As I struggle with the upcoming 3rd anniversary of Sam's death, I am trying to stay grounded by remembering how difficult the end of his life was.   The only time I ever felt "safe" from potential bad news was when I was out of cell phone reception.   It felt normal at the time but it was far from it.  Sam didn't leave a good life behind, he left pain, suffering, anxiety, and a crippling addiction that he could not see his way out of.  He had given up. As his mom,  even in my deepest grief,  I can't wish he were back in such agony.    Sometimes it's important to be realistic.   I lost a wonderful son who had become incapacitated by the same drugs that are causing a worldwide epidemic.    

The anniversary of losing a child is so much more than just a date.  It involves too much familiarity with everything about the season,  recognizing the before and after, and the vulnerability of life.    One minute our children were here, the next they were gone.   Often, as time goes on,  we learn to partially escape the excruciating daily pain with the changes of seasons and activities, but only until our season comes back around.   And it always does. This episode is about dealing with the upcoming 3rd anniversary of Sam's death.    My thoughts, feelings, and how I am trying to support myself through this time of year.     

I am just crawling back out of one of my darkest times.   We are nearing the 3rd anniversary of Sam's death and my heart felt unbearably heavy and sad.   It felt like it was almost time to give up and succumb to a loss I cannot change.   To lie in bed and ruminate my days away again.   But, then I realized that while I can't bring Sam back, it will always be up to me to find my way back into the light.    I think this is true in all areas of life.  Ultimately, we have to learn to depend on ourselves.     It's easy to get stuck in the rut of pain because we are creatures of habit and tend to fall back into the same grooves every day.    If we take in the same ideas and allow ourselves to become stale in our daily activities, we stay stuck.   Our brain cannot override what our body and mind are succumbing to.    To effect change and move forward, we have to be willing to change our forcus and behavior, even in the smallest ways.    It starts with the content we allow into our lives and how we choose to spend our time.    Same in, same out.   If we want different outcomes, we need to plant new seeds.❤️ In today's episode, I discuss my decision to feel better after falling back into a dark and oppressive state of mind and the steps I took to do so.  

Sam told me he would never forgive me for turning him in when he robbed a bank but I was positive he would.    I knew that as soon as he got sober, he would understand that I did what I had to save his life.   I wish I could say that I was successful, but he died first.    This episode is about living with unresoved conflict when we lose a son or daughter to addiction.     When we no longer have the opportunity to work through these struggles in realtime with our child, it's important that we use common sense to resolve them within ourselves.💕

Gratitude is most important during the times it's the hardest to feel. such as during great loss and tragedy.   However, finding gratitude for what we once had, and what we still have now, is a scientifically proven tp create a profound difference in our life by the simple act of shifting our focus.      In this episode, I talk about why gratitude is important, how it has helped me in my grief, 3 specific reasons it's important, and 2 ways to tap into a gratitude practice of your own. Gratitude doesn't diminish our grief or our child's death,  it simply means that we are choosing to look through a lense that not only honors our loss, but also acknowledges what we still have to be thankful for. We aren't seeking to replace our grief with our gratitude, but rather to support it.💕  

I recently heard a metaphor that I want to share:  Life is like ascending a spiral staircase and because of this, we keep revisiting the same core problems and  issues time and again.      They may not always look the same, but they often hold the same roots.    Consequently, when we see ourselves faced with the same type of issues over and over, it's often easy to miss how much we have grown, and it's also very important not to.     The grief of losing a child becomes our deepest wound and one we will never, or never even ever want to, walk away from.     As we face this trauma over and over again,  there are going to be times that we feel like we have not moved forward at all.    This episode is about keeping faith in the process because as long as we are taking the correct actions, we are moving forward, even during the times we don't feel it.💕 

When I started this podcast, my intention was to talk more about Sam's addiction and death than I have, but that was before I realized how important my focus is as I move forward with grief.   If I zero in on the tragedy that I cannot change or undo, I am surrendering the valuable time I have left here, whereas If I focus on healing, knowing that I will ALWAYS carry this grief, I am developing the tools I need to make the burden of losing Sam lighter.    What we focus on is crucial to the future we create for ourselves.    If we want to feel better and become stronger, we need to focus on what we can control, which is how we choose to live the rest of our lives.    Our grief of losing a son or daughter takes up tremendous amounts of energy in our lives, whether we are looking directly at it our not.  When we shift our gaze forward, we are not escaping our grief,  we are arming ourselves to live with it.💕

Losing a child is such a torturous journey that If we wait until we feel like moving forward into healing, some of us may never get there.    This is why I believe that instead of waiting until we feel like it, we should wait only until we are capable, whether we feel like it or not.  In this episode, I talk about why we need to push ourselves into the process when we can and three specific reasons why this will benefit us in the long run.💕  

When Sam died, I was surprised to notice all of my relationships were  shifting.   Some became closer and some more distant.   At first I felt hurt and misunderstood but I have learned quite a lot in the past 33 months. In this episode, I discuss why our relationships naturally change when we lose a child, my perspective on this shift, and how I choose to approach it.  I also talk about how my family of origin has felt the pain of losing Sam and of watching my family grieve and how they have shown up for me in exactly the way I have needed them to.

When I think about Sam's death, which is large portions of every single day, it's easy for me to get locked into one specific cause or reason for it.   The problem with this is that it causes me to focus too heavily on one area, blame myself or others, and obsess on a problem I can not cure. In this episode, I discuss why it's important to remember how complex our son or daughter's addiction and death really is and why it's important to acknowledge the multitude of factors that went into losing them. 💕

Shame can be a good emotion if it is used to create change but most of us hold on to it long after the lesson has been learned and we suffer long term consequences because of it. In this episode, I discuss 3 aspects of Sam's death that I still carry shame about along with the logical arguments I use to help myself feel better.    It's an ongoing battle but I fight daily because I see shame ruin too many lives.    I also talk about why shame is a very selfish emotion to hold on to, how it keeps us stuck,  and how we can better use our energy to serve others. Thanks for listening.

Nighttime is often the most vulnerable time for me because I am all alone with my baseline pain of losing Sam and I cannot escape my own mind and emotions.   I am faced with the reality that daytime distracts me from and I tend to question myself, where I went wrong, and how this can possibly true.    It's as if the dark dives clarity to what the light shields.     

"We can either compromise for happiness or settle into misery."  I heard this phrase about relationships on another podcast and I believe this idea supports the relationship we have with our grief as well.    In today's episode,  I discuss what ]it looks like to find happiness through compromise rather than settling into misery and why I think acceptance IS the compromise we need to make.

One of the harshest realities I have had to face since losing Sam is that I live under the glass ceiling of grief now.   My best days and most fantastic experiences will never be as purely joyful as they used to be.   They start that way and my excitement is real,  but the joy I feel is forever anchored in the sorrow of Sam's absence.   This is part of losing a child.   I believe that it is a grief that we do not overcome, we can only learn to manage, within the confines of our own life and personality.    I live big and I grieve hard.  Ironically, the two inexplicably show up together frequently, creating huge confusing emotions of gratitude for life and profound grief at the same time, and this is what today's episode is about.💕

In my opinion, any emotion we carry after losing a Son or a daughter is valid.  I know that anger is a common emotion after losing a kid to addiction because there is so much chaos and disbelief that we could not save them, but I have never felt angry towards Sam, just fear that I would lose him. In this episode, I discuss why I am not angry at Sam, how much I identify with him, and why I think the cops that arrested him that night could have done a better job than to drop him off at the train station with no shoes or warm clothes on a sub-zero night.    As a society, we have to be better than this.    If either cop had known Sam or had true compassion, things could have turned out differently.   I live with so much confusion and pain but I don't blame Sam, I blame the perfect storm that became his life and took him from me.   I have lots of unanswered questions,  no gains from figuring them out, and this is another stifling and tragic part of losing him to addiction.

One of the emotions I have always struggled with is the shame.   I have made plenty of mistakes in my life and when they happened, I would always try to explain, excuse, and then use super human strength to rectify my wrongs.    I could not bear the thought of people thinking poorly of me for being irresponsible and not getting things done.   Being the black sheep of a highly functioning family, It is a struggle I have lived with forever.  In this episode, I discuss a mistake I recently made, the shame it brought me, and how I was able to help me accept and my human imperfection and give myself grace to move forward. We don't have to lose a child to face the harsh consequences of the need to be perfect but sometimes it takes something like this to remind us that we are here to connect and to love, not to convince the world that we live a perfect life. 

Running was an activity I could always count on before Sam died.  For nearly 40 years, I had run through anxiety, depression, stress, and most other difficult times.   It had always provided me with solace, energy, adventure, and a clear mind. After Sam died, I could not run.   I would have expected it to be something that would help me and instead, I was terrified of it.   Starting over, the heavy breathing, the facing of life on the trail.   All of it.   I could not do it. A few weeks ago, however, I decided to start again.  In this episode, I discuss why and how I have begun the process of starting over again, 3 benefits I have received in 2 short weeks, and 3 suggestions for starting back up with a passion, hobby, interest, or sport after losing a son or daughter.     

Losing a child is the hardest thing a parent will ever go through and navigating it as a couple most certainly places tremendous strain on a relationship.   I have been divorced for many years and was not in a relationship when Sam died.    In this episode, I discuss some of the potential benefits and drawbacks in dealing with Sam's death without a partner and why being alone during this time, (while sounding lonely and frightening),  has worked for me.

When we lose a child, we are confronted with how dark and tragic life can become in one moment of time, because we have lived through it.   The rest of the world knows this too, intellectually, but now that we have gone through the worst, it's hard to trust life again.    The fear of another phone call or knock on the door can be stifling.    It's important to acknowledge and manage our fear of what lies ahead and also stand strong in our resilience at the same time and that is what today's episode is about.  

In this Episode I discuss why it's important to indentify our triggers,  the really simple way to do so,  and how to use this knowledge to help us in our grief.     When we acknowledge that our triggers are very potent and continuously have to be monitored as we heal, we can tap into the power of calling them out as we grow stronger over time. Thanks for listening.