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.