Grief is permanent. But it doesn't have to be all-consuming.

That is the quiet, hard-won truth at the heart of this conversation with Wesley, Graham's mom. And it is the kind of truth that only comes from ten years of living with loss.

Graham was adopted at five months old, a boy who struggled from early on with questions of identity and belonging. He wrestled with being adopted, with his sexuality, with depression, and eventually with addiction. Wesley spent years in that particular kind of anticipatory grief that parents of children with addiction know all too well, always bracing, always wondering, always hoping. And then one night, the call came anyway.

Graham died in July of 2016 at the age of 33.

In this conversation, Wesley speaks with remarkable honesty about what the years since have looked like. The shame she felt in the beginning, the instinct to hide, the relentless second-guessing of every decision she had ever made as a mother. She talks about the unique and unexpected gift of seeing Graham's therapist after his death, someone who actually knew him, who could fill in pieces of the picture Wesley never had, and who has helped her understand that she did the best she could with what she knew.

She also talks about how she has channeled her grief into purpose. Her blog, When Your Child is Addicted, her Facebook group Kids on Drugs, and the book she is currently writing are all born from a desire to help other parents before they find themselves where she is now.

And she talks about what ten years of grief actually looks like from the inside. Not linear. Not resolved. Still present on holidays, on birthdays, in unexpected moments. But incorporated now, woven into the fabric of daily life rather than overwhelming it.

I share my rock metaphor in this conversation, and Wesley captures it perfectly when she says that grief will always be with you. It is just that it doesn't have to become the whole point of your life.

The loss never goes away. But slowly, gently, life grows around it.