grew up being told her biological mother had died. When she was 19 and hungover on another motherless Mother's Day, she called information on a whim. Her mother picked up the phone. What followed was a decade-long relationship she describes as beautiful, heartbreaking, and nothing she was prepared for. 'When she picked up the phone and I heard her voice for the very first time at 19 years old, and me having to say like, "I think I'm your daughter," was like beyond. Like the little emoji with the brain exploding. There's like no words, no explanation for just like telling someone at that point, like, you know, on the phone, "I think I'm your daughter," is wild.' — Lacey Tezino The reunion gave Lacey something she had never had: a sense of being tethered to a parent. But it also placed enormous expectations on a woman who was unprepared for a daughter to suddenly arrive in her life. They struggled, cycled through the same conversations, and leaned heavily on alcohol to get anywhere honest together. How alcohol became the bridge and the barrier Both of Lacey's biological parents were daily drinkers. Drinking was the connection point she and her mother shared from the start. Margaritas on Friday nights, wine over hard conversations, tequila lowering the barriers so they could finally say what they meant. When her mother received a stage four lung cancer diagnosis, urgency replaced alcohol as the catalyst for honesty. Sitting through chemo appointments, they finally asked the hard questions. Lacey found herself wondering: why did it take running out of time to get there? That question became the seed of her life's work. What parents model without realizing it Lacey describes a Friday night ritual she could not unsee once she saw it. She and her husband both had high-pressure jobs. Every week they would pick up the kids, head to the Mexican restaurant, hand the children toys to keep them busy, and order margaritas. As the drinks arrived, the tension left their bodies. The kids watched every bit of it. 'Was I modeling to them that I needed that to bring the day down, to now be able to have this fun connection with them? And I was just like... it started making me really sad, to be honest. It made me super sad, and I had a lot of guilt.' — Lacey Tezino She also recalled coming home from a stressful day and telling her kids, oh my gosh, mom needs a glass of wine, and then I can deal with blah blah blah. It never occurred to her in that moment that this framing might be quietly teaching her children something about what alcohol is for. Seeing her own parents through this lens had already given her a preview of where that road leads. The gap between what moms believe and what daughters feel Through Passport Journeys, Lacey now works with mothers and daughters using an eight-question relationship scale that measures trust, respect, and quality time at the start of a program and again at three and six months. The pattern she keeps finding is both surprising and painful. On the question I feel like I understand my daughter, mothers almost always score themselves high. On the mirror question, I feel understood by my mother, daughters score it low. They are passing ships, each convinced the other has the full picture, each missing the other entirely. The teen years are particularly damaging: hormonal, identity-laden, and almost impossible to navigate without some outside support. But the clients who show up most often at Passport Journeys are 30- to 40-year-old daughters who want to revisit those years with a therapist present. They are not there because love is absent. They are there because healing never happened. Connect before you correct The principle that anchors everything Lacey does came from one of her therapists. A lot of parents try to fix or correct their child, the therapist explained, but they are not connected to their child first. The structured bonding activities Passport Journeys assigns between therapy sessions are not just busywork: they are building the safety that makes correction possible. You have to connect before you correct, the therapist said. And Lacey heard it as both a parenting truth and a generational one. Her mother could not correct what she did not understand. Lacey could not heal what she could not name. Therapy, structured connection, and the courage to ask hard questions before time runs out: that is the through line of this episode, and of Lacey's work in the world.