Okay, some of you have reminded me that I don’t need to be a hero or activist to be okay. That seems fair. I’m lowering the bar for me and for everyone else. For those of us suffering from a life-changing trauma, getting out of bed and going through the motions are commendable.

I remained upright to take care of my younger son, to see him graduate high school, go off to college, fall in love and get married. I survived a crazy hate mob of trolls. I learned something about forgiveness. Not everything but something. I have bonded with readers of this blog who offered comfort or shared their own stories. These connections are like little miracles.

So you know, I take back the stuff about being worthless. I will marvel at people who make an effort to change the world when their own world has collapsed. I’m just not a doer. I’m better at communicating through writing. I’m better one-on-one.

I’m good at being preachy. I’m good at urging people to stop shaming addicts and to treat them lovingly, with compassion. I’m good at calming people who are frantic with anxiety and depression.

I’m good at styling people who go shopping with me. I’m good at making them over in my own image. I’m good at advising on red lipstick and steering people away from Zara. I’m good at finding silk pajamas at Salvation Army shops. I’m good at affecting obscure accents in public. I’m good at giving compliments. I make great roast chicken.

I think that’s it for now. I’m okay, alright? I’m going to limit self-deprecation to special occasions. Like my birthday, coming up next week.

Thanks for being the wind or the wings or however it goes! Thanks for being here. xo

How can you watch Susan Bro speak about her daughter without tearing up? What a magnificent woman and mother.

On July 31, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry lost her only son to a drug overdose, but she is back at work, fighting for DACA.

And earlier today, I read about a mother who started a foundation to distribute naloxone to drug addicts after her twenty year old son died of a heroin overdose.

These mothers are everything I’m not. They have pulled themselves together to do something good in the world. They are memorializing their children with so much courage and fortitude!

All I’ve done is cry and wail and sleep and try to distract myself. I feel like grief is the defining aspect of my entire existence, even though I don’t want that to be true.

Maybe it’s not too late for me to be productive. Who knows. I am skeptical, given my laziness, which is legendary.

What I do is sleep with his stuffed animals and wear his hair in a locket and go around feeling lost. But I did write to Mayor Barry and she wrote me back. I wanted to tell her that it would never be okay but it would get easier. Her son had the sweetest face, and his name was Max.

If you didn’t hear Susan Bro talk about her daughter Heather, here she is.  On the one hand we have Trump, a disgraceful amoral piece of shit, and on the other hand we have a ordinary woman exhibiting the best of humanity on one of the worst days of her life.

Let’s thank her for giving us hope, and for being a light in the wilderness of 2017.

This is a clip from an episode of This American Life, currently playing on Showtime. It’s called ‘Never gotten a break’ and it’s the story of a young man with a degenerative muscular disease that leaves him nearly paralyzed and connected to breathing tubes. We meet Mike at age 27.

I watched the show with my husband, both of us transfixed in horror at Mike’s situation. At this point, Mike is no longer able to speak and uses a cursor to laboriously type out his thoughts. We noticed that Mike had a pierced eyebrow and wore purple nail polish. He literally coudn’t do anything, but he still wanted to effect an ‘alternative’ style.

We were even more flabbergasted when we learned that Mike has a girlfriend. I guess she answered an ad he placed online. So here’s this guy, for all intents a vegetable, but he has a girlfriend! It was fascinating. Then our TV froze and we couldn’t watch the end of the episode. For awhile, I whined to my husband, “Get me the cripple back!” but it couldn’t be done.

Then last night we were able to see the rest of Mike’s story. His girlfriend broke up with him and he became deeply depressed. He didn’t know if it was worthwhile to keep living. He nearly became addicted to pain killers but his mother manged to wean him off of them.

Then, Mike agreed to take out his breathing tube so that he could speak for a minute or two. With great difficulty, Mike answered a question. Suddenly, I saw that Mike was a person, not a thing. He seemed to have a nice personality….a cool guy, in fact. He told his girlfriend, who had come back to him, that he loved her.

I was devastated. It was easy to mock him when he wasn’t a real person. Now I see that this guy has lived his life with more courage and determination than I can even imagine. He is a fucking hero of the first order. Try to see this piece and renew your sense of humility, gratitude and wonder.