Sam Was Here: Losing My Son to Addiction

Watching other Parent's grieve a lost child is even more painful after losing my own.  This episode is a reflection of the beginning and also a discussion of what helped me in the beginning and an acknowledgement of how my own life has changed.   Unfortunately, I had some recording errors and had to republish this episode, no intro on this one!  Thank you for listening.  

I have found that I haven't known what is going to help me move forward in my grief until it does.   Much of my healing comes in retrospect:  This worked, that didn't, and so on.    Six months before Sam died, he broke into my home by smashing out one of my windows and crawling through.    I put a piece of styrofoam in that window and kept it that way for nearly 4 years.   Something held me back f...

Today's Episode is about gratitude because I think it is the defining emotion of my healing.  Finding gratitude outside of our grief helps us to and shift our mind into a different perspective. I will NEVER feel gratitude about the death of my son but I will ALWAYS seek to find it in other areas of my life and let it help lift me out of despair.   Today, I will go over a few of the well known bene...

After taking a couple of months off podcasting, I have realized that I am at a critical junction in healing from Sam's death.    I now want to focus more on healing and what I learned from Sam's life than the tragedy of his death.    This is a huge mountain to climb but after more than 3 years in grief, it's clear to me that when we lose a son or daughter, it's easy to get locked in on a life gone...

Sam's body was discovered on November 13th, 2022, and his funeral was on the 20th.    The anniversary of losing a child never gets easier.   The trauma lives in our bodies.    In today's episode, I share memories and thoughts from that impossible week, my struggle with grieving alone,  and my heartfelt decision to bring a 4-legged companion back into my life. The triggers and grief of losing a chi...

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...

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 onl...

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 l...

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 t...

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...

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...

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...

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 reason...

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 fam...

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 d...

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 to...

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 grie...

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 th...

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, I...

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 heav...

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, (wh...

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 wh...

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.