High School Assembly - November 2014

I was honored to be invited to speak at a local high school assembly today, to share my families story. When the assembly was over, a young woman hugged me and thanked me, telling me how much it meant to her to hear it. This was the greatest reward I could have wished for, and the reason that I won't ever stop talking about my baby and everything that we went through to try to save her.

I have shared the speech below, in hopes that it will do good for others as well. 

There is no adult who can look at a teenager and say "I know exactly what you are going through", because life has changed since we were kids. But that’s OK, because the point of advice, of sharing our stories with you, is to hope that there is something within them that you will be able to relate to.

We can't tell you that you can lead a life free of mistakes, because for most of us, our lives are chalk full of them - that is what makes us grow into successful and wise adults.

What I can tell you, is that some mistakes change your life forever. Some of these life-changing mistakes can turn out to have a positive outcome, you can learn from them and make better choices, and become a wiser person.

Other choices will turn your life into a nightmare.

My daughters’ mistakes cost her her life. Her choices, and my reactions to them, have taught me many horrible things.

I’ve learned what it looks like to watch your daughter change from one person, who is good and kind and strong - into another, broken person who wants to be all of those things, but doesn't believe that they can be anymore.

All because of a series of mistakes.

I can also tell you what it is like to mourn that person. I can tell you what it's like to know that someone left your child to die, alone in a gas station bathroom - because those are the choices you make when you take drugs like heroin.

I can tell you that my daughter, Elannah Rose, did not overdose. She took a drug that would have killed her no matter what - it wasn't safe in any dose and there was always going to be a day that she died from it.

The craziest part of everything that happened to my daughter is that she was an addict for three years before we knew it. At this point, every time I tell this story, I feel compelled to acknowledge what I believe all of you are thinking. What kind of a mother doesn’t notice that her child is messed up for three years? This is something I think about every day.

I believed I was a good mom. I did everything I could to provide for my daughter. I talked to her about everything I was supposed to talk with her about. My husband and I made sure that our kids knew they were our first priority.  We ate together, we hung out together, and we did everything we could to prepare her for the world and to be there for her. But I still missed it.

There were certainly signs that she wasn’t alright. Looking back I can see them with perfect clarity. Unfortunately, the signs were never things that we knew to look out for. And because she was so good at hiding her drug use, and so good at appearing to be the same person that we knew, we missed it.

I will never forgive myself. Even now, two and a half years after she died, I lie awake at night thinking about everything I missed, and everything I lost. I don’t blame my daughter, I blame myself. That doesn’t mean that I don’t hold her responsible for her choices, but I was her mom, and I was supposed to know. And I was supposed to save her. From everything bad in the world.

That was certainly my job when she was thirteen. It was my job until the day she died.

When my daughter was sixteen, she started using heroin. She had convinced herself that she could try it and stop, just like she had been able to “experiment” with every other drug she had tried.

It didn’t take long for her to realize that she was not going to be able to stop. Within a couple of weeks she realized that she had made a huge mistake, and she asked for help.

The daughter I saw that night was trying to be sober for the first time in years. She was shaking and picking at her skin… she looked extremely ill and a little insane. It was such a huge and sudden change that I almost convinced myself that she was faking it.

For months we watched her. She begged us not to send her to rehab and we didn’t understand that people don’t get clean at home… so when, once again, our little girl seemed to be perfectly together, we believed her. It was as if all of our prayers were answered.

Throughout this time she maintained a job, she received promotions, she graduated from high school… the drug use came up a few times, but she was so capable in everything else that we didn’t understand that she had a major problem. And it was never heroin again, it was a drink at a party, or a little bit of pot. She was living a double life, and she was good at hiding her other one.

We did this little dance for the next few years. She slipped, we caught her and became more vigilant, she got herself together, we gave her back her freedom, she slipped, the cycle started again.

Until one day when I was opening our mail and there was a letter from a lawyer offering to defend her. She had been arrested for possession of heroin, and this was how I found out. She had spent so much time hiding her activities that she never even considered we would discover the arrest.

By then, she’d been clean and sober for months, as far as we knew. She’d been talking about joining the military or potentially looking into a law enforcement career.

Now she was a felon.

We took her to court, and I cried through the whole thing. I was terrified for her, terrified for her future. And every time we went to court, I saw a side of her I didn’t know. A side that was created out of this other life, this addict’s life.

Even then, we didn’t stop trying to save her. I was so convinced that it was all my fault that I kept trying to fix everything. I kept believing the things she told me. I believed that I was helping her.

And then she got high at home. I caught her smoking heroin in our garage, and I had to kick her out.

This whole time… all these years of helping her… we had two other kids in the house. It never occurred to me that she would be using in our home with her brother and sister there. We had never found any evidence of drug use in the house; we had never actually caught her high.

I didn’t understand an addict’s behavior. I didn’t understand how good she was at hiding things. And even those things I should have understood, I didn’t want to believe those things about my daughter.

But this time I couldn’t ignore it. She was putting our other kids at risk and I couldn’t allow that, couldn’t risk losing them. Elannah Rose was an adult, our other children weren’t even close, and we couldn’t continue to make them suffer because of her choices.

Kicking Elannah Rose out was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It was also probably the best decision I made from the moment I found out she was using up until that point.

It wasn’t long before she begged to come home, she finally agreed to go to rehab, and she was willing to do anything not to lose her family. And she did. And we had a wonderful break from all the craziness, and she was back for a while.

The problem is, the heroin had changed her. It had altered her body chemistry and she just couldn’t feel good anymore. And one day, it was worse than not be able to feel good, she hated what she had become, this person who never felt right no matter how hard she tried. So she tried to cut her wrists open, and she was taken to a mental ward and placed on lock down.

And she got better again. And she was given medication that helped normalize her. But she knew she would never be right, and even though she went to a new rehab facility, and eventually got through to sober living and then came home, she never liked herself again. She never really believed she had a future.

She was grateful to have a chance to be a big sister again, to do it right. And she did for a while. She helped her little sister with her homework, she shared a room with her baby brother and cuddled him when he woke up at night. She loved them, and she wanted them to know it.

But eventually her meds needed to be adjusted, something in her life shifted, she met up with the folks she used to use with… and she couldn’t maintain anymore.

A few days before she died I started feeling like she was slipping, and I mentioned it to her, but she’d made so much progress that I didn’t want to press her too hard. I just asked her to talk to me if she needed help. She teared up, and smiled, and promised.

A day or two later she stayed up late cuddling with her dad and me and watching some goofy TV show. The next day she skipped her AA meeting to go out with a friend. They were supposed to be studying, but they were shooting up heroin. That was the last choice she ever made.

I still can’t remember what they said when they came to my house, I know I kept asking where she was, and that my husband collapsed on the floor. And I started screaming. I don’t remember a lot about the next few days. I remember different things at different times, but even though it was only two and half years ago, it’s the foggiest part of my life.

I do remember picking out her grave-site. I remember lying down under a tree, and looking up and knowing that that would be her view forever.  This little person who had been with me for more than half my life was going to stay in this place until her body was no more.

And that is what I thought about for months. Her body decomposing in that box, images of it would wake me up screaming at night, until I got to the point where I just tried to avoid sleeping.

I’m not sure I will ever be normal again. At least once a day I have to talk myself out of crying in some public situation. My emotions are always boiling just below the surface. This is not because I’m a woman, it’s not because I’m an emotional person, it’s because my heart was broken, and that is a real thing.

Sometimes, when I think about Elannah Rose, I am grateful that her struggle is over. I don’t think I can say that without sounding a little nuts, but it’s true. I am so grateful that she doesn’t have to fight her addiction anymore and that she is at peace. But I also know that my struggle will never be over. Parents are never supposed to bury their children, it is not how the world was meant to be.

And I am here, telling you this, because even though I know that I cannot ask you to live mistake free, I hope that some of you will be able to learn from mine, and from my daughters.

Late night

Baby Girl, 

I can't stop thinking about you tonight. I'm missing your wild laughter and your amazing presence.

I lost sight of you for awhile, of what you inspire me to do and be. I was missing you so much that I just became angry at the world. I forgot how good it was to speak about you, even when I was doing just that - because it hurt so much to do it, because another set of significant dates passed that I don't yet know how to deal with.

I forgot, a bit, that you have been inspiring me for twenty-two years. My little protector of the small. From the moment you could walk you were defending the meek, you stood up to bullies who were twice your size, you refused to let the world be mean to those who didn't know how to take it, and you created joy in your wake. You embodied everything that was good in how we are supposed to treat the people in the world around us.

You were also an addict. It was awful and tragic, but it didn't change who you were. No matter how troubled, you remained the protector of the small. It's so painful to know that your struggles made you blind to how amazing you were, and had always been. There was a song you recorded just before we lost you. I listen to it when I need to hear your voice, but every time I do it reminds me of how you saw yourself and it breaks my heart all over again.

I'm not sure I can be nearly as good at being the protector of the small as you were. I don't have your confidence, or your natural ability to stand up and be heard just because it's what you need to do. But I'm trying. 

I can't let go of the idea that there is another kid out there who forgot themselves like you did, or is on the path to do so. I can't let go of the idea that someone else's baby is going to pop some pills, do a line, or pick up a needle. And even if they don't die, they will lose themselves like you did. I want so badly to be able to do something about it. What an intimidating task, when I couldn't even save you. Maybe being your mom made me strong enough to do something better than both of us.

I love you, Baby. I carry you in my heart always. I hope that you are at peace.

Always, 

Mommy

Important Conversations

There are a million lessons I have learned that I wish I could transfer to my children so that they won’t have to face the same perils that I did – things that might keep them safe and allow them to bypass danger and heartache. Unfortunately, we cannot do this and as much as we might wish they did, “just say no” and other autocratic messages don’t work either - we aren't raising automatons, we are raising intelligent free-thinkers who have ready access to information, which means that we have to be prepared to deliver it first.

I’ve heard parents talking about being so afraid of the world we live in that they don’t want to let their children out of the house. This way of responding to the world shocks me, as it punishes our children and breeds an atmosphere of fear.

When our kids are little we teach them right from wrong - no hitting, no swearing, be nice to others, act like a good friend in order to have good friends. These are all important life lessons which we, as parents, don’t shy away from.

The older our kids get, however, the harder it is for us to have these critical conversations. We stop concentrating on the necessity of these fact based life lessons and start worrying about the discomfort we feel, and the discomfort our children will feel if we bring up body functions, peer interactions, and drugs and alcohol.

We need to recognize that the fact that these conversations make us nervous is really an indicator of how critical they are to have – not only so that our kids will understand the facts, but also so that we demystify the topics, we bring them out into the open so that they stop being uncomfortable for us and for our children.

And we can’t just have the conversations once, we need to have them regularly – to remind our children that we are watchful, present, and interested in what is happening in their lives as well as to reduce the discomfort that comes along with these difficult discussions.

This is true in any community, no matter how safe we may want to believe we are – and I believe that in some cases the safer the community feels the more we have to be alert. Parents are insulated from danger, so we assume our kids are, too. My husband and I learned how true this was when we found out that our daughter was introduced to drugs and alcohol at thirteen years old, and it was driven home years later when we lost her.

I often think about the things I wish I would have done differently and those are the most important things to share:

• I wish I would never have yelled at my daughter during her confessions to me. I feel like she would have been more open to talking to me and looking for help if I would have managed to give her a safe place to ask for help. By reacting emotionally, I made my feelings of betrayal more important than her needs and this resulted in a barrier between us that made it harder to get her the help she needed, and made her less likely to reach out to me.

• I wish I would have talked to her earlier about drugs and alcohol – even though I had those conversations with her, I think we started too late – thinking she was still too young and innocent even though she’d already been exposed to drugs and alcohol in middle school. Once I did start talking to her, I should have kept the conversations going, instead I felt safe, the conversation checked off the list, and I moved on to other things. This was a huge mistake that I pay for every day.

• I wish I would have taken stock of all of the changes that came about after she started using. Her clothes, friends, the books she read and shows she wanted to watch, an obsession with fitness and her appearance. There were a multitude of changes which might have been nothing independently but I will never stop wondering what I could have done to help her if I would have added them all together.

• Most importantly, none of the things I now see as signs were on any list of what to look out for if you are watching for drinking, drugs, partying or other dangerous behavior. We know our kids, and we have to pay attention and look at what is happening in our homes and with our children all the time, with love and attention – we can’t take comfort in a safe neighborhood or in some list that an expert who has never met our child gives us, because it is bound to be missing something, and that thing could be the clue for your particular child. Instead, take confidence in what you teach your child and what you know about them. It might save their lives.

As parents, our only logical option is to arm our children with information, strategies, and an open and honest environment so that they can make informed and brave choices, ask questions, and find answers without fear of embarrassment or retribution. This is our most fundamental responsibility, to prepare our kids for success and independence in a world that isn't pure and perfectly safe by education and communication.

Groundhog Day

Baby Girl,

Tomorrow marks the second anniversary of your passing, my personal Groundhog Day. I have barely been able to concentrate on anything else for days, becoming somewhat obsessed (again) with your absence and with trying desperately to find some way to fill the void that exists in my heart without you.

I find myself drifting off, completely losing track of conversations, forgetting what I was doing, unable to keep track of the calendar… I’m floating in the past. Your birth, your first steps, your laughter, your amazing life.  And I miss you so much that I ache.

Your brother asked for you today, and I had to remind him that you can’t come home… and try to explain why in words he could intellectualize. It was a challenge, but I think that it is always good for us to talk about you, to acknowledge your life  in positive terms, and to try to remind ourselves that losing you didn’t ruin everything that you were.

I don’t want this life without you. I know it is selfish to say, and horrible to think. It sounds like I am not grateful and adoring of those I have left to love, but that’s not quite so. Your daddy, brother and sister anchor me in this world. They keep me centered and focused and working toward the future, but it is never any less painful without you in it.

I want you to come home to me. I will never stop wishing for it, and feeling slighted that you cannot. I hurt without you, we all do. As much as we celebrate each other, and everything we had with you, I cannot change how wrong it feels that you are not here with us.

I would give anything for just another moment to hold you, to give you my love, to let you feel my adoration. Because I can’t, I try desperately to do justice to my love for your brother and sister so that they will have my strength when their road is rocky, so that they can hold it with them when they have to make hard choices. This is the best that I can do.

I miss you, Baby Girl. I love you so much. And I hope that you are somewhere joyful, full of beauty and singing.

Always,
Mommy

23 Months

I have been thinking a lot lately about signs, those I missed, and recognize now, and those I hope that I am open to in the future.

When I was in college Elannah Rose went to the preschool on campus. It was a wonderful little program, nestled in the back of the campus and surrounded by redwoods. I loved taking her there, the location was beautiful, the staff amazing, and I could always spend my lunch with her so that I didn't have to spend the whole day away from her.

The campus itself was built on a fault line which divided the main campus from the preschool, and I could never quite get it out of my head that if there were an earthquake it was highly possible that I wouldn't be able to get to her. I was often obsessed with the idea and as I would rush over to pick her up I would imagine how awful it would be if something happened to my daughter and I was stuck with no way to help her.

As a parent, this is our worst nightmare, and we search for clues, for any answer, for THE answer. The one that will allow us to set our children up for success, or at least for safety, so that we can relax a bit and celebrate a job well done.

As I live past the nightmare and try to analyze the pieces (or sometimes try not to analyze the pieces), I realize that the signs that my daughters addiction was shattering her life were not obvious and easy to list, so that I could share with other parents so that they won't make the same mistakes I did. The most important thing I wish I had noticed would have seemed insignificant at the time. The one that stands out in my mind is the books she read, that is the one major indicator that I wish I would have understood.

It now seems so momentous - I was reading Beautiful Boy, by David Scheff, which is the heart wrenching story of a father dealing with his sons' addiction. About halfway through the book I realized that Elannah Rose was reading what I consider to be the companion book, the one written by the son about his struggle with heroin. I remember thinking that it was such a funny coincidence that she would have chosen to read that book at the same time that I read the fathers story. I chalked it up to her broadened horizons. Now that I know that it was right around the time she first recognized her addiction, I wonder if Elannah Rose was trying to figure out how the young man conquered his.

Who would ever think that literary choices would be an indicator that someone's' life was at risk? Not me. Not any average parent, I'm pretty sure. However, my daughter gave up her science fiction and fantasy novels for harrowing tales of drug addiction and troubled teenagers. I look back and think that it should have been obvious, but it was not even a little clue in my mind.

This book was a little earthquake. Maybe a 4.2, sizeable enough to take note, but hardly enough to create great alarm. Ultimately, it was the first tremor in a massive earthquake that separated us, and I could not get to her in time.

I wonder if I will see the tremors that my younger children face in time to help them navigate the dangers of the world. I wonder if I will be able to provide them with better guidance, or if I will be as blind to their downfalls as I was to Elannah Roses.

As the second year of her passing draws to a close and I find myself reflecting more deeply on her life, I don't feel that I am any closer to figuring out how to do better. But, oddly, I feel that I have figured out how to honor her properly – by letting my love and joy in her life be bigger today than my sense of loss, even though I cannot hold her close.

~Hannah

Wishes

Baby Girl,

It seems silly to say I've been thinking of you a lot, I'm always thinking of you a lot. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I'm talking about you a lot these days. What you meant (and mean) to us, how good you were, and the mistakes that you made that took you away from us.

Last month I shared our story with our community, and as the event neared I was terrified of any potential backlash that might come from it - for your sister, for our family, but mostly for you. I couldn't help but think about the fact that I was about to expose you and all of your choices for criticism, and part of me felt like it was a betrayal.

Before and after, I waited with baited breath for the backlash, for the judgement, for cruel statements about you that I had exposed you to. It never came. And it reminded me again of how wrong I was at every phase of this nightmare to look for judgement. But we do, I think, expect the worst when we are waiting to unveil our darkest secrets.

In this whole story, the worst aftermath was losing you. Everything that came before, everything that might have been in our control, everything that might have saved you, everything we didn't do because we were afraid or just didn't know better... there was no backlash that would have been as bad as your death. And although we did not sit idly by, the more I learn about the resources that would have been available, the more I feel that I failed you by missing them in the first place.

I guess that is the most important message, when I look back at what I would have done differently. I wish we would have been more vocal about needing help. I wish I would have raised my voice to our community because I have learned how much love and kindness and support there is here. I wish I would have risked losing you in order to not have lost you. I wish I would have done more. I'm so sorry, Baby.

I miss you so much. I pray for you every day, that you are safe and happy and at peace. I hope that you know that you are making a difference in the world, even though you aren't here with us.

I love you, Baby Girl. 

Love, 
Mommy

It takes a village - Youth CVTC Speech

Being a parent changes us. It turns us into people who base our decisions on the welfare of others, people who take as much or more pride in the accomplishments of our children as we do in our own, people whose very existence is defined by our relationship to another.

Parenthood lifts us up to the greatest joys, giving us the ability to persevere through sleepless nights, find patience when we believe that there is none, and to live with teenagers.

It also makes us infinitely more vulnerable, as our world can also be shattered by our offspring. Their bad decisions become our own failures, their loss is the end of existence as we know it.

I have felt that vulnerability for years. First as the mother of an addict, and with increasing intensity with every relapse. And over the last 21 months I have felt that vulnerability as someone who lost part of what was most precious to her.

When my daughter died, I started counting life by days, and eventually by months. I’m not yet to the part where I think in terms of years – much like when we first have a child and we count each new joy by the hour, I count life by the emptiness that was left behind when my daughter died.

I want you to understand who we are. I have always been a bit of a wall flower. I would much rather watch events than be the center of attention. My daughter, Elannah Rose, was my polar opposite. She was ready to take center stage from the moment she was born. She ran head long into any adventure she could find.

Elannah Rose barreled through life without fear, she collected loved ones along the way and continuously impressed us with her ability to be confident and comfortable in any situation. She started out with such an extreme measure of confidence that it was hard to see beyond it into the troubled young lady she became. She was precious to us, and we were prepared to do anything to make her life successful, including uprooting her from our original home in northern California, to come to La Crescenta, and all it offered.

We picked La Crescenta not only for the proximity to my husband’s family, but also for the schools, and the somewhat small town atmosphere that seemed so appealing and just a bit surprising this close to the city – at least to me, since my hometown actually was one of those typical small towns where you can’t go to the grocery store without catching up with everyone you know, every neighbor is in your business, and as a kid when you stepped out of line, your parents knew before the dust settled.

The first few years here seemed like paradise, even though this neighborhood was probably always a touch out of our budget, we found a way to make it work because it was well worth it to have our kids grow up here.

When Elannah Rose got into middle school, we knew that she was struggling a bit with the more complex social structure and relationships, but there was never a sign that things were desperate for her. We were still sitting down to dinner together every evening, her dad still checked her homework every night, and we saw many of her friends on a regular basis. She still seemed to confide in us about all the right things, and we made sure that we had all of the important conversations with her, so that she could make wise choices about boys, drugs, school. In all of the areas that we were supposed to provide guidance, we made sure to.

By the time Elannah Rose got to high school, things seemed to settle down. She found her niche in the drama classes, she joined comedy sports, and her social circle grew. We thought that she was thriving, as a matter of fact, I regularly confided in my friends on how lucky I was that her teenage years were so easy.

Our idyllic life was shattered when, at sixteen years old, Elannah Rose confessed that she was using heroin, and had been using drugs of one kind of another for the past three years.

I can’t describe our horror. Elannah Rose had, in recent history, displayed complete shock and disgust over stories of drug use at school, being particularly disgusted when one of her friends was caught smoking pot. How could that girl be the same person who was now telling us that she wasn’t sure she could control her drug use anymore?

At this time, Elannah Rose was working part time and doing incredibly well at her job, she was also generally doing ok at school, and I can’t say that we ever noticed any specific decline. She was still highly involved in her extracurricular activities at school and was excelling in her dance classes. I kept wracking my brain… how had we missed this?

We missed a lot. In hindsight, I almost guarantee that if I was more alert to the risks, I would have seen the signs. Like any other parent of an addict, I can find a million ways to blame myself. But I also know this…

Elannah Rose was what is considered a high functioning addict. High-functioning addicts like Elannah Rose appear to be extremely successful, happy, and productive individuals who on the outside, just don’t give off signs of their addiction.

How terrifying. Even now I don’t know what to do with the idea that I could have had a person with such a horrible problem living under the same roof and not have seen it. What a complete failure. As a mother, as a human being. To not notice that this perfect creature that I made and raised was in such a dangerous state of mind and of health.

I don’t know if I will ever live through another day and not feel how much I failed her. And if every person in this room were sitting in judgment, I would understand. Because I was her mother. I was supposed to see it. I was supposed to be alert and to be paying attention. What was I doing instead?

I mentioned that Elannah Rose had already been using for three years by that time. She tried speed for the first time when she was thirteen, in the girls’ bathroom at Rosemont Middle School. She got the drugs from another student. In her time as an addict, she found it exceedingly easy to get access to any drugs, whether she was obtaining them from another student, or from people she met at our local convenience store, she could find someone to give her drugs if she wanted to.

For weeks after we first found out she was using drugs, I felt like I was living with two different people – my daughter who was so together that you couldn’t believe that she was doing anything, and this other person who picked at their own skin, couldn’t keep her hands from shaking, and hid homemade heroin pipes in her room. I remember at the time I wondered if she was exaggerating her behavior to mess with us. At some point, I did actually convince myself that while she may have tried drugs, her actual use had been hugely exaggerated.

At Elannah Roses request we kept her addiction a secret, even from most of our family. A few people knew, but only just enough to keep her in line – to scare her with cop stories about drug busts and jail, addiction stories from another recovering addict, and anything else we could think of to help her. Keeping that kind of a secret takes its toll.

When Elannah Rose seemed to get it together again, we believed that she was sober. We thought our home detox methods were actually successful.

We were so naïve. I later found out that she was only behaving normally because she was using again.

Unfortunately, this realization came after a few more cycles involving relapses. Each time we would threaten to send her to rehab, and each time she convinced us not to, and to continue with her horrible secret.

During this time my husband and I fought daily. We talked about divorce. I was convinced that it didn’t matter how much we loved each other, we would not make it through Elannah Roses addiction. This addiction, which wasn’t even ours, was going to come between us because we could not agree on how to handle it, and how to handle our daughter.

This whole time, we were trying not to let life suffer for our other children. And we may have fooled ourselves into thinking we were doing a good job, but looking back I can see how unhappy our household was.

I became so frustrated that I regularly snapped for no reason. I was a different mom, a different person. I think it was kind of a safety mechanism, I tried to control everything else, because I couldn’t control my daughter’s addiction.

This went on for about two years, during this time Elannah Rose lied to us regularly, successfully passed home drug tests while maintaining her drug use, and refused to acknowledge her problem with any real conviction.

Shortly after her 18^th birthday, Elannah Rose was arrested for possession. She didn’t tell us, like everything else in her other life, she did everything she could to keep it a secret.

I found out about the arrest one day when I opened our mail and there was a letter from an attorney offering their services. This was what life had become. A series of nightmarish surprises that ruined any comfort we could find on a regular basis. Now we were dealing with court, trying with renewed effort to get her into a rehab program. Desperate for anything that would save her.

My desperation made me believe that she was clean at an opportunity. I’m sure it’s easy to judge, from the outside, how stupid we were. How gullible. But let me remind you that, yes, we caught her doing bad things, but she was always functional. Except for the first time that we found out, she never displayed signs of her addiction. Her performance at school didn’t change, she was still dancing, and she was still working and had received a great promotion at her job. She was still highly functioning. She was still lying every day.

A few months after her high school graduation, I caught Elannah Rose smoking heroin in our garage.

Even when caught red-handed, Elannah Rose wouldn’t admit to using. By now we knew that she couldn’t continue to live with us without endangering her brother and sister. We agreed to kick her out of our home, as she still refused to go to a detox or rehab facility.

It only took a few weeks of couch-surfing for Elannah Rose to realize that she wasn’t willing to lose her family over her addiction. She agreed to go to a rehab facility and we checked her into one in Tarzana.

After two consecutive visits where we heard about other patients being caught with drugs on hand, we agreed that it would be best to move her. Elannah Rose moved to a recovery center in Culver City, which appeared to work.

The change was amazing. Not only was she in rehab, but she was going to counseling and surrounded by people who wanted to overcome their addictions.

Elannah Rose did very well for a time. Eventually, she slipped and used marijuana. Her relapse changed her. She became moody and difficult. She stopped participating in her recovery, begged regularly to come home, and eventually became deeply depressed. She began cutting herself to fight the need to do drugs.

Eventually she cut her wrists so badly that she was transferred to a lock down medical facility. I cannot describe the horror we felt at seeing our pint sized daughter, arms bandaged, locked up in a fenced in area with deeply sick people. It might have been the best thing for her. By this time her chemistry was so altered from the drugs that she needed medication to help her achieve normalcy. Her doctors were given the chance to find the right medication to help her to do so.

Once her chemistry started to normalize, Elannah Rose recovered beautifully. She went from the ward to Casa de las Amiga’s in Pasadena, where the strict program worked for her. She once again seemed to thrive, to fit in well and start to make connections. She started to seem happy, like her old self. It was a dream come true.

We looked forward to our weekly visits. We attended family therapy with her. Once she moved to sober living she would walk down to my office to have lunch with me, or visit after work. She was my baby girl again. It was amazing.

During one of our family therapy visits I broke down. The theme for the night was to talk about our biggest regrets.

After years of desperately trying to keep it together, I couldn’t answer this question without losing it.

 I am sorry that I wasn’t a better mother. I am sorry for everything I missed. Maybe if I had been older, wiser, had more to offer her, maybe she would have been ok. It was my fault. All of it. She was just a little girl that first time… I should have been there for her, she would have made better choices.

I was sitting in a room full of parents and their daughters. Most of them probably financially better off, some of them less well off. I was the youngest mother, some of them were grandparents. Addicts and parents alike corrected me, if it was my fault because I was a young mother, what was their excuse?

My daughter held my hand and did her best to explain that these were all her choices, and that nothing I did made her an addict. She lovingly explained to the room what I had given up in order to raise her, and everything she loved about me.

I think about this almost daily. It is a gift to have heard it, I carry it with me because I cannot carry her with me.

Eventually, Elannah Rose came home. She wanted a chance to be a good sister, and she was. She helped Abby, our middle child, with her homework every day. She spent every moment possible with her brother, who was three at the time. She had their names tattooed on her wrists so that if she ever got the urge to open them again her love for her brother and sister would remind her of what she had to live for.

We had months. Amazing, wonderful months in which she was perfectly her old self. I thank god for this gift, because it ended swiftly and suddenly.

One night, she didn’t come home on time. I was so angry. She had skipped her AA meeting to go out with a friend, she was supposed to be doing homework, but she was not. She was shooting up heroin, for the first and last time.

I was in our bedroom, my husband had decided to wait up for her in the living room.

I heard the door open, and something fall. It was my husband, when I came out he was sobbing on the floor. There was this woman standing there, repeating over and over that Elannah Rose was at the coroners, and I kept asking if I could see her. I don’t know how many times she had to repeat it. I started screaming, I couldn’t stop. At some point I turned around and Abby and Noah were standing in the hall. Still screaming, I bundled them up to take them across the street to my in laws house.

I still can’t pull the details together in my mind. I remember trying to get my brother in law to understand what had happened without actually saying it. I remember that woman asking to speak to someone who could keep it together.

I remember that the whole time that I was ranting about my daughter being late, she was dying. I was angry at her while she was lying alone in a gas station bathroom, breathing her last breaths.

I kept asking to see her. I wanted to hold her. It’s not like the movies or TV, I never got to say goodbye, I didn’t identify her body, and in later, weaker moments, I would pretend that there was a possibility that it wasn’t her.

Time became fragmented as we prepared for the funeral. I would sneak away to comb through her Facebook page, to look through pictures of her and to watch videos. Someone uploaded a picture of her laughing and I couldn’t stop watching it. I couldn’t stop because I would never hear it again.

I will never see her again. When she was an infant I had nightmares about bad things happening to her, now I have nightmares about her decomposing body. I can’t sleep on my own and I have to sit in my car every morning and cry so that I won’t cry during the day, or in the evening when my kids need me.

It’s been 21 months. I don’t know when I will be better.

My poor kids, Abby and Noah, now have to deal with me worrying about everything. It might be worse for Abby, who can remember a time when I didn’t freak out and assume she was dead if she didn’t answer the phone.

Strangers have to deal with the discomfort that comes after they ask me how many kids I have, because I refuse not to acknowledge Elannah Rose, and eventually I have to tell them that she is gone.

I’m sharing this with you because I hope that my loss can do some good. I hope that my daughter, who wanted to make a positive contribution to society, can do so through her story.

I was careful not to use the word “overdose” tonight, after reading an obituary for Phillip Seymour Hoffman last week in which the writer says that Mr. Hoffman “did not die from an overdose of heroin — he died from heroin. We should stop implying that if he’d just taken the proper amount then everything would have been fine.”  It’s such a simple and true statement. My daughter didn’t overdose. She died of her addiction, which was an illness she couldn’t manage, and there was no amount of the substance that she was addicted to that was safe for her to take.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how I will keep my remaining children safe, since Elannah Rose died. I am not in law enforcement, I am not prepared to fight a war against drugs, and I am not interested in living a life that feels like I am at war with any part of my environment.

What I can do, is live like I am in a village and look to my neighbors to do the same. I love OUR children too much to live in my home like my neighbors are strangers. Having come from a small town where everyone is in everyone else’s business, I can tell you that that is much preferable to living in a town where not a single neighbor came running when I was screaming bloody murder. Or the code of silence that kept my daughters friends from telling me when they learned she was using. Or that same code of silence that allowed me to keep my daughters addiction a secret when I learned she was using.

I will never pass by a child who is in need. I will make sure that my home is open and safe to any of my children’s friends, I will be there for any of our kids who need help or who need help recovering from poor decisions. As much as I prefer to stay in the back ground, I will stand up in front of any crowd to raise awareness and wake up my community. And it is not our kids that need to be awakened, they see what their peers are doing, whether they speak up or not (and they must learn to speak up). It is our parents that need to band together for the good of our children, to wake up to the dangers that face them, and to do everything in our power to be the village that watches out for them together. 

New Years - 2014

I was trying to explain to someone why New Years is a hard time for me. The best I can say is that it is another end and another beginning that doesn't have my daughter in it. It's bittersweet at best, which doesn't mean I don't appreciate all that I have - I certainly do. But during such a celebrated occasion it's hard not to miss what is not there.

My new years resolutions came early.  At some point in 2013 I realized that I needed to do something with my grief, to use it to promote change, or I would wallow in it forever. 

When I look back on the things that I told my daughter about her future, that it was still full of opportunity, that she could still be anything she wanted to be, that through hard work and perseverance she could reopen any doors that she felt were closed to her, I realize that there are so many other kids out there who need the same level of support, and in order to honor my daughter I have to find a way to give it.

This also means that I cannot sit by and allow what happened with my daughter to happen again to another child. I have to find a way to use my daughters experience to help build a brighter future for my community, because one more addict grown in our schools is not acceptable. Another overdose, another family losing their child, another child buried... these are the things that we have to come together to fight against. I hope to use my experience to help open the eyes of my neighbors, and to build a tighter and stronger community.

In 2014 I will find a way to honor my daughter, to extend the support I gave her to others who might need it, to work with the  CV Alliance, CV Youth Alliance, and Youth Town Council to strengthen my community, and to use these things to help my family heal. This is my promise to my baby girl, to my family, and to myself.