The message evolved over the last 9 months He makes it holy ground! Bring all that are broken! Free tickets are available by registering online at brokennomore. A link will be on the website tonight. No limits to your ticket number! Bring your pain, because God is bringing His purpose! With the loss of our parent we grieve the loss of our past. Only a parent can remind us of our personal story. A current accomplishment could be just a bit more satisfying if we could look over our shoulder and see them nodding with approval.
This type of approval can only come from the parental awareness of our humble beginning. Honoring those we have lost. Taking care of ourselves. Grief and sadness are difficult emotions and the tendency is to suppress our sadness which only makes it more intense.
In addition to the grief we will have the additional stress of trying to cover it up. The avoidance of grief is also a subtle statement that our own sense of self, our sadness, does not matter enough for the expression of our tears. The gentler way to move through grief and sadness is to embrace it, acknowledge it and tell the truth about it. Remember there is healing in the telling. Often the people who care about us do not know how to support us in the grief process. When they ask how you are doing, let them know.
If they offer support accept it and let them know how they can be of assistance to you. During special days do remember those who are absent. Bring out the photo albums, tell stories, and reminisce. The truth is life matters and your loved ones continue to make a difference. Pass their teachings on to others. Retell their jokes and favorite stories. Share how your life has changed and how you have expanded as a result of knowing them and surviving their absence.
Say their name, tell their life story. Include them in a ritual, in a prayer. Display their favorite flowers, play a favorite song. Serve a favorite food. Be gentle with yourself and honor the lives of those whom you love. Your loved one is worth it. Your relationships have not ended they have changed form.
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You are still a parent to your child and you are still the child of your parent. Give yourself permission to grieve and honor your loved one by keeping their essence alive. We just take for granted that it's totally OK to describe a human being with one word, "addict" -- a word with overwhelmingly negative connotations to many people. We don't really do that for other challenging qualities that can have a serious impact on people's lives.
We don't say, "my mother, the blind," or "my brother, the bipolar. We don't ascribe a difficult state as the full sum of a person's identity and humanity. Maia Szalavitz eloquently expressed similar frustration with terms like "substance abuser" in her recent piece at substance. When we do feel the need to reference a state of disability, challenge or disease when describing a human being, we say something like, "my mother has cancer," or "my nephew has leukemia.
We do not say or suggest that a person is their challenge. We remember that they are a person first, then if appropriate indicate their challenge as one factor of their existence. Why can't we be that intelligently sensitive with people struggling with drugs? For many people, myself included, the word "addict" is incredibly harmful and offensive.
You do not have my permission to call me an addict. You can of course refer to yourself as an addict, if you wish, but please do not refer to everyone physically or psychologically dependent on drugs as "an addict. The sense of fear, loathing, otherness and "less than" created by that word far outweighs any benefits of using linguistic shorthand to quickly describe a person.
Even in a chaotic stage of drug use, we are not "other. We cry, we get so lonely, we hate sitting in traffic. Addiction can be wretched, no question, but we do not ever stop being human beings, even during the times in our lives when we are dependent on drugs. I may be in the fight of my life with drugs, but I am not the drugs that I take. I am a fighter, a survivor -- I am never merely "an addict. We retain our full humanity despite our challenges, particularly when our challenges are much deeper than our attention-grabbing drug use might suggest.
My days of chaotic substance abuse are long behind me. I am not "an addict" now, and I wasn't "an addict" then. I'm just a person, who had a period of difficulty, pain and challenge. I battled, I failed, I tried again -- just like most people. Why not try using any of the following as alternatives to calling someone "an addict": The use of person-centric language may seem inconsequential, but I assure you, it is not.
It is vitally important to scores of people, most of whom you've never met and never will. They are the people who, in the eyes of the world, are lumped into that "other" category you've created for them by calling them "an addict. They don't want to be there anymore. I'm hoping to tell their story with this blog post. We've been silent too long. Please -- put our humanity first. This piece first appeared on the Drug Policy Alliance blog. Diannee Carden Glenn is a resident of Florida who is the mother of a passionate young man who was a leading force in harm reduction, advocating for the rights of drug users living in New York and nationwide.
He died from an overdose April 9, Diannee is now an advocate for harm reduction and overdose prevention and writes about her son, his passions, his shortcomings, his death and the effect it had on his family in the hope that it will be helpful to others. October 25, Sterling, IL: My son, Michael Carden came screaming into this world 6 weeks early at 4 pounds, 12 ounces. December 16, 7: He graduated summa cum laude. He was almost barred from walking with his class to get his diploma because he had played a prank on one of his professors who didn't see the humor in it.
I know they say God won't give you more than you can bear - but I don't know Lord this one is a tough one! I don't remember writing it, I do remember being alone at home, receiving a phone call and then finding myself on my knees on the floor. My son had died from a heroin overdose. November 15, Seven months after my son's death I stood before my son's peers at the Harm Reduction Coalition's conference to speak about Michael. I was introduced to harm reduction by my son many years before. He was a harm reductionist when it was a fairly new concept.
We would talk about needle exchange, medication maintenance, Hepatitis C, HIV and meeting those who use drugs with respect wherever they are at in their lives. I would listen, not realizing that I was also learning, and give advice. In my profession finding that the best way to get professionals to come to an in-service is to provide food so that's what I suggested.
It was winter so especially warm food. At one point during my son's struggle with his substance problem he asked me for my social security number so that he could make his life insurance policy payable to me. In trying to answer the questions Why? What am I going to do? I became more interested in what I could do for people like my son. I read everything I could get my hands on about harm reduction. I was asked to be on their Board. Both bills passed in and were signed by the Governor on the first anniversary of my son's death it wasn't planned but was significant to me.
Though the bills were passed, the work had just begun. A woman that I met through a private message on face book drives two hours once a month to talk over a cup of coffee. If we, those who have lost someone to overdose, don't advocate for change in how overdose is viewed who will?
Before my son's journey with heroin I would not have been involved because I knew that could never happen in my family. That was for those other people - the ones who had children with problems, the ones who didn't do something right. But, guess what - I AM one of those people. We are all one of those people. There is a Chinese proverb that says Nobody's family can hang out the sign, "Nothing's the matter here.
For many of us, when we first learn that our loved one is struggling with problematic substance use, we feel bewildered, overwhelmed and often confused. Feelings of shock, fear, anger, guilt, disbelief and confusion can at times leave us immobilized.
Sam Snodgrass, PhD, BNM Board Member, to Speak at NHPCO’s Conference
We seek out help and find that there are few options to support us. When our loved ones refuse or leave abstinence only based treatment, treatment centers give us referrals to interventionists or community based step support groups. Our options seem to be one of two polarities-do everything within our power to coerce our loved ones into treatment, or accept that there is nothing we can do to affect the course of our loved one's substance use aside from learning to let go, detaching with love, and waiting for an elusive bottom to hit.
To be clear, many of us have found great comfort, solace and support from such peer groups and hold no animosity against them, and yet some of the encouragement given to let our loved ones 'hit bottom' and to be ever vigilant against 'enabling' or 'codependence' feels counter-intuitive to our roles as parents or loved ones. Many of us are left asking "Is there something proactive I can do, even if my loved one is not ready to enter abstinence only based treatment? One purpose of this project is to explore these options. The mission of Harm Reduction for Families is to explore and increase access to an array of evidence based practices rooted in respect, dignity and compassion that family members can utilize in supporting their loved ones who struggle with problematic substance use as well as in finding healthy, affirming support for themselves, their families as a whole and their communities.
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Please join our conversation. You can find us on Facebook at: June, - Working on overdose prevention at the California State Capital. As disasters go, it was a big one. Federal drug prohibition started in earnest years ago today, with the passage of the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act. While on its face, the law appeared to tax and regulate opium and cocaine, it was intended-and enforced-as an absolute ban on the nonmedical use and sale of these drugs and their derivatives as well as on maintenance prescribing to addicted people.
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It was the opening salvo-soon followed by our short, violent and crimogenic ban on alcohol-in what seemed until very recently to be an ever-escalating "war" on most other drugs. While prohibition was often said, and even believed, by many to be a fight to improve public health, it wound up subjecting those it claimed to want to help to an illegal market, prison, torturous treatments and even the deliberate poisoning of alcohol supplies by the government, which is believed to have killed up to 10, people.
And we also remain among the most avid consumers of drugs. So what have we learned from a century of drug prohibition? First, that our drug laws began in racism and continue to reflect its corrosive influence.
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Let's look at what led up to the passage of the act, during a period of American history that has been described by Yale historian David Musto as "the peak of lynchings, legal segregation and voting laws designed to remove political and social power" from African Americans. The public health motivations behind the Harrison Act were murky, at best. By contrast, the very first national drug regulation law, the Pure Food and Drug Act of , required products to disclose their ingredients and was clearly designed to protect consumers.
Before opiates were prohibited, simple labeling had already cut their sales by a third. There were certainly concerns about addiction linked to over-the-counter sale of drugs like cocaine and opium-but this was not the focus of the debate over the law. In the early s, the typical opiate addict was a white housewife who bought her drugs ostensibly as medicine, and yet the media spotlight mainly fell on black and Chinese men.
The same article also claimed: The use of coke is probably much more widely spread among Negroes than among whites. Heaven dust, they call it. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention must read great book god maryann christ lives moved testimony. Showing of 16 reviews. Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Maryann's testimonies are living accounts of faithfulness and goodness of the living God, Jesus Christ.
This book is packed with wise advices for women, men, teenagers alike. Fight for your marriage know your enemy is , not your spouse. The authors openness is refreshing. Quick and easy read but full of Truth. Would recommend this book to those who are still hurting from things that happened in their past. I couldn't stop reading until the end! This book really makes you take a look at your life and see where you can improve.
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Incredible book that touched me deeply! As I read it, my desire to grow with God increased! This book inspired and encouraged me as a person and practitioner. Healing comes from God and this book embodies that beautifully!!!! And I am truly blessed to have her Every aspect of this book touched my life!
And I am truly blessed to have her in my corner! One person found this helpful.