To my beautiful son…
Happy 24th Birthday Rob. Today we celebrate you and we mourn you. I find myself wondering, where would you be and who would you be? I have seen a lot of your friends graduate college, start careers and even get engaged. All of the milestones that we will never get to see with you. I struggle to make sense of it all and yet sometimes, I understand it completely. Much of my life is centered and focused in a duality of sadness and enlightenment.
Who you were and who you are resides in this complicated duality and has taught me everything.
There is meaning and there is purpose in your death. They are in the countless lives that have been saved and changed through Rising Above Addiction. They are in all of the girls that have walked through the doors of Reclaiming My Life and Keeping My Serenity. They are in the meaningful relationships you have brought into my life and even the necessary losses of others. They are my survival.
This year, my gift to you is something that I have been working on for a very long time.
When you died, I made a promise to you..
I will survive this and I will use my pain and my journey of grief to help others.
This requires openness and vulnerability.
For the past year, I have been working on writing a book. I had no idea where this journey would take me.
The purpose of writing the book was simple: to help others and to continue to heal from losing you. The emotions that came along with writing this book were not so simple.
Experiencing my life play out before me was difficult and many tears were shed along the way. However, I was also able to see that I am strong, I am loved, and I am a survivor.
My hope is that this book will give hope, provide healing, create change and help people to find the strength to go on.
All proceeds will go to Rising Above Addiction, so I hope that this book will save lives too.
