School shootings, overdose, suicide, and crime and that’s just this week.

HOW? How did something like this happen?  Suicide, overdose, school shootings, relapse, crime, and that has just been THIS week.  Unfortunately, it is EVERY week.  It takes a lot to catch our attention because it’s just too much.  We are NUMB.  This week a 1^st grader shot a teacher in Virginia about an hour from where I live.  As someone who was the Crisis Coordinator in an elementary school for about 10 years, I ran the active shooter drills where we practiced for a gunman in a school. I comforted crying children when they were scared by the thought of someone hurting them. I imagined the scenario and it made me sick when I let my heart and mind go there. To think of my friends and school family and the “what if “ it ever happened in our school.  Every time I saw a school shooting on the news, I imaged my students, teachers, and administrators.  This week it was a 6 y.o. that posed the threat.  HOW?

We are losing young people at an alarming rate.  How?  As someone who has spent the better part of 28 years in the mental health system in schools and in the community, I have a few thoughts and observations about “the how”.  There is no easy answer but here’s my 2 cents:

I did not get it for a very long time, because like many others I was marinating in a culture of “never enough”, of “do more” and I bought it lock, stock, and barrel.  I got on the treadmill and was pretty good at staying on it, until I wasn’t.   We are seeing an alarming number of people, young and old that are just not okay.  We say it’s okay to not be okay, but then don’t teach people what to do when they are not okay.  We fail them when they are not okay.  We are losing them at alarming rates. 

I am tired of hearing schools need to do more.  It’s crap.  If my kids never brush their teeth and drink mountain dew for the first five years of their life, when they go to the dentist with their teeth rotting out of their heads, NO ONE BLAMES THE DENTIST.  Not ever!! Yet, people who have never stepped foot in a classroom, other than as a student have the answer. Their answer has been to micromanage and tell teachers, who actually know how to do their jobs, they need to do more.  Teachers marinade in the never enough culture, so they try. They do more.  I watched them do more and leave in tears many a day. They have long owned things that do not belong to them.  It’s so bad we are seeing a mass exodus of amazingly talented, loving teachers and professionals.  If you have a pulse, schools are so understaffed and desperate we will hire you.  This is like watching a train barrel down the tracks, and the crash is coming.  It’s honestly painful to watch.

In the 12 years that I worked in mental health in schools, let me tell you what I saw teachers/schools inherit at the beginning of a school year:  kids who have never been told no, who are placated with iPhones, computers and iPads, they have never had family meals or eaten with utensils, everyone gets a trophy, parents who are on their own devices and not plugged in, they are all too happy to ask what educators are doing.  My kids can’t read, what are you doing about it?  Do you do homework with them? No. Do you read to them each night? No. Do you make sure they are ready for school the next day? No. But teachers, why can’t you fix it?  Simply, because it is not yours to fix. Teachers and administrators are being screamed at, spit on, hit, having their classrooms/offices destroyed, and dealing with tantrums the likes of which you cannot imagine.   We are putting children in classrooms whose behaviors would be more appropriate for residential treatment centers and trying to tell teachers and counselors to do more.  Well guess what, they aren’t the ones who need to do more.  Schools don’t need to do more. We need a hotline for teachers, counselors, and administrators to report what they deal with every day.  It’s easier for us to BLAME schools because then we don’t have to look at our part.  It’s US, it’s the marinade that we aren’t acknowledging it.

It’s the us or them mentality that we buy into.  If we don’t all own this, we are in big trouble.

Many of our young people are LOST.  Do you know what they need?

 They need SAFE CONNECTION.  They need their parent’s TIME and ATTENTION.  They need parents who aren’t in survival mode.  They need to understand that THEY ARE NOT their achievements or material things.  We have young people who are looking to us for answers and what we reflect is YOU are enough if……. (grades, sports, achievements, college you get into…etc..). 

We are all too busy pretending we aren’t in survival mode.  I think most of the world is in survival mode.  We are living in nervous systems that are literally on fire and we are running 100 m.p.h. and it has become NORMAL.  The gas pedal is floored and when people are wrecked, we blame or act shocked.  We ask HOW?

Think of your body and nervous system like a bucket.  The bucket is FULL and when that happens there is no room for the daily stress or normal things that are part of life.  When we are at the top of the bucket, we are in SURVIVAL MODE (Fight (anger, tantrums, aggression), Flight (anxiety, overachieving and over-functioning, avoidance), Freeze (depression, apathy, disconnect)).  Behaviors are our best attempts to regulate or find balance.  We focus on behaviors and are using band aids and it’s not enough for the gaping wounds we are walking around with.    We have got to DO LESS and SLOW DOWN.  Our young people need to learn to sit with uncomfortable and understand that they ARE ENOUGH regardless of their grades, how popular they are, how cool their friends are, or the number of likes they get.  WE are the MIRRORs for children to see their reflections. We need to slow down so it’s not a blur.  We must model bouncing back, rising when the world is unfair, showing them how to sit with uncomfortable feelings and emotions.   Far too many of us use what I call false taps.  A false tap is a quick fix, it feels good and gives us the illusion that we are emptying the bucket but really we are just adding to it.  Examples of false taps:  drugs, busyitis, gambling, porn, sex, working all the time, eating, over functioning, under functioning, sleeping too much or too little, avoiding, fighting, yelling, blaming, overthinking, intellectualizing, shopping, and technology.  These are the quick fixes that are adding to our distress. 

Your nervous system wants balance.  It wants calm, rest and repair.  Yet many of us don’t know what that feels like.  What are some tools/real taps that empty the bucket:  Meditation, Nature, Tapping, Yoga, Exercise, Art, Music, Writing, Stillness, Laughter, Safe Connection, and Havening.

Your diet is more than what you eat.  It is the music you listen to, the people you surround yourself with, the tv you watch, the books you read, the video games you play, and how you spend your time.  It is what you put into your body physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 

I have had kindergarten students who want to be “Chucky” for Halloween, who were singing in class, 1, 2, Freddy’s coming for you (Nightmare on Elm Street), who are watching porn, and playing video games where they are killing people and bathing in violence and crime.  We are allowing technology to wire in the opposite of what we want and then sit back and ask HOW?  This is HOW.

All of this is HOW.  If we want to right the ship, we need to stop pointing fingers and blaming each other and look in the mirror.  I think our young people reflect “US” and the culture we are all marinating in.  That “Marinade” is something I consciously try to get out of each day.  Some days I do a better job than others.  I am more aware of how full my bucket is than ever before.  Losing Taylor stopped me cold and really made me look at my life as I started to put myself back together.  I was part of the problem. 

Mental health is about the nervous system, “the bucket”.  The tools that regulate the bucket need to be in everyone’s toolbox.  You want kids to learn in schools then you need them in their brains in a calm and safe way.  In survival mode, you don’t have the learning and memory parts of the brain turned on.  You can have the best teacher in the world in front of them and they will not learn or hold the information because they are not in that part of their brain.  They are in the part of their brains that says, “danger”. They are running from “the bear” and the bear is always chasing them.   

The How? I believe isn’t not as complicated as we make it.  The How?   The marinade and the nervous system.  If we can educate everyone about the marinade, we are all floating in and stop buying it and then real tools to find calm in our bodies/nervous systems we will have made a dent in some of this. 

This threatening finger pointing is getting us nowhere.  We better start being brave enough to own our part of the HOW or this will continue to get worse.  I have HOPE that together we can be part of the solution, but it won’t be because we all started doing MORE.  Quite the opposite actually.  The answer lies in LESS.  It lies in slowing down so that we can all take a collective breath, reset and find ways to safely connect to the best in each of us.  That doesn’t happen in the “marinade” at the top of “the BUCKET”.  The HOW is; we are already ENOUGH and our WORTH is not dependent on things outside of us.  Our worth is an inside job.  Slow down and look in the mirror.  You are worth it; our kids are worth it. 

Twenty-Three Things Taylor Taught me.

June 17, 2022

On the first anniversary of Taylor’s death, I wrote this list.  Twenty-One things Taylor taught me.  Today in heaven he is twenty-three.  Every day I  try to honor him because he’s worth honoring.  Hears to twenty-three beautiful boy. 

As Taylor’s mom I have learned so many lessons in his life and from his death. When he was young around ten, he had gotten in trouble for something and in one of my finer parenting moments we were talking. I said, “well it’s just one of those life lessons”. He stopped, and you could see the little wheels turning in his head. Then he looked up at me and said, Mom, can you just teach me all the “Life Lessons” so I will know. I smiled and said I wish it worked that way but I’d do my best. Taylor and I both learned a lot of life lessons the hard way and he taught me more than he will ever know.

In honor of Taylor’s 23rd birthday (June 17th), here are 23 things he taught me.

1. It’s worse than I IMAGINED. When you love someone who struggles with addiction you imagine their death because you know that it is within the realm of possibility. You imagine all the moments that you may never get to have, the bad jokes, the hugs, the texts, the sound of his voice when he says” Mom”, the bad rap music, the arguments, the birthdays, wedding, the holidays the vacations and the mundane every day moments that you might miss. In those dark moments when I imagined life without him. Never seeing him, hugging him, hearing his voice again. No more memories, holidays, arguments, laughs. Those thoughts, as heartbreaking as they were, never came close to reality.

2. It’s hard to just breathe. The first few weeks are like a bad dream. Numbness and pain come in waves. It is hard to feel any positive emotion. It is like your emotions got a shot of novocaine. Every single task seems overwhelming. There is no right or wrong way to do this.

3. There is a BEFORE and an AFTER. Grief Splits you. There is a part that carries the pain and loss and a part that functions in the world. The line between them is thin in the beginning and all consuming.

4. I am NOT Strong. People tell me all the time you are strong and we are inspired by you. I never realized the price paid for such comments. I would trade it in a second to have Taylor back. I am just a person like any other with simply no choice. My strength is really the people who love me and hold me together. It is GOD and my son walking with me each day and carrying me more days than not.

5. Being a Parent is the hardest job. No one is prepared for the love they feel as a parent. It is the stuff of super-powers. I think it is the strongest love on the planet and it is hardwired from the moment you know you are having them. I loved Taylor long before I held him that first time. Having people that you love more than you thought humanly possible walking around outside your heart is truly the most humbling, scary thing I know. I am sooo blessed to be a mom of two beautiful kids. The hard part is learning to live with one of them in heaven.

6. PEOPLE have no idea what to say. I know people are trying and I really try to give them grace. Some avoid saying something and those are the hardest. The thing that gives me the most comfort in this are the people who risk saying the wrong thing and decide to try to tell you how much your child and your family are loved. Telling people, they are loved and thought of is what get us through.

7. You see them all around you: I see Taylor all around me. He is in nature, the song that randomly( not really) plays on the radio, a smell, a feeling, a breeze, the night sky. Every new place you go you look for them and every familiar place is full of memories.

8. Be STILL: Taylor’s death stopped me in my tracks and brought me to my knees. There were weeks where I did nothing but listen and look for him in the beauty of the world. My life before that was BUSY, too busy, too full of distractions and things that really didn’t matter. His death changed that for me. I am grateful. It is really only in my own stillness that I find him and that ever present ache is soothed.

9. Love more, Judge LESS: Taylor was the kind of person that loved little kids, all dogs, and saw the big picture in life at an early age. He didn’t care if you had money, what color your skin was and had a gift for seeing “who you really were”. I am so proud of his kindness and his strength in standing up for others who couldn’t stand up for themselves. We try to be more like him each day.

10. HAPPINESS and SADNESS are forever tied together. Every happy moment is laced with sadness because he is not here. I believe it will always be this way. The reverse is also true. Crying and feeling sadness over our loss will have an undertone of happy because it is full of Taylor. What people who haven’t lost someone they love don’t understand is when they say I wish I could take your pain, what they don’t realize is that they would also be taking your love. You can’t have one without the other.

11. The Before is harder than the day. In this year of firsts without Taylor, every single day is really hard. There is a fog that rolls in before those big days. Thanksgiving, first day of school, Christmas, birthdays, graduations… the list goes on. You can feel the heaviness and dread surrounding you. It is often worse than the day itself. I try on the days that are hardest to BE STILL and listen.

12. I WANT TO QUIT. I have a CHOICE in how I spend each day. In the last year, there are so many days where I just seriously wanted to quit life. I don’t want to die, it’s not that, but I really just want to pull the covers up and quit. Usually somewhere in all the “I want to quit talk” I recognize what a gift it is to have another day. What I wouldn’t give for Taylor to have another day. Then I get my butt up and try to honor him.

13. Tears. There are so many tears in missing him and all the strings in life tied to his life and death. As a young person, I would tell myself over and over, “do NOT cry”. How crazy. Crying does not mean you are weak; it means you are human and your bucket of love is overflowing. I miss him so incredibly much and when the tears come, I know how lucky I am to LOVE someone that much.

14. STORMS CHANGE YOU. Losing Taylor and his struggle with addiction has changed me. It has stripped my life to the core of what is most important. I don’t have energy for the bullshit or frivolous in the world. Losing a child brings you to your knees and when you get up off your knees you are a different person. I know I am a lot kinder, less judgmental, more determined and more focused on what is really important: Family, friends and leaving the world a little better than I found it are where I try to focus my energy.

15. Silver-linings: Taylor believed that it is only in breaking that the light gets in. It is one of the silver linings to the DARKNESS and STORMS in life. I have always known that life’s worst moments were weed-outs. Those moments help you to separate out/weed out who is and isn’t important in your life. If you want to really find out who your people are look around you in the darkest moments. Those are your people. They are GIFTs. I am so grateful.

16. LIGHT in the darkness. I have always been a spiritual person and believed in GOD. Our family was not one to go to church. Many of my Sundays growing up were spent on the ball field. Taylor’s addiction and death brought me to my knees in surrender to GOD in a way I had never known. One of the reminders that Taylor had set on his laptop was PRAY. IT popped over and over again when I opened his laptop after his death. I know GOD saved me and has my beautiful boy.

17. SIGNS and GOD-WINKS- I have had signs and God-winks from the other side most of my life. I never really stopped to look for them or think about them. When my dad was dying, I got a really big one that logic could not explain. That was when I really started to reflect and think about what it was all about. Since Taylor’s death we have gotten so many signs from him. They come in many different forms: songs, a number, a rainbow, a smell, dragonflies, butterflies, birds, weird things that you can’ t explain. They are gifts from Taylor and the veil between this world and the next is thinner than I thought.

18. COST of KNOWING. There are so many lessons that we pay a price to learn in this life. I never really understood that before and when I meet people that have “that wisdom” or are doing amazing things, I know now, all that comes at a cost. There is no higher price than losing your child. If there is a hell on earth this, is it. I wouldn’t trade the 20 years and 12 days of having Taylor with me for anything. Was is enough? NO. I have learned so much in being his mom through his life and in his death. He is still teaching me.

19. Blessed: Taylor had a tattoo, on his forearm that said blessed. I found it odd at the time because his life seemed very out of control and far from God. I learned that it was to remind him every day how blessed he was to have the family, life, and people he did in his life. It was to remind him to remember all his blessing even though he was struggling and lost sometimes. I find so much comfort in that in my own journey.

20. Listen More. I have been a fixer my whole life. Always trying to help and fix things. It became an obsession at times with Taylor, as his mom. I so wanted to help him, to fix what was wrong. To find the answers, that eluded us all. In the end, I wish I would have listened more. As a parent, we get caught up in the fixing so easily. It is not our journey, it is theirs, and it wasn’t until I really started to LISTEN that I realized all I could do was walk beside him and make sure he knew how loved he was. So parents, if you want some advice: Stop sweating all the small stuff and LISTEN. (Side note: most of it is SMALL stuff).

21. Everyday… there is not a day that goes by that I don’t wish Taylor was here with us or I was there with him. I am not suicidal and I am not done with my time here just yet. Every day I tell myself I am a day closer to being with him again. It gives me peace. The day we lost Taylor I literally felt a piece my heart shatter. I am not strong, I am not inspiring, I am simply just putting one foot in front of the other, like every other parent that has lost a child. It is a shitty club to be part of. The price of membership is high. We are not strong, we simply have no other choice. We are trying to learn to live in this world knowing a piece of our heart lives in heaven. Each night, I talk to Taylor before I go to bed. When it is my time and I get to see him again, I hope what he says is, “Mom I am so proud of what you did in my name”. I have great peace in knowing that one day we will all be together again. Happy 21st Birthday T. love, mom

22. Not Lost. I use to say we lost Taylor when I referred to his death until a friend reminded me, they are not LOST. We know exactly where they are. I think for me, the biggest learn this year has been though Taylor is not physically here, he is not gone or lost. He is in heaven, of that I am sure and he spends a lot of time if I am still enough and open enough to feel, see or hear him giving me signs that he is all around me. The universe is an amazing place and the more I learn the more I realize how much I don’t know and have yet to learn. Earth School is hard and until I see Taylor again, I will keep taking life’s tests and doing my best to honor Taylor and fight for him and all those that struggle. Until then, I will keep LOOKING UP and asking for God and Taylor’s help to live my highest path and leave the world hopefully a little better than I found it. Happy 22nd Birthday my beautiful boy. Love, mom.

23. The Second Mountain, is the name of a book that a dear friend who also lost his son sent me.  It’s about how most of us spend our lives climbing the “First Mountain”.  The First Mountain is about achievement, climbing the ladder, material things, goals, making it look good, and having it all.   It’s what our culture tells us is important.  The first mountain is pretty competitive, dog eat dog.  For some, tragedy  happens and it knocks you off the First Mountain into “The Valley”.  The Valley is a dark place full of brokenness and not where any of us ever thought we would be.  Some people just wallow in the Valley and never leave, some go back the First Mountain but a few begin to climb a “Second Mountain”.  The Second Mountain is not about YOU. It is about OTHERS. It’s about service, purpose and a life that is about helping others and making the world a better place.  I spent the better part of 50 years climbing the First Mountain.  Caught up in achievement, buying into the lie.  Taylor’s death plunged me into the Valley and I did not see it coming.  I am grateful to the people who I saw climb out of that Valley.   I am grateful to have an opportunity the climb the Second Mountain and in awe of the people I  meet there.  The cost to be on this Mountain is high and truthfully, I would go back to the First Mountain if I could have Taylor back for even a day, but that’s not the way any of this works.    I now recognize Second Mountain people when I meet them and until my last breath I plan to keep looking up and climbing.  Happy 23^rd Birthday my beautiful boy. Love, mom.

This is for all the people that are struggling to hold on while loving someone struggling with a substance use disorder (SUD). This morning I was returning a text to a friend, whose son is in inpatient treatment for SUD once again. Her message said in short, this is such a rollercoaster and it feels so hopeless.

To love someone one with a substance use disorder is incredibly hard. The fear you carry on a daily basis is all encompassing and threatens to pull you under at any moment. I can remember so many days with Taylor grieving the person standing right in front of me, because I hardly recognized him. The behaviors that go with SUD make them incredibly hard to love at times. As a mom, it was so gut wrenching to be afraid every single second to know that today could be the day you lose them or something awful could happened. I tried not to let myself go there, but you do. It is such a dark place, but I couldn’t help it at times. It is a rollercoaster as my friend reminded me this morning. Only it is not like any rollercoaster you have ever ridden. It is like being on a rollercoaster with no safety harness, hearing the ominous click, click,click of the car as it climbs the hill, knowing what awaits when you get to the top. Then the shear terror of knowing you aren’t strapped in as you drop down that hill unable to breathe knowing the car could derail at any moment. It is the nightmare of all rollercoasters.

As awful as it is at times, there are also moments of Hope. In those moments, you are scared to exhale. Scared that hope is so fragile if you exhale too much it will shatter into a million pieces. I found that having faith and hope in the darkest moments with Taylor was difficult. Ironically, faith is hardest to have when you need it the most. I was scared to hope too much because I knew the other side of that coin and perhaps I thought it might protect me somehow. It doesn’t protect you by the way.

I pray that if you are reading this and you love someone who is struggling you give yourself permission to have HOPE. Because as awful as it was in Taylor’s darkest moments; the crazy, the lies, the fear, the frustration and the anger, that was so much better than what it is like to actually live in a world without them. The heartbreak is so profound and gut-wrenching. To lose a child, is to lose a part of yourself and then have to figure out how to live in the world with a huge part of yourself missing.

If you are reading this and you love someone who is struggling with SUD or mental illness please allow yourself to HOPE. When you do that, I believe you bring that into the world and to your loved one. They need to know that there is HOPE because they too lose HOPE. Hope is light and we can help them find that light even in the darkest of moments. It is one of my biggest regrets looking back that I didn’t allow myself to hope very often because I was so afraid all the time.

Taylor taught me so many things on this journey. One that resonates with me today as I write this is, that people who struggle do not need fixers. I am a life-long fixer by the way. They need people who can walk beside them on this journey even on their darkest days and love them. Just simply love them when they are finding it hard to love themselves. It is no easy task because none of us know how the journey will end but I do know this: as long as they are breathing there is still HOPE. Believe it and put it out into the world. I told Taylor so often that I was always rooting for him. I would forever be in the stands of his life, cheering my fool head off. I learned that from my high school spanish teacher of all people. It is so powerful to know there are people in the stands of your life rooting you on. So know that I am rooting for all of you out there that are struggling and loving someone with a SUD and I believe there is always HOPE.