Two Moms with Two Dead Kids: When Your Child Dies From a Drug Overdose

DeAnne and Astrid discuss an interview Astrid watched with a mother whose son committed suicide. It prompted them to touch on whether their own children's deaths were accidental, or not. How do you know if an overdose death was accidental? Does it matter? Does it change the loss? We discuss how we react now when we see signs of hardship. How we relate to others and how others relate to us, af...

Gabor Maté is a Canadian physician and addiction expert. (In our conversation I called him a psychologist - sorry.) In this episode we discuss his book, The Myth of Normal, and what we took away from it.  One of DeAnne's biggest impressions from the book was the idea that the body often expresses unaddressed trauma in the form of disease. Astrid's biggest takeaway was that we all carry t...

Here we visit The List - topics that have come up for us in our grief journeys that we feel would be worth discussion. What's on the list? What are the things we have faced or continue to face in the process of coming to terms with a death by overdose? We take a look. 

In this conversation, we start out discussing the rituals and habits we form to get us through the day. and what happens when these get disrupted. It's interesting to think about how we rebuild ourselves and our days after the deaths of our children.  One of those rituals for us has been walking dogs, which segues into a conversation about having pets, especially the pets our children loved.

In this episode, we start out by talking about triggers - the things that bring up old feelings of helplessness and anxiety.  Neither of us ever really felt that our children would die. But they did. And that brings up the old saying - Why Not You? Why shouldn't it have happened to us? It can happen to anyone, so why not us? We then segue into an acknowledgement of relief about some aspects o...

How many of us have wished for a sign from our loved one? Did you get one? A lot? None? In this episode we discuss some of our experiences with signs. 

In today's episode, we welcome our friend Beth, who also lost a child to a drug overdose. We talk about coming out of the shock of experiencing the death of a child, into the realization that they are not coming back.  We can be so hard on ourselves. Can we practice self-compassion and self-love?

When your child dies from an overdose, many of us harden to life. We become frozen, paralyzed, and turn to stone. In this episode, we discuss practicing going from hard to soft. Frozen to unfrozen. We also talk about where we find support in this journey and what that support might look like. 

In this episode, we discuss how the ways in which we care for ourselves have changed. This discussion leads into a conversation about finding meaning. Is it out there to find? 

In this episode we discuss what it means to heal. Is there a definition for it? Is it possible to heal from grief? Or is grief a chronic condition - something to be endured but never truly healed? Interwoven into the conversation is the question of how to hold love and loss at the same time. 

Holidays. When your child dies, what do you do about holidays? Do patterns change or stay the same? Cling to the old ways, or make new ones? We've pretty much decided that you can do whatever the hell you want to do. And you can make a change anytime you want to. And somehow, that led to a discussion about what we did with their things. Keep them? Give them away? Do what you want. 

What do we do with our memories of our children? The photos? When your child dies of an overdose, memories can get very loaded. Even the good ones can be painful. Are all of our memories ruined? We discuss. 

In this episode we talk about our sometimes tendencies to make deaths of our children ok for others. Is it ok to NOT do that? People want a happy ending, and we can't offer that. We talk about Megan Divine's book, It's Ok That You're Not Ok. 

How have our boundaries changed after the deaths of our children? Do we relate to people differently? In this episode, we discuss ways in which our perspectives of what's important have changed. Friendships change, and the way we connect and communicate change. We talk about what's of value now. 

Both of our sons died from a drug overdose. In the immediate aftermath, besides asking ourselves how this could have happened, what do we do to try to understand it? Is it helpful to go through their personal things? Is it helpful to try to identify what they were feeling? Weirdly, are they ok? Do we try to know where they are now? 

One of us has a kid in a bag. The other has hers in a box. We start a conversation about what we've done with the ashes of our children after they've died. Is there a right answer? How do we relate to what remains? Literally. 

Following up on the previous episode, The Mind-Body Connection, we explore the effects of "cracking open" and allowing ourselves to soften in our grief. What happens when we lower our protective barriers and explore what we find there? We look at other avenues of connection and think about what we're willing and able to do in this present moment. We also explore what it means to hav...

Today we explore the mind-body connection and what that means for us. Neither of us had ever explored this before our children died. What is it? How does it work? How does it help? Can we use the mind-body connection to connect to our children in a way that's meaningful?

We spent the first six episodes lightly touching on the details of our children's deaths. In this episode we ask, why did we do that? What is the benefit of sharing the particulars? What does it mean to have to work through the details of that day? As it says in the title, we're in it now. We are diving in. 

How do you share the news of what happened to your child? What happens when you share a deep loss with others? Here's a first look. Our stories might change over time. 

Weirdly, we sometimes find ourselves still trying to meet social expectations even after the worst has just happened. Why do we do this and what have we learned? 

In the lead up to talking about the day Garrett died, we chat about how we sometimes start our day. The shower sets the tone. 

We explore the immediate aftermath of Nicholas' death. How do you navigate the world when this happens?

How do you know when things got started? How do you know when there's a problem?

We introduce ourselves and start talking about our kids, and how this kind of death explodes your world.