Hello Port 45 Family and Friends!
I am a little late submitting my blog this week. This is because this week is typically a hard week for me each year. If you have been following my blog you know that I lost my sister Sam to an overdose in 2001. March 23 was her birthday and that day is an emotionally trying day for me. Grief is such a complicated emotion, and I am far from an expert on the subject of loss.
When I lost Sam, I emerged myself into drugs and used her death as an excuse to use for 9 long years. I was so focused on how she died that I did not want to live. In early recovery, I experienced another hard loss with the death of my mother just 5 days after completing treatment. For the first time in my life, I had to actually feel those feelings without numbing them. As a result, I was able to grieve both my sister and my mother properly.
But even after the initial grieving, a piece of my recovery puzzle was still missing so I joined a support group for people who had lost loved ones to drug and alcohol-related deaths. The therapeutic value of reaching out to people with like experiences was the missing piece that made all the difference. I began to find purpose again.
The circumstances that led up to my sister’s death are still painful and I miss her everyday. The process of healing never stops but I chose not to focus on her death any more. That moment that she took her last breath is only one moment in countless other moments that I got to share with her.
Her death is more than just “another overdose death.” I chose today to help others to recover because I could not help her. I chose to remember the laughter, the fights we had (as ridiculous as they seem now), the family vacations and Christmas’ that we had with our family. I chose to remember her as a beautiful, smart, kind and fierce woman that she truly was.
I share her story as freely as I share my own. I hope that maybe through the act of sharing, I will help someone else who is also working through the grief and pain that losing someone can bring to a family. I will teach my children these things about their Aunt Sam and I will remember her in the work that I do every day. She wasn’t just another addict, she was my sister.
Happy Birthday Sam!
Love Kathy
Who We Are:
Port 45 Recovery is a community behavioral health center fully licensed by the state of Ohio. They have convenient locations in both Columbus and Portsmouth. Their centers provide a variety of behavioral health treatments:
- Medication Management
- Individual Counseling
- Group Counseling
- Case Management
- Mental Health
- Anger Management
Contact them for additional information about their treatment programs or to schedule an appointment.
Columbus office (614) 826-9995 | Portsmouth office (740) 529-7356
Like and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.