[...] Over at Babble this morning, I am sharing how I came to shed a crippling fear I hadn’t even been fully conscious existed before Henry died. [...]

My nephew, my sister’s son, as you know, is dying. That has cast long dark shadow over our lives, but it has also given us – me this: a keen appreciation of how fragile and precious life is, and an understanding that it is possible to bear the very worst things with grace and love and courage. That it is possible to hold fear close and know it intimately, so intimately that you can engage it, and that in engaging it you can live in relationship with it, in ways that are rich and healthy.

I would say, in other words, that for us it’s not so much been fearlessness, but a different relationship to fear. Either way, it’s powerful.

Thanks for this, Katie.

Excellent post, Katie, and I admire your fearlessness. I am a strong, outspoken woman, but I completely relate to the kind of fear that Henry’s death has allowed — and forced — you to shed. It’s excellent food for thought.

I so get this. It makes perfect sense to me. Like jzzy, I, too, had an adoption nightmare that unleashed the beast of cage-rattling in me and brought me to a new level of bravery. The other day I tried, unsuccessfully, to post a question to you about HOW do you do what you do? How do you put anger and grief and love and joy and fear all side-by-side in your heart and manage to pull out the strength to fight for Henry’s justice the way you do, leaving no stone unturned, no official unexposed. My question was how can you do all that? And then I supposed that you would say, “How can I not?”

Keep fighting the good fight, mama bear.

I wasn’t raised in a “nice” southern family. I was raised in a working class family in New York City, where people are not afraid to be loud, speak out, and fight for what they want. The flip side to that is we have no way of accessing the kind of power networks where “nice” families do things. I can’t ask my dad’s old college buddy for a job because my dad didn’t go to college, nor can I ask the ladies my mom worked with at the newspaper because my mom was a waitress before she married my dad. And no one asks us to be part of organizations or groups. We have to fight our way on and when we get there, the “nice” people make it clear they don’t want us and they don’t like our pushy behavior.

Must be nice to have it both ways.

It certainly is freeing isn’t it? Being able to be true to yourself and tell/show that truth to others is part of being fully authentic. When you get there, you’ve really accomplished something!

Something you said here struck me like an electrical shock. I, too, was raised in a polite and restrained deep Southern family. And that thing, the thing one must never do, is bother or inconvenience or distress others. I was a live wire, a square peg, but that has been bred in my bones. Even now, I struggle to free myself and my parenting from that first impulse, never to cause offense.

Harriet, I’m sorry that everything I write irritates you so. Every. Single. Comment. you ever leave indicates that you find me insufferable. And of course you are welcome to keep making these comments, but I can’t figure out why you bother. I mean, listening to Howard Stern makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a grapefruit spoon, but I know that, so I don’t waste my time listening to his show or shouting my resulting irritation at the radio. Can’t imagine why you bother reading my blogging when it clearly annoys you. Surely you have better things to do with your time.

Best to you,

-Katie

Even in the most horrific of life’s events there is a glimmer of light, something to be learned and carried forward. Excellent, excellent entry dear Katie.

Katie, originally I started reading you because I too have a teenager who uses drugs and you were going to tell us the mistakes you made with your boy. Then, I thought, I would try to avoid them with my own child. But you never have. Fair enough; you have a right to your privacy.

Harriet, I’m sorry you’re dealing with a drug addicted son. I’m also sorry that you express your pain by lashing out at another mother.

Perhaps she hasn’t written here, but KAtie has, on her own blog, written about mistakes she made with Henry, namely not addressing what seemed like simple teenage experimentation as much as she should have. However, if what you’re looking for is a simple solution, what katie has shown us over and over and over again is that there is no magic solution. THere is no, if you do X, Y (a drug free child) will result. There is no X. I’m sorry there is not. And I’m more sorry you’re stuck in that cycle, and that causes you to be an unpleasant comment-leaver.

@Harriet-as was said earlier, katie doesn’t have the answers to what will fix this, and if you avoided doing what she did with her son with yours, that doesn’t mean it will fix it for your son. I think there is some myth out there that all addicts are the same, that all people who drug are the same. I don’t think that is true. Are you mad at her for not having the answers? Because in your shares you do seem just super annoyed and ticked off at her, no matter what she writes about. I know firsthand how terrifying and hard it is to have a child who uses/abuses drugs, and wanting someone/anyone to tell us what to do to make them stop. I remember saying those exact words to my younger sister, “please somebody, just tell me what to do, tell me what to do”. Sometimes people do a certain thing and it seems to work, but there is no formula. Each addict is an individual, no one size fits all going on with this disease, any more than with any other illness. What might work, might work. AA/NA works for some, not for all. Tough love helps some, not always. I still have nightmares where in them i am saying “I don’t know what to do about Nick, I don’t know, somebody tell me”. And of course, no one could give me the magic formula, because there isn’t one. I guess I have come to believe that each individual has to get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and only then will they possibly change. And even then, well, just no guarantees. It is really, really hard to stop using drugs. Yes, it can be done, but it is ridiculously difficult. Hard to stay motivated, etc. Anyway, I would suggest you read other things that don’t annoy you so much, cuz if you are dealing with a child on drugs, you already have a plateful of stuff to be upset about. No sense adding to it by reading someone who bugs you so much. Take good care.

Must be nice to have it both ways.

Harriet,

I echo the sentiments of those above about your child. It’s very, very hard to realize that you can’t control someone else, even your own child. It’s probably one of the hardest lessons of being a parent, realizing that you have less and less control to keep them safe and happy.

Reread what you wrote that I’ve copied above though. Do you not think that Katie would switch positions with you in a heartbeat? She could have Henry back — still using drugs, but still with the possibility that it would turn around, that the right answers would appear for him. You on the other hand would be in her shoes, without your child. There is no nice about that, no “both ways” about that.

Please, get help for yourself at least. Being so angry at a grieving mother, one you only know from online, just isn’t healthy, not for you and not for your family either.

Thanks for the free psychological workups, folks, but disagreeing with a blogger doesn’t mean I’m “angry” with her. Yeesh, does everything have to be couched in emotions with you people? If a person doesn’t agree and says so, they’re “mean” (the usual), a “troll,” or “angry because Katie doesn’t have the answers.”

I said I started reading Katie a while ago because of X reason and I’ve continued since then. Do the rest of you only read bloggers you agree with? I find that really boring and not intellectually satisfying.

(And FWIW, my son hasn’t touched any drugs in six months.)

Mama Power! Nothing like it! Thanks for sharing — it helps motivate me to be more fearless because I definitely struggle with trying not to step on anybody’s toes. Ha! Why?!

@Harriet-that is wonderful news, that your son hasn’t touched drugs in 6 months! I hope he continues on that path. To answer your question, I don’t read many bloggers in general, but yes, i only read ones that I enjoy, either their stories, topics or their writing. I certainly don’t read ones who annoy the crap out of me (there is one i read, whom I won’t name, but all I get out of most of her writing is she can really cuss like a sailor). so yeah, to me it seems odd that you would continue reading someone you have never posted a positive or encouraging word about. Again, great news about your son!

Yes. When one goes through such experiences, something is often gained. Not the way you want to have gained it, but I do know what you mean.

Roar away! You have earned it, in the toughest sort of battle a parent has to fight. The survivors of a losing battle are often the strongest people of all, not the victors.