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

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?