March 29 to April 1 2012

GRASP Retreat 2012

Where: Double Tree by Hilton Tampa Airport – Westshore. 4500 West Cypress Street, Tampa, FL 33607.

  Register Here!

GRASP Retreat Agenda

• Thursday
  
  • Arrival, check-in and Registration
  • Welcome and Reception (7:00pm to 8:30pm)

• Friday
  • 8:00am
    Welcome, Introduction, Gary and Denise Cullen
  • 8:30
    Gretchen Burns Bergman
    Moms United to End the War on Drugs Campaign
  • 9:15
    Julia Negron
    Challenges in traditional drug treatment & Harm Reduction strategies
  • 10:00
    Break
  • 10:15
    Q and A Gretchen and Julia
  • 10:45
    Grief, coping, journaling as a tool Marilee Odendahl and Denise Cullen
  • 12:30
    LUNCH Together
  • 1:00pm
    Free time

• Saturday
• 8:00am
  Introduction to Harm Reduction
• 8:15
  Meghan Ralston – Harm Reduction Strategies:
  Good Samaritan 911 / Naloxone Response to OD / Prevention & Reality Based Education
• 10:00
  Break
• 10:15
  Stephen Gutwillig – Advocacy Training introduction
  Media / Legislative / Community / School
• 10:45
  Stephen & Meghan: Crafting your Story
• 11:00
  Stephen & Meghan: role play hard questions
• 11:30
  Stephen & Meghan: Media Advocacy
• 12:15
  Break to get lunch bags
• 12:30
  Panel Discussion: Gret, Julia, Denise, Gary, Marilee, Stephen, Meghan
  Free time
• Sunday
• Check-out and goodbyes

GRASP and its partners are providing your hotel room (two to a room), a Thursday evening reception, a group lunch on Friday and a group dinner on Saturday.  The hotel provides free transportation between the airport and the hotel, and your room includes a buffet breakfast each day.  Air travel and all other expenses will be the responsibility of each participant.

SEE YOU ALL IN FLORIDA!!

Please join us. Register below.  

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If you are traveling with a spouse or other person please indicate that here and please make sure they also register separately. 

GRASP and its partners are providing your hotel room (two to a room), a Thursday evening reception, a group lunch on Friday and a group dinner on Saturday.  The hotel provides free transportation between the airport and the hotel, and your room includes a buffet breakfast each day.  Air travel and all other expenses will be the responsibility of each participant.

I am a woman who lost her son, Ian Murphy-Mitchard to overdose on September 24, 2007.  I found GRASP (Grief Recovery After A Substance Passing) while searching for people who had gone through this experience.  What follows are my own observations and beliefs about this dynamic Facebook group.  I hope you will find it helpful and that it encourages you to take some time to participate.

What can GRASP do for a person who has lost a beloved person in their lives?

Nothing.  And Everything.

Nothing anyone can do or say will deliver the impossible wish  – to bring back to us the person we have lost too soon to the disease of addiction.  But that said, here we are – all of us together on a path more lonesome, terrible and stark than anything we could have imagined for ourselves.  How on earth can we continue on in our lives?  For some of us during our darkest days of despair the question is “Will I continue on in my life?”

That’s where “Everything” comes in.  As parents, family and friends we search everywhere for answers to why this tragedy has happened to our loved one and to us. We spend hours on the Internet researching drug abuse; we listen to music and find equal measures of comfort and pain in the lyrics.  We watch movies, read books and search the Bible for verses and passages that give meaning to the senseless loss of our children, parents, boyfriends…   Some people who never thought that they would – go to psychics or mediums.  Others find themselves in a church pew for the first time in years.  Still others find themselves completely isolated and unable to reach out to anyone.  I am glad that you have found GRASP and I hope that here you will find a place of comfort among friends where you can safely speak what is in your heart.  Speaking your truth at this juncture in your life may well turn out to be “Everything”.  It was for me.

One thing most people who have lost a loved one to substance abuse/overdose have in common is our inability to speak in a natural way about our loved ones and their deaths because of the stigma attached to addiction.  GRASP hopes that through encouraging open, accepting dialog we can help remove some of the collateral damage to those left behind by the isolation caused by stigma. I could not answer the question, “How did your son die?” truthfully for a year after his death.  Had I responded to that question by replying, “Ian died of a heroin overdose” I felt sure it would have instantly cleared the room.  I would say something like, “It was an accident”.  And I felt that each time I answered with some euphemistic nonsense instead of the truth I was somehow betraying him.  My son was so much more than “just an addict” but for many people the fact of his addiction effectively erased every other wonderful thing that he was.  To many he was the sum of his affliction.  How often do you read about someone who is a talented poet and an excellent cook and (as an afterthought) … an addict?  Never.  When someone suffers the disease of addiction in our society that becomes all they are –  reducing a complex human being to a stereotype.  That kind of stigma is isolating for both the person struggling with addiction and for the family trying to help them – and it serves no positive purpose whatever!  Thankfully, I have gotten past that now, but it has taken years. Far too often we who are struggling to find support in our time of grieving find instead these isolating attitudes that just underscore our loneliness.  We feel certain that no one who has never walked the tumultuous path we have walked with our loved ones (children, husbands, wives, boyfriends or girlfriends) can ever understand our devastating loss.  At times we are certain they don’t really want to understand.  Sadly, some people will even say that we are responsible for our loved one’s death, that somehow something we did or did not do contributed to their passing.  It will never occur to them that in no other situation where a person has lost a family member to a disease is it ever (EVER!) suggested that a parent is somehow responsible.  This is just one example of the many areas in which GRASP participants can offer understanding and support to one another.   It is important to remember that GRASP is not just one or two moderators chiming in on discussion threads – but rather GRASP is the sum total of all participants – everyone has an equal voice, an equal opportunity to raise concerns, questions and to offer their unique voices to the on-going conversation.

We are a group of people who belong to a club no one wants to join – and each time a new person makes a tentative first posting our hearts sink in unison as we welcome another grieving parent, husband, grandmother, friend or lover who has had their lives shattered.  We know.  We know.  When a new person writes, “my daughter died six months ago and I am so angry I want to scream” or someone else writes, “No one ever even mentions my son’s name to me, don’t they realize what has happened to me?” – they receive almost immediate validation of their feelings – some person they’ve never met will write “I know what you mean sometimes I drive into the country just so I can scream in the car and no one will hear me and think I’m crazy” or another person will write, “Hold on, it might not seem possible but it will get better” or “I’m so very sorry, tell us more about him”.  And so, with gentle encouragement and genuine interest a father is able to speak for the first time about the details of his child’s struggle and his grief and anger and pain.  Why?  Because we know.  We are not just mouthing empty platitudes when we respond, “I know how you feel.”

GRASP helps people to break through the veil of isolation and self-blame, for some it will be for the first time in years they’ve been able to speak openly.   Read some of the posts and you will see each new person responded to with welcoming messages.  You’ll see requests that new visitors post pictures of their loved ones, encouragement to talk about their present state of mind, their feelings, their joys and their sorrows.   You will find people just like yourself and people whose experience has led them to different conclusions than your own.  You will also read post of incredible compassion for those who have passed and for those left behind.  You will read prayers and poems; you will read anger, resentment and stories of incredible courage.  In short – you will find a broad spectrum of perspective and response to an all-too-common tragedy.   People supporting and sometimes saving the lives of people they will never meet but whom they understand so well.

You may be surprised to see more than a few “LOLs” in the postings.  You might read a word or two that makes you uncomfortable.  Some posting are full of raw, aching words of sorrow and regret that you might find yourself in tears as you recognize your own pain in someone else’s longing.  Some postings read like poetry in their eloquence while others are as simple and true as the people who write them.  And sometimes something so funny will start off a truly hilarious thread as people jump on board with their own stories.  GRASP is like life – it’s all there: the ups as well as the downs.

Some words of warning:  you might encounter controversy on our Facebook page.  Drugs (and drug policy) can make criminals out of people who are sick and create such chaos in the lives of those who use them and their families it is hard to sometimes to parse out just where you stand on the surrounding issues.  Is the “War on Drugs” working?  Are our drug policies helping to destabilize foreign countries?  Should drugs be legalized?  Is effective, affordable drug treatment really available in this country?  Who is right?  Who is wrong?  How can it even matter in the face of all we have personally lost?  You will find many differing opinions at GRASP. All that we ask is that we each be responsible in our postings & remain open and respectful in our responses.  The last thing anyone needs is to feel threatened or shut out of a GRASP discussion.  Remember if you will that everyone you encounter here is a survivor of the greatest loss and emotions sometimes run high.  We all have lessons to learn from one another.  It is a goal of GRASP to lessen the stigma of substance death through a willingness to listen and learn.  When people become angry the first thing we lose is our ability to hear, really hear, what the other person is saying.  To this end I have at times simply signed off the site when I cannot agree (or be agreeable) in a conversation.  Sometimes retiring from the field is the better part of valor!

The Internet is often taken to task for its shortcomings – but GRASP is an example of the best that the Internet can be.   For a parent in a small town who has just lost a child to a heroin overdose and who has absolutely no one in his or her life who can begin to understand – finding the voices at GRASP may seem like a miracle.  Our goal is that each and every person who joins our site finds themselves welcomed, supported and understood.  Living through the experience of profound grief is beyond my ability to describe fully, but I do know that it is the loneliest, darkest place.  My wish for you dear reader is that you will hold out your hand and let someone reach out, grasp it and pull you forward into life.

- Marilee Murphy-Odendahl

Jamie and Cori Sievers

  Since just before the 20th of June, 2011, the first year anniversary of my only son Jamie’s death, I’ve been in a new corridor in the seemingly endless labyrinth of grieving, and I just couldn’t make it out for awhile. I didn’t fall, I leapt into a path of self destruction with a single-mindedness born of true hopelessness.

I can honestly say, I wanted to die.

Three days before the anniversary, I drank a bottle of vodka and swallowed some sleeping pills. Obviously, by some fluke or grace of the Powers That Be, I didn’t succeed in my attempt.

Every time I would dwell on my despair, think about what I could have done differently, think why…I’d fall down into a dark place inside myself that nobody is meant to look at for too long, let alone live; and the desire to die took a stranglehold on me. I was drinking. A lot. And that made the desire to die completely overwhelming. No matter who you are or how you end up dealing with it, the grief of losing a child takes you to places nobody is meant to go. Some of us don’t make it out.

But dying would be passing the buck – onto my friends and chosen family, onto my niece and nephew who call me “second mom”…it would be spreading the pain out even further. The ultimate selfish act. Despite the pain I feel, I know now I cannot do to them what my son’s death did to me.

Have you ever been so lost that you gave up trying to find your way back out again?

Until now, that meant giving up ever finding my way back to myself – to sanity. But now I think that NOT trying to find our way back is essential to survival – but instead, we must push on…go deeper and deeper into the dark until we meet the thing that terrifies us the most. Our loss. Our grief. Life without our children: unthinkable. Because until we do, we aren’t really surviving, we are hiding…and the more we hide, the worse the pain gets until we’ll gnaw off our own limbs to end the trapped feeling, the intense pain of being caught in our own grief and guilt.

Inevitably what happens then is we bleed out and die.

Fortunately for me, I managed, with help, to drag myself through to the other side (with a lot of support, and no thanks to me).

Well, perhaps the one thing I did right after putting on the mental tourniquet is that instead of crawling back the way I came, I’ve resolved to claw my way past the big bear-trap that was sprung.

It’s already sprung, it can’t hurt me anymore.

Even though I know full well there will be more obstacles and traps out there…but nothing will ever hurt me again the way that losing my son hurt me. And every day I live through another 24 hours, and find a reason to laugh or love or fight or create, is an honor to my son’s life. I’m not going to lie, it’s scary here. Dealing with the grief naked, without the veil of denial, is something I’ve not done once this past year.

And sometimes the path seems to double back and you can see, running parallel to you, just a step away, the path back to where you came from. Sometimes they even intersect, and you could, if you are not careful, end up right back where you started. Only if you do, you find that suddenly you can’t seem to fit into your old skin anymore. Nothing seems to belong. Even the people around you don’t fit into their former places in your life.

Everything is just…off. It’s like stepping through Alice’s looking glass – suddenly you find yourself in a new, strange world – the old one just in view, but remote and ultimately unreachable – because unlike Alice, once you’ve stepped through, you find eventually you can’t go back – can’t stay in that old, stale, hard world anymore because you no longer belong in it. You’ve changed, and the reason for as well as the process of that change, sets you apart from the people around you.

When I was a kid, it was a silly kind of conceit to want to be different, set apart from people around me. Now, it doesn’t have any kind of merit or stigma either way. It just is. It’s disconcerting and strange to know you have really passed through something – and are passing through something – that most people will never understand. And you would never want them to understand, because that would mean them going through the unthinkable.

And so you have no choice but to try the new path – eventually, it begins to turn farther and farther away from the old path.

And then you are in a new place – one you can only trust will be a place in which you can survive and even thrive.

You have to evolve. Change. Then break free. I cannot keep going the way I have. I’m exhausted and frustrated and nothing fits anymore.

And besides, I know exactly where it leads – and that is a place I mean never to visit again. All there is to do now is wait…breathe. Then keep going – but not back to where I was. This past year has not been a “cocoon”. It’s been a raw, painful period of waiting to see whether a massive loss is going to bleed enough to clean itself out and eventually heal, or become infected and ultimately kill me. It’s a noisy, painful, ugly time. You are bleeding and suppurating and lancing the wound again and again – and there is no doctor giving you morphine. You do the worst of it alone, and you do it fully conscious. Even the cheap oblivion of booze or drugs (even the ones the doctor prescribes you) is temporary and ultimately maddening. It doesn’t obliterate any pain, it actually irritates it and in some cases, even amplifies it. It puts you in a mental and emotional holding-pattern that inevitably leads to a crash. The only way to go through suffering is to go through it. If you try to mask it, it only draws it out the longer.But you don’t have to go through it alone.

It took me a year to get here – and I’m not sure where here is. But I’m not where I was, and I guess you can call that progress.

And you looked away and quickly
began to talk again.
All the attention you had given me drained away.

“How am I doing?” . . .
I do better when people listen,
though I may shed a tear or two.
These feelings are indescribable.
If you’ve never felt them you cannot fully understand.
Yet I need you.
When you look away,
when I’m ignored,
I am again alone with them.
Your attention means more than you can ever know.

Really, tears are not a bad sign, you know!
They’re nature’s way of helping me to heal . . .
They relieve some of the stress of sadness.

I know you fear that asking
how I’m doing brings me sadness . . .
but it doesn’t work that way.
The memory of my loved one’s absence is with me, only a thought away.

My tears make my loss more visible to you,
but you did not cause this sadness. It was already there.

When I cry, could it be that you feel helpless,
not knowing what to do?
You are not helpless,
and you don’t need to do a thing but be here for me.

When I feel your permission to allow my tears to flow,
you’ve helped me.
You need not speak. Your silence is all I need.
Be patient . . . do not fear.

Listening with your heart to “how am I doing”
validates what I’m going through,
for when the tears can freely come I feel lighter.

Talking to you releases
what I’ve been wanting to say aloud,
clearing space for a touch of joy in my life.
I’ll cry for a minute or two . . . then I’ll wipe my eyes,
and sometimes you’ll even find I’m laughing in a while.

When I hold back my tears, my throat grows tight,
my chest aches, my stomach knots . . .
because I’m trying to protect you from my tears.
Then we both hurt . . .
me, because my feelings are held inside,
causing pain and a shield against our closeness . . .
and you, because suddenly we’re emotionally distant.

So please, take my hand and see me through my tears . . .
then we can be close again

– Kelly Osmont,

The grief we talk about here is real, gut wrenching pain, accompanied by all sorts of other emotions such as guilt, shame, regrets – all the “what ifs”, “should haves” that do nothing but drag us down farther.  It is what it is and we go on from here.  To lose a person you love deeply, someone who has been an important part of your life…maybe the MOST important part of your life – is devastating.  Really, there is no word for it that equals the intensity of the feeling.

Everyone responds differently to their loss, and this fact makes it harder to understand each other when we find ourselves comparing her loss, to my loss, to his loss.  We must try not to do that.  Even if all experiences, all relationships were the same, each person’s response would still be different, and add to that, different from day to day, moment to moment!

Then there’s the gender differences involved that most in science acknowledge — and not just in grief, in most areas regarding emotion, communication, sharing, and our willingness to be vulnerable.  There’s a reason why many marriages break up over the loss of a child.   My opinion is that when our responses don’t jive, we feel badly; like we, or they are not meeting some expectations.  Maybe we or they did not love the child enough.

Intellectually most of us know there are differences between the genders in so many ways; that doesn’t mean that when we are off kilter we accept it easily.  Men typically have a need to FIX things.  When they can’t, as in a situation like this, they may feel they are letting us down, maybe not “strong enough”?  Perhaps they close down more because of that?  I don’t have the answers to the whys, I just know they exist.  I do know that when you are “on the same page” with someone you love deeply about something as important as this, it’s a wonderful feeling.  MY PERSON GETS IT!  Sometimes that lasts for a day, a week, a month, or never happens.  Sometimes it’s that way throughout.  We are all different.

There are many things involved in losing a loved one to substance use disorder, accidental overdose, and health issues brought on by use of damaging substances that complicate the grieving process.  It is widely acknowledged that to lose a child is the worst possible loss.  It is unnatural.  Parents are supposed to precede their children in death.  Children are not supposed to die young.  These are a few of the things in life that just aren’t “fair”.  Although we understand that life isn’t fair, it is very difficult to accept when it happens to you.

A huge part of what makes this grief so unique is that many people do not understand the addictive illness that took the life of your loved one.  There is blame and shame attached to it.  It is oftentimes considered a “choice”, therefore, the person caused it themselves, and moreover; you must’ve had a hand in it because you allowed it to happen!  Pile that on to whatever guilt you are already feeling, along with the incredible pain of your loss, and it’s unimaginable that people are able to go on.

There is also the fact that there were months, often years of turmoil, distrust, anger, sadness, pain, hope and disappointment that has preceded the death of your loved one.  Sometimes it feels as if you lost the person a little at a time and even though you always hoped you would get them back whole, usually there came a time that you realized it just wasn’t going to happen.  So, your dreams for your loved one, for your relationship with them, for their future happiness died bit by bit.  But as long as they were alive there was always hope.

So now, they are gone.  You begin the real work of grieving, of trying to have a life in which this person, so important to you, is not a part of.

At Broken No More, we have GRASP, Grief Recovery After a Substance Passing– see www.grasphelp.org  for more.  Here, we have all traveled the same road and we provide love, comfort, understanding and support to one another.  We do this through face to face groups all over the country, and we do it every day, nearly all day on our Facebook GRASP site.  We share ideas, experiences, and stories of how to cope.  We share our loved ones; their lives, talents, hobbies, pictures, their families, trials and tribulations without fear of judgment or criticism.

We laugh about the things our loved ones said and did, we remember fondly the good memories and sweetness, and we talk about the bad, the heart-breaks, and the agony of waiting for the other shoe to drop while riding that roller coaster from hell.  We also talk about the injustice of the “systems” we were forced to navigate.  Those whose job it was to help our loved on, help us help them, failed us at every turn.  We do all of this in a safe place, and in time, the pain softens…maybe just for a short while, but we begin to feel small pleasures again, appreciate the beauty in life, and realize that there is good here, still.

We talk about our beliefs, our faith, our spirituality, in the ways that it helps us and in the ways that we feel it has failed us, and the continuing merry-go-round that sometimes accompanies it.  We share poems, music, stories, that inspire, or connect us to our loved one who has died, hoping to connect others to them as well.

Most of all we try to keep them alive through sharing about them.  Some of us aren’t able to do that within our own families or circles in daily life, so we do it here and it works.  We know each other’s loved ones by name, by face, by smile, even by their tattoos!  Sometimes the funny stories are the best!  Other times, the sweet ones, showing our loved ones’ tenderness lift us up more.

Some of us work through grief recovery by doing advocacy work in this area.  We want to see change, to prevent others from going through the pain we have been through.  Some just seem to always be there with just the right words when someone is hurting especially badly that day, or even having an especially good day.  It seems the more we get to know one another, the easier it is to help when someone reaches out.  Helping others always seems to help us as well.

We have lessons to learn on this path to recovery.  Many lessons.  The most important one I find is to be patient with ourselves.  There is no schedule for this, and at times we take 3 steps forward and 7 back.  We must try to be patient, even those high achievers, those Type A personalities among us, must learn that this has a life of its own and we can only control so much.   So when you have that “meltdown” as it’s so often referred to, SO WHAT!  Ride it like a wave and let it wash over you.  Talk to someone if you feel like it, lie down if you feel like it, take a walk…whatever it is that helps you in that moment is what you should do.

Taking care of ourselves is so very important; especially those of us who have others to take care of.  We cannot do it if we are not well.  If we are not eating right, sleeping, exercising, doing small things that bring us any tiny bit of pleasure, we will not be able to be there for others.

I know some of you are saying “she must be crazy!  I couldn’t even move for weeks, or months!”  I surely do understand, because I was one of those people.  Sometimes I still am!  On a really bad day when I can’t feel anything but my pain, I’ll go to bed and just sit in the dark.  I am fortunate to be able to do that, but if people could see our pain on the outside, the way we feel it on the inside, they wouldn’t argue with us!  They would rush us to the Intensive Care Unit!  We would be bleeding and battered and look like we were on death’s door.  THAT is how bad it can sometimes be.

Please, do whatever it takes for you to dig yourself out of this hole; reading, talking, looking at pictures, not looking at pictures, being with your pets, getting creative in your garden, helping someone else, going out for coffee with your friends who do understand, attending support groups, going to church, watch a movie, anything to get OUT of your own head for a bit. The list goes on and on.  You will find, I think, that if you MAKE yourself put your shoes on and go outside that door and walk, even if it’s just around the block, you will feel better.  All of these suggestions are meant to be used at your pace…when you are ready.  But sometimes we still have to force ourselves if we think it might help us.

Educating others is another thing that can help.  We are the teachers now.  We know (or are learning) more about what took our loved one from us, and we must use that information in the best way we can.  For most, telling everyone the truth is a big first step.  For some, it came totally naturally.  There is NO SHAME in addictive illness.  It is no one’s fault.  NO ONE CHOSE IT.  They are not here to stand up for themselves, so now, if we can, we must do it for them.  In all likelihood, they were harder on themselves than anyone anyway.

Another important area in our “teaching” role is to share with those we care about what we need from them.  They often don’t know what to do or say.  They are afraid of upsetting us.  Making us cry.  They don’t know how much we cry alone at a song, or food on sale at the grocery store they loved, or a person who looks a little like them, maybe wearing “their” brand….  It’s up to us to educate them.  Tell those you love that you WANT to hear them say your loved one’s name, you want to hear stories (even if you already know them), you want to hear others laugh about them, remember them, see love in their face for your loved one.

And always, always, remember…you are not the only one who loves and misses them.  On important days and others, acknowledge those friends and family that are hurting as well.  Again, in many cases, we will never, ever get OVER this loss, but we can work toward getting through it.  For that, we need each other.

A very important thing to remember, always – is that we would not be in such pain if there wasn’t great love.  GREAT LOVE.  We shared that with the person we miss and that is precious.   Though this is the most painful, difficult thing I have ever experienced, I am blessed to have had that love with my son for 27 years and 5 months.   I am grateful for that.

To end this short, surface article on grief recovery, the bottom line is we all have our own path; our own schedule and it can change from day to day.  Consider yourself very fortunate if you have people in your life who understand you; who “GET IT”.  If not, then do your best to find them.  They are our greatest gift.