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 tools I need to make the burden of losing Sam lighter.   

What we focus on is crucial to the future we create for ourselves.    If we want to feel better and become stronger, we need to focus on what we can control, which is how we choose to live the rest of our lives.   

Our grief of losing a son or daughter takes up tremendous amounts of energy in our lives, whether we are looking directly at it our not.  When we shift our gaze forward, we are not escaping our grief,  we are arming ourselves to live with it.💕

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 reasons why this will benefit us in the long run.💕  

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 family of origin has felt the pain of losing Sam and of watching my family grieve and how they have shown up for me in exactly the way I have needed them to.

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 death really is and why it's important to acknowledge the multitude of factors that went into losing them. 💕

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 too many lives.   

I also talk about why shame is a very selfish emotion to hold on to, how it keeps us stuck,  and how we can better use our energy to serve others.

Thanks for listening.

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 grief that we do not overcome, we can only learn to manage, within the confines of our own life and personality.   

I live big and I grieve hard.  Ironically, the two inexplicably show up together frequently, creating huge confusing emotions of gratitude for life and profound grief at the same time, and this is what today's episode is about.💕

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 the cops that arrested him that night could have done a better job than to drop him off at the train station with no shoes or warm clothes on a sub-zero night.    As a society, we have to be better than this.    If either cop had known Sam or had true compassion, things could have turned out differently.  

I live with so much confusion and pain but I don't blame Sam, I blame the perfect storm that became his life and took him from me.   I have lots of unanswered questions,  no gains from figuring them out, and this is another stifling and tragic part of losing him to addiction.

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, It is a struggle I have lived with forever. 

In this episode, I discuss a mistake I recently made, the shame it brought me, and how I was able to help me accept and my human imperfection and give myself grace to move forward.

We don't have to lose a child to face the harsh consequences of the need to be perfect but sometimes it takes something like this to remind us that we are here to connect and to love, not to convince the world that we live a perfect life.