[00:00:00] Angela Kennecke: (MUSIC UP!) 

Welcome back to another episode of Grieving Out Loud. I'm your host, Angela Kennecke today we have an incredible guest joining us who knows firsthand that as parents or knowledge alone isn't always enough to shield our children from the battles of drugs are alcohol. When she was growing up, both of Patty's Stovall's parents battled alcohol addiction. They're now in recovery, and Patty's mom even helps those who struggle with substance use disorder. That also led Patty to become a professional counselor specializing in grief and addiction, but life as we know can throw unexpected curve balls. Despite her decades of experience and knowledge, Patty's own daughter went down the dark road of drug abuse.

[00:00:52] Patty Stovall: of course I felt as a mom, I, I couldn't save her. And I felt shame and I felt the guilt and I felt sad a lot. I felt like I lost my child a long time ago. 

[00:01:08] Angela Kennecke: But this episode isn't just about loss. It's also about resilience and growth. Patty shares the invaluable wisdom she has gained through her own experiences, offering insights that can help others who find themselves grappling with grief and addiction.

[00:01:26] Patty Stovall: I always tell my grandkids, you know, never feel like you can never call  when you're in a situation or in an environment that you feel stuck. You will never have to feel stuck in anything ever. So we tried to create that environment within the family.

[00:01:42] Angela Kennecke: Join us as we embark on this raw and enlightening conversation with Patty Stovall.

Together we'll learn from her journey, gain new perspectives on grief and addiction, and find hope in the face of unimaginable loss.

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:01:59] Angela Kennecke: Patty is so nice to see you again. We met at the Bereaved Parents Conference in St. Louis last summer, and I know we have a lot in common, but also you have so much expertise and background that I don't have. I am just so grateful that I'm able to connect with you again and talk to you about what happened to your daughter and about.

Some strategies maybe you have for coping with loss that the rest of us don't have because you have all that experience as a counselor. 

[00:02:30] Patty Stovall: Oh, well, welcome. I'm so happy to be here and thank you for having me today. 

[00:02:33] Angela Kennecke: Yeah, you're so welcome. Well talk about your background a little bit. Tell us you are a counselor and you specialize in addiction and grief and tell me about your journey to get to that point.

[00:02:44] Patty Stovall: I grew up in an alcoholic home. My parents are recovering 43 years, so my whole life has been around addiction. And when my parents got recovery that's. Really where my own personal healing started. And so as I went through high school, college, I decided that's what I wanted to do as well.

And so when I have a background, my education is in counseling and addiction, and I became an addictions counselor out of college and worked in that industry. Approximately 18 years in mental health and addiction. And was pretty challenging for me. Pretty tough because I had to go through a lot of my own healing and during that time because it really triggered a lot of my own stuff.

And then I had my son when got really sick at that time. I worked with the mental health association in my area and I had to take a step back from doing that work and take some time to be with my son. He was ill, very ill. And I decided to go back and get a graduate degree. While he was sick and staying home with him.

And during that time, my daughter was struggling with her own stuff. 

[00:04:04] Angela Kennecke: Sarah. how old was Sarah? 

[00:04:06] Patty Stovall: This was high school time, probably around high school-ish. 

[00:04:10] Angela Kennecke: Did your son recover? 

[00:04:11] Patty Stovall: He had Crohn's and he had to have a surgery. He had his colon removed, and we had a lot of medical during those two years, and so there wasn't a lot of tension around her, but she also had scoliosis and that's where her addiction kind of started at that time.

[00:04:26] Angela Kennecke: Did she have pain with scoliosis then? 

[00:04:28] Patty Stovall: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So the doctors prescribed her pills. Oh, pain pills. 

[00:04:33] Angela Kennecke: As a teenager, she was getting pain pills. 

[00:04:35] Patty Stovall: Yep. Wow. Mm-hmm. 

[00:04:36] Angela Kennecke: first of all, none of us has everything figured out when it comes to raising a teenager.

Right. Especially when there are some issues that pop up. But I would just think with your background in addiction counseling and everything like. You would just know exactly what to do and have it all figured out. So did you have it all figured out?

[00:04:55] Patty Stovall: No, I didn't. Especially because at that time I was a single parent, and so I had one who was sick and then one who was dealing with.

Whether we were to get her surgery or we tried alternative options with her as well. It was very stressful at that time for me for both of them. And so they put her on It wasn't a narcotic, but some type of pain kind of medication and it wasn't working for her and she was 17 at the time and so my son had to have a surgery and so she started to seek out other alternatives for her pain 

[00:05:41] Angela Kennecke: pills in the form of pills.

[00:05:43] Patty Stovall: Pills and drinking. Mm-hmm. She was drinking at that time too. 

[00:05:46] Angela Kennecke: And with you knowing so much about addiction, I'm sure that you used all the tactics you could to try to change her 

[00:05:54] Patty Stovall: course. 

Yep. Everything. Everything 

[00:05:58] Angela Kennecke: tell me about some of the things that you tried, that you thought should work. 

[00:06:02] Patty Stovall: Arguing, did a lot of arguing with her pleading.

We sought out counseling. We tried even treatment. She even wanted to do treatment and, you know, recovery was part of our family. So she understood what recovery was. grandmother and, you know, had a treatment center herself. grandma was doing treatment and Therapy with other people and also my brother was recovering, so there was a lot of recovery happening in the family, so she understood what recovery was.

[00:06:38] Angela Kennecke: It just strikes me with all of that knowledge and all of those resources, You know, if you couldn't save your child, so to speak, how is the rest of the world, you know, supposed to save theirs when we don't have the kind of training in, in your family, the kind of knowledge that you had about addiction and recovery?

For me it was just as a journalist doing a lot of research, bringing my daughter to counselor after counselor. Eventually we were trying to get her into treatment, but that was right before she died. And she died before we had that chance. Because of fentanyl, but I just think like, what is someone supposed to do when you know so much, but yet you feel so helpless.

[00:07:17] Patty Stovall: Yeah. it was tough and I think I. there was this turning point for her that I was the bad guy because I could see it in her more than others. And so she really pulled away from me, and it was her when she got pregnant that she decided to clean up her life. And there was this period for her that she got clean.

[00:07:47] Angela Kennecke: How old was she? 

[00:07:49] Patty Stovall: She was 20 at that time. 

[00:07:50] Angela Kennecke: 20 when? Mm-hmm. She had her first child? Mm-hmm. 

[00:07:53] Patty Stovall: When she had her first and she changed. There was a change in her that she quit smoking and quit drinking and quit partying for about good f. Three or four years during that time. She'd done pretty well. She was doing a lot of volunteer work at the recovery center.

She was doing a lot of volunteer work at the NA and AA. She knew the program. She knew the program. 

[00:08:19] Angela Kennecke: I bet. For those three or four years that she was doing well after she had her child, I bet you were really hopeful.

[00:08:25] Patty Stovall: Mm-hmm. She had two children. 

[00:08:28] Angela Kennecke: Two children during that time. Mm-hmm. So I bet you were really hopeful that you were through the worst of it through the woods, so to speak.

[00:08:34] Patty Stovall: Mm-hmm. Yeah. She was present and she was part of the family. we thought, okay, this was teenage stuff that she had went through.

She had kind of moved out of that. She was very, very, very active in the family. And, our Sarah's back. You know, we thought, okay, , this is good. And then there was someone that stepped into her life that wasn't really good for her. 

[00:08:58] Angela Kennecke: A male friend, a boyfriend, male, 

[00:09:00] Patty Stovall: A male friend? Yes. Mm-hmm.

 (MUSIC UP) 

[00:09:02] Angela Kennecke: No matter how hard parents try to protect their children from drug use, the influence of friends can lead them astray. 

Peer pressure remains a top reason why teens start smoking, drinking, and using drugs. In fact, a study by the foundation for a drug-free world found that 55% of teens who tried drugs did so because of their friends, but it's not just teens who succumb to peer influence. Research has shown that young adults and even older ones can change their habits under the sway of peer pressure. 

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:09:34] Angela Kennecke: and I'm sure as an addiction counselor with the experience you had though, you probably knew that there was always the chance that she could relapse.

[00:09:42] Patty Stovall: Of course. Of course. And she wasn't living with me, so I didn't see a lot of things that were happening. She was probably 30 minutes from me and we started to see some progression where she was pulling away, and so I became more aware of things with my grandchildren.

I became more present in their life. And then the conflict. I knew when there was this conflict between myself and her, something was going on because that's that defensiveness. I could feel it. And my, intuition was telling me that something wasn't right again. And then there was this presence of someone else, a male friend.

And we knew 

[00:10:27] Angela Kennecke: so a boyfriend, tell me about what was happening with the boyfriend, what was going on? 

[00:10:32] Patty Stovall: Well he was coming around with her, there was just this not good feeling about him. And. My granddaughter just didn't like him at all.

[00:10:47] Angela Kennecke: And how old were the kids at this point? 

[00:10:48] Patty Stovall: They were six, seven, somewhere, right in there. 6, 7, 8. So they were speaking, but she was just, they weren't speaking really.

[00:10:57] Angela Kennecke: Yeah. 

And so you sense this, you could feel it because the tension or the conflict between you and your daughter, and did she ever admit that she had relapsed or that it was a problem again? 

[00:11:11] Patty Stovall: Nope. Legal stepped in there was a A DUI happened. That's where it all started. Then we knew that she was drinking again.

And so that confrontation was with her dad and I to her, that what's going on? We need to, you know, talk about this and so it was, I'll take care of it. And the pushback was there. And so we noticed that not only there at the dui, there were pills starting again, the pills were starting constantly.

She was. Saying that she was on Suboxone, well, why are you on Suboxone? And so this person that she was with introduced her to heroin. Oh, 

[00:11:59] Angela Kennecke: highly addictive. But if she had liked the pills earlier, you know, it would make sense that she would.

Gravitate toward heroin. 

[00:12:06] Patty Stovall: Yep. 

[00:12:07] Angela Kennecke: If 

that was her choice early on. Mm-hmm. And so did she admit to you about the heroin and how did you find out about that? 

[00:12:13] Patty Stovall: She did admit to us about that, she had also admitted that to my mother, was also addictions counselor. And so she wanted the help at that point.

So she was in and out of treatment probably for a few years. In and out, in and out. She would go and then she'd leave, go, and then she'd leave. She just couldn't sustain any sobriety for any period of time. And then it just went spiraling for a good three years. The last three years of her life were just terrible.

Terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible legal stealing. Just the struggle was real. 

[00:12:55] Angela Kennecke: The addiction had taken over her life completely. What about her children? What was going on with her children during that time? 

[00:13:02] Patty Stovall: The last year and a half of her life, we had stepped in and taken the kids to the other grandma and the father's house.

And she had stepped away from that. 

[00:13:11] Angela Kennecke: Is that? Who has the children today? Mm-hmm. Yep. They're with grandparents and their dad. Yep. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

So, It must have been such a feeling of frustration and almost, I think as parents, we all, and I'm not saying this because I believe you are a failure, but I think as parents, we all feel like we've failed our children somehow when we see this happening to them.

And especially with your background, you know, I would think that you would take it almost extra personally. Did you? 

[00:13:43] Patty Stovall: I was grieving her before she even left. And I, I think because I knew so much about addiction, I knew she wasn't her addiction. I knew that.

My Sarah was there and I knew this, how to separate that. You know, there were many times that I had her here, even in the midst of her addiction, as a mom, I knew sometimes it was wrong to have her here when she was active, but, she was hungry or she needed something, and so I, I fed her and I knew that she would leave, and I also knew she was protecting her family by not coming around because she knew that she was active in her own addiction because she understood addiction herself.

So a lot of times she stayed away to protect her kids and her family as well. So, I knew that wasn't her. And yes, of course I felt as a mom, I, I couldn't save her. And I felt shame and I felt the guilt and I felt sad a lot. I felt like I lost my child a long time ago. And then, We let her fail in the street with the legal system.

We hoped that she would go to jail. She stole my car outta my driveway one time. She thought it was okay. You know, the drugs took over her brain so much that she thought, okay, I'm just gonna use my mom's car and it's okay. But no, she got in and left and I reported it stolen. know, we let her go to jail.

Because we knew that she couldn't sustain that addiction in treatment. So in jail we thought we could get her clean. 

[00:15:38] Angela Kennecke: Did it help going to jail? 

[00:15:41] Patty Stovall: Well, six months in jail, that's what they gave her I don't know if it did us good because the system failed her. They didn't give her any support services at all.

[00:15:55] Angela Kennecke: Oh, at all. So she was just sentenced to jail, had to spend time in jail. But she was not given any treatment, any kind of aftercare, anything like that? 

[00:16:06] Patty Stovall: No. 

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:16:06] Angela Kennecke: Unfortunately, that's not unusual. In a previous episode of Grieving Out Loud, we sat down with Jessica Pfau. She spoke with us before serving a prison sentence for heroin overdose. This was not her first time going to prison for drugs.

 (QUICK MUSIC BRIDGE) 

[00:16:23] Angela Kennecke: Tell me what kind of counseling, what kind of treatment did you get there? 

[00:16:26] Jessica Pfau: If you wanna see mental health, they really don't have a lot to do with you if you're gonna be there for anything less than six months. Otherwise, they're not gonna be able to help you. They'll tell you an emergency that you can call them or kite them.

But they don't really do anything to adjust any medications or look at those needs that you may have. As far as any treatment, they don't have chemical dependency treatment at all right now, other than M R T, which is a class. They used to do another class, CBIA, but they don't have the staff to do that right now, either the last time I was there anyway.

[00:16:59] Angela Kennecke: So you weren't getting treatment for addiction while you were in there? 

[00:17:03] Jessica Pfau: No, not at all.

[00:17:03] Angela Kennecke: Joshua Sharpstein, a professor of Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health says that lack of treatment too often turns deadly.

[00:17:17] Joshua Sharpstein: When people get outta jail, maybe a few days later, a few weeks later, they're still have that brain disease. They're still craving opioids. They go out and maybe use their usual dose, take the same size pill, or you know, the same bag of heroin, and they're at risk now because they've lost their tolerance for overdose and death and to the rate of death among people leaving.

Jails is astronomically high. It's something like a hundred times higher than for the general population, and in, in that first week or so, it's 10 times higher than it'll be even in, in just a few months. So it is just an incredibly dangerous time.

 (MUSIC UP) 

[00:17:55] Angela Kennecke: What's even more frustrating is Patty knew that and was very concerned about her daughter.

[00:18:05] Patty Stovall: And we hired an attorney to. Keep her there to get her those services, which the attorney said, I've never had a family hire someone to keep someone there.

And I spent every day with her for 45 minutes face-to-face to face, and so did her kids to be able to see her clean. Which helped me for the first time in years to see her clean and spend time with her. But when she came out she was supposed to go to a long-term treatment and they didn't have a bed ready and she died eight days out of jail.

[00:18:44] Angela Kennecke: Oh, it's just so heartbreaking. If there had been a bed ready, she might still be alive with us today. 

[00:18:52] Patty Stovall: She could have been. They let her go without a proper aftercare plan. And just released her. 

[00:19:00] Angela Kennecke: The system really, really fails so many people. First of all, because we treat addiction as a crime itself and we don't understand as a society, I'm saying in our systems. I'm not saying individuals. Don't understand, addiction is a disease of the brain and the behaviors are symptoms and that we really need to get people adequate treatment and medically assisted treatment and keep them alive. I just think it's so sad. What happened to your daughter ultimately? The cause of her death was what?

[00:19:30] Patty Stovall: She went to the guy's house. The boyfriend, the boyfriend it was cocaine and 43 NGS of fentanyl was in that cocaine. So it was a fentanyl poisoning that took her right 

[00:19:42] Angela Kennecke: and I'm sure she had no idea she thought she was using cocaine, and I'm just saying, imagining in her mind, this is not opioids, this is not heroin. I'm just gonna use some cocaine to feel better. Probably having no idea that there was fentanyl in it. 

[00:19:55] Patty Stovall: Correct. Correct. We had warned her over and over she had trusted this person tremendously so. 

[00:20:03] Angela Kennecke: Was anybody charged? 

[00:20:05] Patty Stovall: No. 

 She must have lived at some point and they took her to the hospital. And when we got there he told the nurse that he had to leave because the family was gonna say that he had. Taken her life they did an autopsy, but no investigation was ever done. And he sold off all of her things. He sold her phone and all of her belongings 

 And the police never got the phone. 

[00:20:31] Angela Kennecke: Oh, Patty, I am so sorry. That is just, Such a heartbreaking story. how do you cope with that? How do you come to terms with that? Would you wish that he would've been charged with something? 

[00:20:44] Patty Stovall: Yes, I do. He did go to jail on possession charge of three months later for a year. Which part of my soul believes that she had some hand in that on the other side. 

[00:20:59] Angela Kennecke: I think it's such a difficult thing when you feel so let down by systems in your case, the judicial system and the law enforcement who could have done something, with fentanyl being laced in cocaine.

How were we gonna stop these deaths if nothing is done? 

[00:21:20] Patty Stovall: Yes, I, I agree. I, I couldn't agree more because that's, 80% of that in my community is fentanyl, 

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:21:29] Angela Kennecke: It is not just Patty's community where the majority of overdose deaths are related to fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A record of nearly 110,000 Americans died from drugs in 2022. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids were mainly to blame. Many of these deaths were young adults. Sarah was just 33 and left behind two children, a 10 year old and a nine year old.

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:21:58] Angela Kennecke: And how are her kids doing? 

[00:22:00] Patty Stovall: They're good. They're good. one of the things I think is so important is never to not talk about that with children. I. You know, the children are always left behind with grief and with really what addiction is. And we've never kept that a secret with the children.

You know, we've always made sure that the children knew that the addiction was not their mother. We made sure that we, you know, at their level of course, made them help them understand what addiction was. I think my granddaughter, she's gonna be 13 on the 1st of May one smart cookie when it comes to addiction.

And she knew that her mother loved her. Both of them know their mother loved them, and she was not who she was in her addiction. 

[00:22:47] Angela Kennecke: She was sick. She was sick. She was sick. Yeah. And do you worry about them? Because I think just the genetic factors mm-hmm. , we think we can protect kids by, you know, being honest with them, telling them this is what ha but doesn't necessarily mean.

That they're going to make a better choice. 

[00:23:02] Patty Stovall: Right. I try not to project too far and ahead, but I do think it's important that we, you know, make sure that we have an environment where the kids are open to talk about feelings and talk about you know, what's going on with them. Because stressors are really tough in our community and, in this world today. And it's really, really important to create that environment for them, that they feel safe. 

You know, I always tell my grandkids, never feel like you can never call when you're in a situation or in an environment that you feel stuck. You will never have to feel stuck in anything ever. So we tried to create that environment within the family. For them to feel safe to talk about whatever it is that they need to talk about. And I think that's really, really important for any child today, because that's where the depression, those things start where kids don't have that to talk about and then they turn to things outside of themselves to, to make themself feel better.

The pills, the drinking, the drugs, the things. So we are trying to break that cycle within our family. So we hope that, my grandchildren, I have four where we can break some of that cycle

[00:24:16] Angela Kennecke: Now, Patty, is there anything in your background, in your training that you feel has helped you cope with grief, with the loss of your daughter, with everything that you went through while she was in active addiction? Cuz you're right, you lose them before you lose them. 

[00:24:33] Patty Stovall: Yeah, you know, I see a lot of people, there's a lot of feeling, a lot of anger, a lot of, they label that person and then You know, I don't want to be associated with them anymore. Or they don't want to talk to them anymore.  The boundary is I'm done with that person. When that person needs someone the most,  

I think I've learned that. We have to remember that that person is feeling very much. Isolated and alone in their addiction too. I know that we have to set boundaries and we, I know that we have to have that healthy boundaries with them, but they also need to feel loved and supported and guided as well.

I've read some things that my daughter has written after she passed where she, you know, struggled to speak about how she felt and feeling alone and feeling like she wished she had people who cared about her. And Maybe I wasn't there as much as I could have been for her because I was angry with her. Her brother was angry with her. You know, people were angry with her for her behavior. And so I think it's important that we remember that people are not their addiction. They are sick. And so it's important to remember that, to make sure we're guiding people to services and letting them know we love them still, even in their addiction.

[00:26:02] Angela Kennecke: What about coping with her death? Is there anything within grief that you had training for? Do you have a, do you have a one up on the rest of us? Because grief is really, really tough. I know. You know that. 

[00:26:14] Patty Stovall: So one of the things I, talk about in my grief workshop that I do, I have a grief workshop and you know, remember that. We're going to grieve forever. And that grief is something that is not a stage. It is a cycle of our life and that we need to build our life around grief. I don't agree in stages of grief. At all. I believe that we cycle through those feelings sometimes, all of them in one day. We need to allow for ourself to move through them.

 You know, I probably could do a whole podcast just on grief with you. it triggers things that are unresolved from our past. So if there are things that you haven't dealt with from your past and you lose someone, it's gonna come up. In your loss. 

So, we just need to remember that if we're in anxiety, we're in our future. If we're in depression, we're in our past. So if you can bring yourself to the present and just try to do things that you can do to take care of yourself in the present moment. Some of those things might be just getting out of bed and brushing your teeth and eating, you know, in your early grief and Good for you. That's okay. You have to have, give yourself grace and your grief. sometimes it's just doing some simple things in a day.

Now, if you are in that past, in that depression feeling like, you need to, get in bed for a few days and eat ice cream, that's okay too. But just don't stay there too long. You have to take care of you One of the things that I say is find your tribe. Grief is a very much a personal journey. Nobody is gonna walk that grief but you. But if you have people that are around you that understand your grief, like if you lost a spouse, find those people who've lost a spouse. If you lost a child, find those people that lost a child. People will understand that, but even in the midst of those people who have lost children, Everyone is grieving differently. Nobody is grieving the same. 

So understand that your grief is personal, it's sacred. No one is gonna understand that pain that you carry in your soul. And so it is a lonely walk. build your life around your grief. Know it. Is yours. It's personal, it's beautiful, and it's love, but it is yours only. And don't let anyone tell you any different. No one should tell you to get over that. No one should tell you how to grieve. 

[00:28:56] Angela Kennecke: Or, my aunt did it this way and she was fine. My aunt lost a child and she was fine. I've heard things like that before. You know? Yeah. And I just think that it's very disrespectful because you're right. Our society is not very tolerant of people in grief, and society in general thinks, oh, well a year has gone by. You should be okay now. You know? Mm-hmm. And the thing I really hear you saying is to be kind to yourself and not let others define what your personal grief is. 

[00:29:24] Patty Stovall: Absolutely. Absolutely. Because it's okay. It's okay. We will have that forever. And once people know that it's okay and we will carry this forever, then it's like a relief.

it's a relief. Because I think people want to know like, is this gonna be over? No, it's not. But it will get better. It will get better as we build our life around it. 

 (commercial break - visit www.morethanjustanumber.org) 

[00:29:49] Angela Kennecke: And it doesn't mean that you can't live, it doesn't mean that you can't have a beautiful life. It's just that this will always be a part of it.

[00:29:57] Patty Stovall: Correct? Correct. 

[00:29:58] Angela Kennecke: Yeah. I think that's where we get a little messed up in our society because people think you just gotta put this aside. And be happy all the time. And quite frankly, nobody's happy all the time. Everybody goes through stuff, it might not be this, you know, a loss of this magnitude. Mm-hmm. But we're all going through different mental health issues and different things all the time. Even people that don't wanna admit it and. We're not very tolerant of other people's pain, 

[00:30:26] Patty Stovall: correct? Correct. Yes. And you will lose people along your way, and that's okay too. And you will gain other people who will love you. Yeah. Through your grief. 

[00:30:38] Angela Kennecke: That's very true. I think it's hard when you have a loss and then you have more losses on top of that. Happens to most people though, That you will have other kinds of losses, whether that be the loss of a job or the loss of a friendship. Mm-hmm. There are other losses that compile on top of that core loss of a child.

[00:30:56] Patty Stovall: Mm-hmm. 

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:30:56] Angela Kennecke: To help her deal with her incredible loss, Patty started a charity in her daughter's Honor Sounds of Sarah raises awareness about the dangers of illicit fentanyl, counterfeit drugs, and addiction.

 (MUSIC UP!) 

[00:31:11] Patty Stovall: So last year I went to Washington after the faces of Fentanyl museum. I have Sarah there. I think your daughter's there as well. 

[00:31:23] Angela Kennecke: Emily is there so we should let people know you're talking about the faces of Fentanyl. It's a wall at the DEA in Washington, DC. And it has many of our children, if we've submitted a photo, are there. 

[00:31:35] Patty Stovall: Mm-hmm. And so when I came back I knew that there wasn't a lot of activity locally to raise awareness, and I do have background in nonprofit and I thought I need to do something here locally.

 I'm northwest Indiana, so I'm south of Chicago And I said, you know what? I'm just gonna do something. I need to put some of my pain into some purpose here and to raise some awareness. And so I came home from my day work and I sat at my desk and I just started to do some work and it happened so very quickly, I swear I'm divinely guided. I don't know how it happened so very quickly, in like three months. It went from a nonprofit to where I was at, and then in January, the first of the year I put up, Some billboards and it just kind of evolved.

And so yeah, we're really moving forward. We placed a naloxone vending machine in our local area here just a couple weeks ago. The press from Chicago has been down. They don't really come down this way very often. I just did a interview with ABC last week and It's, it's been great really raising some amazing awareness and working with some of the politicians here too in the area.

[00:32:54] Angela Kennecke: Patty, I know why it took off so fast cuz it's so important because this word needs to get out. And I felt the same way about Emily's hope. Like there were many things that happened that had nothing to do with me. It was almost like divine intervention or guidance or whatever was happening because it's so vital that, and I think it's going to take. Not just me working over here with Emily's Hope, and not just you working over there with sounds of Sarah, but all of us together all of us coming together to really make a difference and to end this horrible public health crisis that we're in losing so many young people every single day. Yeah.

[00:33:31] Patty Stovall: Yeah. I look at the numbers, even like locally here, just for 2023 80% are fentanyl. It's just overwhelming. It's heartbreaking. Just heartbreaking. And it just continues. And yes, I couldn't agree with you more. I could not agree with you more. 

[00:33:49] Angela Kennecke: Well, thank you for everything that you're doing. Thank you for sharing Sarah's story. It breaks my heart, like every story breaks my heart. But this one, you know, she really was let down. By so many systems that were supposed to help her, and I'm so sorry for that. But I also really appreciate the wise words that you had about grief, because I think there's a lot of baggage that goes along with grief in our society, and I just, I love what you had to say. Mm-hmm. 

[00:34:18] Patty Stovall: Thank you for all you do. I appreciate that.

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[00:34:20] Angela Kennecke: And thank you for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. You can find out more information about Sounds of Sarah by checking out the show notes of this podcast. While you're there, we'd appreciate it if you take this time to rate and review this episode and share it with your friends and family. By doing so, it helps our mission to raise awareness about our nation's deadly drug crisis. 

If you'd like to get involved, head over to our website, Emilys Hope Charity. There you'll find various ways to give back helpful information for those battling substance use disorder, and details on our programs, including our educational curriculum for students in elementary school.

Thanks again for listening. We hope you found this episode helpful. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wonnenberg-King and Anna Fey

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[00:35:15] Angela Kennecke: .