Write About It

(Douglas and me at his high school graduation, a very happy day.)

Write about what frightens you the most. This came across as a prompt on Substack recently. I have witnessed countless times with children, both with my own, and the ones in my class room that there is truth contained within this. As soon as they were ready to share, whether using their words, drawings, or in written form, what was frightening them, it morphed into something that didn’t feel as daunting. It can become our Kryptonite, if left buried and unattended. Once uncovered, allowed to rise to the surface, where it is warmed by the sun, and oxygen breathed upon it, the intensity and enormity begins to not carry the same kind of unbearable weight. It’s as if the atoms and molecules are rearranged and alchemize into something new miraculously.

When I sit with how massively uncomfortable this initially makes me, what I understand without a doubt it is for me was my denial, my lack of knowledge and understanding around the disease of addiction. What did I miss? Where was I absent in terms of noticing the signs? How about the ones I was noticing, yet dismissed as something else because surely my son would not be involved in any sort of reckless behavior? When he sat beside me and broke out into a sweat, and I inquired, how could I have believed what he said about it? My mind cannot even remember his very swift and calm response. What if I had taken a moment to look it up, I might have discovered that sweating is a symptom of taking opioids. No amount of academic education, my intuitive sense, nor life experiences assisted me in the critical arena of addiction.

My deep shame, anguish, utter helplessness that the loss of his life due to addiction might have been prevented resides within me, how could it not? I cannot outrun it, push an easy or eject button no matter how many I have tried or wished desperately that I could. The harsh reality is this was Douglas’ path, nothing we did try when he was steeped within the addiction could help because of his denial of the disease. His belief that he did not suffer from the disease of addiction, because I did not, and that he was fifty percent me, was a bet he embodied, which cost him his life at one month shy of twenty-five. We went the rounds with him on this countless times, and he never budged, not even a millimeter.

An Episcopal priest and dear friend named Shannon, explaining to me a very hard truth that I was just not that powerful, and yes, I had some influence, yet if the person was in denial, I was indeed powerless over their actions and choices. The 3 C’s that I have written about often, I didn’t cause it, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it are a north star for me. Simply insert your word for it, and absorb those C’s and witness how they land within. They allow me to exhale a tiny bit more each time I rest within them. My forever gratitude to 12 step programs/Al-Anon for this.

It still makes my palms sweaty and my heart pounds outside my chest when I’m asked how Douglas shed his earth suit? (Perhaps this should be a question not asked, and one waits if the desire to share is offered.) I can experience so much inner hopelessness and sorrow around the stark reality, that I could not keep my son earth side. No amount of Love in this world could change his outcome, and this is something that remains tightly lodged between my bones. Living currently requires an ongoing practice of how do I carry this? Most days now I am able, yet there are moments still when it feels as if a very sharp needle has been inserted into my heart piercing it until the red of my blood begins to drip.

Writing about my feelings around the loss of my firstborn is a heavy, dark shroud that can cause my shoulders to drop, and my neck to feel as if it’s made of cement. Yet, such is living within paradox because within the words I’m writing are nestled my freedom, healing, and release. I am uncovering just enough for each of you to witness. Not for pity, not because I carry a victim mentality, not for an oh, I can’t imagine, because we are absolutely called to imagine. To try on and slip these unthinkable life situations over our skin so that we remain compassionate, present, and then release into the ethers what we can no longer hold for transmutation and healing.

This is the only thing I can fathom of what to do with what frightens me the most. It is to beckon it forth, and lay it naked and bare first for me, and then for those who choose to look my way to see. Please do not look away, look towards and within, and lay yours bare alongside of mine. Let’s create magnificent and brilliantly colored tails for our hand crafted kites to carry that which frightens us far, far away out into our eternal cosmos.