When you lose someone to sudden violence, the mind doesn't know what to do with that much pain — so sometimes you just try to drown it. LaShawnda lost her 21-year-old son Tyshawn to a random shooting in Cleveland in January 2023, eight days before his birthday. For roughly a hundred days after, she drank a fifth of tequila daily, lost sixty pounds, and — by her own honest account — barely knew how she was getting through each day. It was Tyshawn's dog, visibly wasting away, that finally broke through.

Dr. Kat and LaShawnda talk through what grief actually looks like when it has no clean edges — the anger directed at the person you lost, the numbness that can look like functioning, and the slow erosion of a sense of self. Dr. Kat walks through how the brain attaches to pain as a form of problem-solving, why grief can make you feel like you've lost all agency, and how rebuilding starts not with healing but with small, deliberate choices. If you've ever found yourself just existing rather than living, this conversation will feel familiar.

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