About

• 

Kerri, Taylor Jr., Blair, and Taylor Rhodes

“If you think it’s hard to watch, imagine how hard it is to live.”~ Taylor Rhodes Jr.

I am a licensed professional counselor (LPC) and licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT) with twenty-eight years experience in the mental health field. None of my experience, prepared me for my own son’s struggles with addiction and the journey it would take our family on. This site focuses on my journey, grief, addiction, and mental illness. It is for anyone who struggles with addiction, loves someone who struggles with substance use disorder/mental illness and those who live with grief. There is the grief of loving someone who is standing right in front of you that you no longer recognize and the grief of losing someone you love. I lost my beautiful son, Taylor on June 29. 2019 when he was 20 years old to an accidental overdose.
It was a moment I will remember for the rest of my life. In that moment, as I fell to my knees my heart breaking into a millions pieces I was unable to think, breathe, speak or function. The next day in the early hours of the morning I sat out in my sunroom listening to the fountain Taylor and his sister had given me for mother’s day a few weeks earlier. I began to write what I could not say and it was like someone undammed a river. I don’t know where all those words came from but I couldn’t type fast enough some days. I wrote to Taylor each day. It would become a huge part of my healing in that first year.
Taylor was a light in the world and this blog is a tribute to that light and my love for him. When we share our broken pieces we bring light to the dark. This site will be place to share grief, brokeness and healing in the hope that it helps someone else. It will be a place to share stories, resources and supports. It will be a place to share the things that are hard to watch and even harder to live.