Grieving Out Loud: A Mother Coping with Loss in the Opioid Epidemic

For the next five weeks, your host, Angela Kennecke, will be bringing you conversations that she had with different speakers and authors at the Bereaved Parents USA Conference in St. Louis in July. She recorded podcasts with women who have dealt with their own grief and have transformed it into helping others cope. We are kicking off this series with Diane Bergeron and coping with grief. One of he...

It’s becoming an all-too-common story; a young person buys a pill via social media that turns out to be 100 percent fentanyl. Laura Didier’s 17-year-old son, Zach, was experimenting with a couple of pills when he made this fatal mistake. Now Laura is turning her heartbreak into action through advocacy work and helping other parents who’ve lost children to fentanyl poisoning through the organizatio...

Lana Olshove is among the more than one million grandparents raising a grandchild due to the drug epidemic. That grandchild is Maddie, who came to live with her five years ago when she was in kindergarten. Lana's son is currently in prison for meth, and Maddie's mother, who also suffered from substance use disorder, was murdered by another man when Maddie was four years old.  Lana and Ma...

Women are drinking more than ever before, as much as men for the first time in history. Dr. Jessica Mellinger says today’s stressors make women an easy target by the alcohol industry. Dr. Mellinger is a liver doctor at the University of Michigan who sees more young women with liver disease, and she says a woman who drinks like a man gets sicker, faster. She hopes educating women about what moderat...

Susan Bartz Herrick’s only child Luke was “set up” for addiction due to several factors while still in his teens. He had years of sobriety and accomplishments but experienced setback after setback. On August 28th, 2021, Susan lost her 30-year-old son, Luke, to fentanyl poisoning. She is now speaking out to tell Luke’s story and advocate for substance use disorder. Soon, Susan will release a book a...

Maryrose Fealey gained TikTok fame as she shared her relationship with her brother, Ian, who suffers from opioid use disorder, through a series of raw videos. Maryrose’s efforts to get Ian off substances and into recovery are shown in a gritty Brut Documentary that followed Ian and Maryrose for 21 days while he suffered through withdrawals and cravings. Maryrose is the founder of the 4 The Younger...

To say that Morgan Godvin has had an unconventional life is an understatement. Morgan grew up with two mothers and always knew that her father was a sperm donor. She was very bright and excelled in school, but an emptiness inside, along with being bullied, led her to drugs. Addiction also ran in her family. She lost her mother and several close friends to overdose. Eventually, Morgan wound up in p...

Rod Courtney was a probation and parole officer and trained social worker. But even with that experience, Rod Courtney couldn’t save his son. Chad, who was 38, died of fentanyl poisoning in 2016. Following his son’s death, Rod has dedicated his life to helping those who suffer from substance use disorder and their families. Rod’s advocacy work includes serving as Executive Director of CRUSH of Iow...

The fact that Garrett Sheppard is alive at all is a miracle. Garrett struggles with several mental conditions from anxiety to depression to PTSD and  ADHD. He started using meth at a young age, and pretty soon it didn't matter what kind of drug he took, he couldn’t live without them. Sheppard has a long list of felonies on his record and tried to complete suicide multiple times. However, toda...

Ashley Bernardi lost her father at 11 years old.  She has also dealt with a chronic illness. During the pandemic, Ashley spent time writing and interviewing some of the top experts in grief, PTSD, and postpartum depression and created her book, Authentic Power. Whether you are going through death, divorce, illness, or any life adversity, the book provides the tools to teach you how to move through...

Jessica Duenas was Kentucky's teacher of the year in 2019. But she had a dark secret that no one would have imagined. She was an active alcoholic that couldn’t survive a day without drinking.  Once she decided to get help, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. After getting sober, Jessica entered into a new relationship with a man named Ian, who was in recovery from opioid addiction. In Ap...

She's the Faith Hill of Missouri, not Nashville. Faith used meth for six years, starting at age 14, and lost all of her teeth because of it. After finding recovery, Faith decided to document her journey, from having no teeth to what it was like to have dentures, on social media. Faith’s handle on TikTok is “I am toothless and ruthless” and she has nearly two million followers to date.  Her li...

Author Kathleen Glasgow drew upon her own experiences as a teenager to write her first best-selling book, Girl in Pieces , which covered tough topics such as self-harm and depression. She has also poignantly dealt with other difficult subjects in her books, written for young adults, including how addiction affects the entire family, to coping with the loss of a loved one. Kathleen and Angela have...

On February 7, 2021, a drug dealer reached out to 16-year-old Sammy Chapman on Snapchat and delivered a deadly dose of fentanyl to his Los Angeles home. Sammy's story went viral after his parents shared it because his mom, Dr. Laura Berman, is a nationally known relationship expert and TV host. She and her husband, Sam Chapman, are doing all they can to warn parents and hold social media comp...

You may recognize Mary Bono, as the widow of Sonny Bono who filled his seat in Congress and then went on to serve nearly 15 years as a California representative. Mary was on the forefront, warning about the opioid epidemic in the early 2,000s.  She's had family members deal with opioid addiction who have since found recovery.  Mary is now a tireless advocate as Chairman of the Board of Commun...

Dr. Arun Gupta wrote the book, The Preventable Epidemic: A Frontline Doctor’s Experience and Recommendations to Resolve America’s Opioid Crisis. Dr. Gupta says that after specializing in addiction medicine for the last 15 years, the country must do more to train and incentivize physicians to go into addiction medicine, as well as promote medically assisted treatment for substance use disorder and...

Denise Roberts’ two sons, Matthew and Dillan, were born on the same day, four years apart. She was married to her husband, Tom, for ten years when he had a heart attack at age 42 and died. They were already trying to get her son, Dillan, who was 17 at the time, help for substance use disorder. Dillan went through treatment three times, but he died two years later from a heroin overdose. His older...

A former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his family were not immune to the overdose epidemic. Retired four-star Navy Admiral James "Sandy" Winnefeld has become an influential advocate to end overdoses after the loss of his 19-year-old son, Jonathan. He and his wife, Mary, started the Stop the Addiction Fatality Epidemic, or SAFE Project, a non-profit, that much like Emily&...

Dr. Melissa Dittberner’s or "Dr. Mo," as she is known to her students, began using meth at age 14. Dr. Mo has had such a storied life. After giving up methamphetamines when she became a mom and eventually a single mom, she turned to alcohol. This high-school dropout was a welder and roller derby queen, before eventually earning her Ph. D. in addiction studies. She has a deep understandin...

Jeff Johnston has experienced compound loss, first his 23-year-old son to fentanyl poisoning in 2016, and now most recently his wife of 21 years, to addiction. But Jeff is “Living Undeterred,” by loss, doing what he can to change the narrative in this country when it comes to mental health, overdose, and addiction. Jeff is launching the “Living Undeterred” tour this spring, where he hopes to raise...

Your host, Angela Kennecke,  first met Journalist and Author, Sam Quinones, when he spoke at an Opioid Summit in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after writing his best-selling book, Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opiate Epidemic. Now his latest book, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, looks at how much the drug market has changed and how deadly and...

22-year-old Morgan was a couple of years younger than Emily, but went to the same high school and was part of the gymnastics team. She says Emily was always encouraging her.  Morgan began drinking and smoking college and then moved on to harder drugs. Morgan says, " I would use a lot. It wasn’t just a small amount, it was a large amount and I could never have enough. I always needed more. Whe...

Dave and Janette Kucera's daughter, 22-year-old Shayla, died just 15 months after Emily. They didn’t have any idea that Shayla was using heroin until she was in a car crash months before her death.  The Kuceras talk about Shayla's rebellious teenage years. And just like Emily, Shayla also left behind younger siblings who now have their own grief to deal with.  The man accused of providin...

Pj Champion Sallie started the Facebook group #NotInVain four years ago following the death of her 24-year-old daughter, Christina, in 2017. Tragically, Pj’s 31-year-old daughter, Ashley, also died of fentanyl poisoning on January 1st of this year. She now joins the surprisingly high number of parents who have lost more than one child to overdose. She wrote in Ashley’s obituary :  “My grieving mot...

Janet Ropp's 19-year-old son, James, died October 13, 2018, from a Xanax overdose. James had struggled with addiction throughout his teenage years. He had been diagnosed with ADHD at a young age and his mother believes he was self-medicating with illicit drugs. Janet is marking the third anniversary of James' death by sharing what she has learned about grief and how to cope.  She took cl...