People understand grief when someone dies. They bring casseroles. They send flowers. They tell you they're sorry. They acknowledge your pain. But what do they do when the person you love is still alive? Nothing. Because they don't see it. They see me posting memes. They see me smiling in pictures. They see me talking about books, advocacy, faith, and prison reform. What they don't see is the grief. The grief of birthdays spent apart. The grief of holidays celebrated through letters. The grief of hearing bad news and not being able to call your husband. The grief of sitting in a trailer in Nevada while the man you love wakes up in a prison cell hundreds of miles away. People think grief requires a funeral. They're wrong. Sometimes grief looks like waiting. Sometimes grief looks like surviving. Sometimes grief looks like loving someone who is still alive but completely out of reach. And that's the kind nobody talks about. There are no sympathy ca...
Video that explains it better than most people ever could: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1594568355098862 People always ask me the same question when they hear about what happened with my husband and I: “How the fuck did you not know?” Well… here’s your answer. Before my husband, I had NEVER been around street drugs. Never around addicts. Never around meth. Never around fentanyl. I didn’t grow up seeing it. I didn’t know the signs. I didn’t know what functioning addiction looked like. I thought addicts looked like what TV shows and documentaries tell us they look like. I had no idea that people with ADHD sometimes use meth or fentanyl to feel “normal.” I had no idea some addicts know EXACTLY how much to use to appear calm, focused, functional, energetic, social, or “fine” to everyone around them. And when someone has been doing it long enough, they learn how to hide it incredibly well. So no… I didn’t know. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t blind. I wasn’t ignoring giant neon warning signs. I ...