I still mother them….

At the End of the Day, This Is About Keeping People Alive

I am going to be honest. The last few days have hurt my heart.

I have gone back and forth about even writing this because social media can be a brutal place, especially when people are passionate, grieving, angry, or carrying their own experiences with addiction. But after reading hundreds of comments, messages, inboxes, and opinions surrounding SB 249, I think I need to say this.

First, let me say this: nobody who buried a child wakes up and says, “You know what I want to do today? Argue addiction legislation on Facebook.”

Trust me when I tell you, if I could trade every hard conversation, every public opinion, every post, every criticism, every debate, every single thing that comes with advocacy to have Vincent back, I would do it in a heartbeat. Every single time.

But I cannot.

And because I cannot, I also cannot sit quietly when people are dying.

Has some of this hurt my feelings? Absolutely. I am human. There have been comments that stung, assumptions made about my heart, my intentions, my motives. People acting as though if you support one thing, somehow you are against another.

That part has been hard.

What has hurt me the most is this idea that somehow supporting harm reduction means you do not support recovery.

That could not be further from the truth.

Recovery matters. Recovery is the goal. I have people in my life I love fiercely who are years into recovery, and I celebrate every single milestone because I know what it took to get there.

But here is the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to talk about:

People cannot recover if they are dead.

I know that sentence makes people uncomfortable. It makes me uncomfortable too. But burying a child is uncomfortable. Sitting in funeral homes is uncomfortable. Picking out urns is uncomfortable. Looking at a death certificate is uncomfortable. Having to answer questions no parent should ever have to answer is uncomfortable.

Addiction is uncomfortable.

And I think somewhere along the way, we have forgotten that we can believe in recovery while also understanding the reality of active addiction.

Because whether people like it or not, active addiction exists.

Not everybody is at the recovery stage yet.

Not everybody has hit whatever “bottom” people think they are supposed to hit.

Some people are still deep in the darkness. Deep in survival mode. Deep in doing whatever they have to do to not get sick, not go into withdrawal, not die that day.

Do I wish treatment was easier? Absolutely.

Do I wish recovery beds were everywhere? Yes.

Do I wish mental health treatment, trauma treatment, and family support were stronger? One thousand percent.

But wishing for those things does not erase the reality of where we are right now.

And where we are right now is losing people every single day.

I will tell you what has surprised me through all of this though.

The inboxes.

The quiet messages.

The people coming out of the woodwork.

The moms.

The dads.

The people in recovery.

The people currently struggling.

The people saying, “I do not want to say this publicly, but thank you.”

One message this morning honestly stopped me in my tracks. It said:

“Thank you, thank you for taking your precious time to explain why SB 249 is so important and vital to the recovery community. I did not know the facts, so I had an uneducated opinion. Following you and reading your posts has opened my eyes, heart, and wallet to those in recovery, those not yet, and those actively trying their best to make it after recovery.

My family has been affected by addiction, though not drug related.

Thank you for educating and explaining to us lay people about the whys, hows, and whats of helping the addiction community. Everyone deserves dignity, respect, love, compassion, and chances to recover.

You have made a huge impact on me so please know your words from the heart are reaching people and changing minds.”

And if I am honest, I cried.

Not because this is about me. It is not.

But because maybe that means people are listening.

Maybe people are willing to sit in the uncomfortable and learn.

Maybe people are starting to understand that this conversation is not as black and white as social media wants it to be.

Because this is not political to me.

This is personal.

This is Vincent.

This is every family sitting in grief.

This is every person who still has a chance if they are just kept alive long enough to get there.

You do not have to agree with me. You do not have to agree with every part of SB 249. Healthy disagreement is okay.

But I hope we can stop acting like caring about keeping people alive somehow means you do not care about recovery.

Because I promise you, as a mother who buried her son, if there had been one more chance, one more day, one more opportunity for recovery, I would have taken it.

At the end of the day, this is not about politics for me.

It is about keeping people alive long enough to have a chance.