Hi, it's your host, Angela Kenkey, and I want to invite you to join me in Washington DC on Saturday, September 27th for the National Trail of Truth. The National Mall will be filled with more than 3,600 hand painted tombstones, each honoring someone lost to substance use. It's a powerful day of remembrance, healing, and action, and I'll be speaking along with other advocates. You can learn more or get involved@trailoftruth.org. That's Saturday, September 27th. I hope to see you in dc." sets out in a canoe This morning, two are dead and two others are missing. What started as a fun winter break reunion turned into a nightmare. In January of 2016, a group of college friends gathered at a lake house in southern Wisconsin to celebrate the new year and spend time together. But before the celebration was over, four of them had vanished. They went up further north to Wisconsin to a friend's lake house. There's a bunch of boys gathering there, which I thought was a preferable option to going back into the city, to the bars to drink. Um, I imagined he would be safe there. Sadly, Sally McClellan's son Christopher, wasn't safe. In this episode of Grieving Out Loud, Sally shares the story of her 21-year-old son, the heartbreak she suffered, and what it's been like to live with so much grief. She talks about the struggle to let go of fear, guilt, and regret, and how through it all, grief has shown her just how powerful love really is. I needed to develop a belief that Christopher is here and with me in spirit. I've really come to feel that he. Was always and certainly is a part of me. you know, I love Helen Keller's quote, that is all that we love deeply becomes a part of us. Sally, thank you so much for joining me today, and thank you for the book Reaching For Beautiful about what happened in your family with your son and your unique perspective that you bring to the table when it comes to child loss and grief. It's my pleasure to be here with you Angela. Thank you so much for having me. And, And, and one of the reasons that I wrote reaching for Beautiful was so that people felt less alone. But it's, it's hard for me to that there are so many of us who've lost children. I. Yeah. You know, that's why I write my blog. I just wanted people, and I've written it since the beginning, since shortly after my daughter's death. I just wanted people to know that they weren't alone in these sometimes crazy up and down feelings of grief. But, we'll, we'll get to all that in just a moment. But I wanna start with your story, your family story, and the story of your son, Chris Christopher, who was 21, just like my daughter. Yes. Forever 21. There is something about that. Having, at least for Christopher, an appropriate ring to it. He was my very. Wild and wonderful firstborn. And it just had me off to the races from the very get go and challenged and feeling as if I was out of my league. And you know, he was, he was colicky. He was, he was running at nine months. He was, so busy and he was A light and sensitive and sweet, but was also trouble all at the same time. You could be describing my daughter, Emily. Same thing right from the beginning. She was a high needs fussy baby. Coy had a milk protein allergy talking at eight months, walking and running at nine months. All the things you just said. And wild and, and beautiful and rebellious right from the beginning. And incredibly gifted too. All in the same breath. Yes. Like my daughter, Emily, Christopher, began struggling with substance use disorder as a teenager. When you're a parent in that situation, it's incredibly difficult to know what the right move is for Sally. That meant making the hard decision to send Christopher to a facility in Arizona when he was just 16. From the age of I was concerned about Christopher and I. We sent him to which I never would've imagined I would've done for his first half of his freshman year of high school. We sent him to a military school. We sent him there because he had, he. Begun experimenting and I already saw the writing on the wall and thought, oh, if we can put him in a more insulated environment, or he's really bright, he doesn't know it. If he's put in a position where he has to do the academic schoolwork and get some more skills to be able to accomplish that, be. Better off and it backfired. But you know, largely because the only other young men who were there were also, you I'm handfuls trouble. Yeah, And it wasn't long before they'd, you know, snuck out of this, you know, supposedly. And you know, and I think maybe I should have sent Emily, I looked into sending Emily, you know, somewhere to a home or something to try to get her,'cause the problems for me started 1415. So a little, little bit later, not much. and sometimes I think if maybe, if I would've done that. Right. So we all think like woulda should a coulda, but we could have the same results no matter what. Absolutely. Sally still had moments of hope for three years. Christopher stayed away from substances, but with a strong family history of substance use disorder and the weight of outside pressures. He eventually found his way back to drinking and drugs. He had always wanted to be so much like everybody else. He had a extreme social consciousness. One of his favorite things in the world were his friends, his peers. And so he wanted to go to college and, even though he was, ultimately diagnosed with attention deficit, which, back then we then. quite enough about, and I was sort of belated to the diagnosis. My husband has it and, my other children and I just didn't know, quite what I was, going to be challenged by. I think we all, as parents have various challenges in, in some of these created mine. It's a reminder that substance use disorder and mental health challenges. Do not discriminate. No matter who you are, where you live, or how much money you have, they can affect any family. Sally knows this not just as a mom, but also as a therapist who specializes in addiction, grief, and trauma recovery And you are a therapist, so a lot of people may think you have professional training, you know how to cope with grief. You know what's coming next, you know how to deal with these emotions. Did that prepare you for this horrible thing that happened? In no way, shape or form did it prepare me. And you know, I also, because he'd had near death accidents you know, he'd fallen into a mine shaft and we wondered if he'd gotten paralyzed. Because he'd flipped a truck. I'd, I'd been in fight or flight in relation to his. Addictive nature and the fact that these are the kinds of things that would result when he was out and about. I was not, and nor could anyone be prepared for losing a child. just days after New Year's in 2016. Sally's life changed forever. Her son Christopher, headed to Mill Lake, north of Chicago to celebrate with friends. But that night wouldn't end the way anyone expected. was drinking and drugging during this time period from 19 to age 21, at which time he and his buddies were home from school for holiday break in the winter of. 2016. And I live on the north shore of Chicago. It is very cold here. And they went up further north to Wisconsin to a friend's lake house. There's a bunch of boys gathering there, which I thought was a preferable option to going back into the city, to the bars to drink. Um, I imagined he would be safe there. And he and three other young men decided that they would go out into a canoe on a frozen lake, and none of them survived that.

00 AM the four men decided to take a canoe onto the water. No one realizing they were missing until morning when friends spotted footprints in the snow leading to mill pond and an overturned canoe. When authorities arrived, hope quickly faded in the frigid conditions. Over the next five agonizing days, rescuers recovered the bodies of the four young men one by one. Of course they were under the influence of, various things and um, which ultimately gives me some comfort because the trauma of losing my son in that way. Strangely, as a mother, you want to be with them. You want to be able to provide. Comfort if in fact he was frightened or suffering in any way and. To think in some ways that he wasn't alone at the time, initially gave me some solace. Not very Yeah. But I really don't take solace in that. Of course, I'm, as I said earlier, you know, mortified and can't even entirely integrate when someone else is in a position that, that we were really just traumatized and shattered by losing our child. Yeah, what a horrible tragedy. And it makes me think, you know, on this podcast we talk a lot about fentanyl, poisonings, drug overdoses. Just death from addiction and addiction can kill people in so many ways. How many accidents happen because of substances like this that are never even counted on the rosters of addiction deaths, right. Or you know, deaths due to substance use disorder or, or substance use? Yeah. so true. There's no question that you know, despite Christopher actually having had near death, incidents before his passing um, because he was extremely in the moment and reckless. and then you had these other parents who, this all happened to you at the same time. What was that like? You know, it's so interesting because everyone always wants to know if we together and if that was, the truth is that each of us were suffering our own. Despair To. the extent. And also I only knew one of the other I didn't know the other families or the other young men who also passed at the same time. but I, my heart and my. So go out to each and every one of them. But we did not, it was not like that. You know, they were initially reported mid missing and then one after, the other was recovered. And so we each were with our own, grief experience. What did this brutal grief teach you? There's so much that I've learned and I am. Ultimately grateful in many ways that I've had. know, I'm a recovering alcoholic. I stopped drinking when I was 25. I'm married to a recovering alcoholic. We have three children, two living in one in heaven. All of whom have struggled with addiction. What we didn't know as parents early in the game, we thought all of the love and the nurturing would offset any genetic predisposition. And I've come to find that you and your spouse both have addiction in your genetic material, you have up to eight times more likelihood of having a child who will struggle as well. You know, you saying that Sally, about love conquering all. I had the same idea when I was younger. I knew that my, children's father suffered from substance use disorder, but I thought love could cure it. All right. Love would be the answer. You could love a child enough, but hereditary, the genes like that is such a huge factor for so many diseases. Substance use disorder, just one of them. So many diseases, but it's not really as widely accepted by, I think the general public, like this is a hereditary thing. It, it is indeed. And getting my master's degree to become a therapist and you know, this was back in the nineties, early nineties, before Christopher was born, there was a lot more emphasis on nurture even than there was on nature. and then I've since so many courses and worked with so many people who are struggling with addiction or in relationships with people who are struggling. And it all serves to reinforce the fact that this is a cunning, baffling and powerful disease. It is not an indictment of anyone's moral character. It doesn't discriminate , There's nothing that inoculates you from this, you know, perhaps other than know, not being procreated by, Yeah. by you. Right. I mean, it's so funny you use that word inoculate.'cause I had used that all the time when my kids were growing up. You know, I was gonna inoculate them from, you know, generations of issues, right. Generations of issues. And. right. we're just one person, and you're a therapist. You had all these tools at your disposal. And I took Emily to therapist after therapist starting in high school because we started to experience some issues with her I never thought she had, I. Attention deficit disorder. But later on she was diagnosed with that and she took the medication for it and hated it. Said it made everything slow down and boring. And she was a, you know, amazing artist, and she didn't have all the symptoms of, she didn't have hyperactivity Right. And she was able to, you know, read at a young age and do all these things, but all of the things that were just, it was, was such an uphill battle. And I bet you felt just as frustrated, even though you are the therapist, as I did. My mom and I were just talking about this. She's about to turn 85 and I. I said, remember how you tried to. that maybe Christopher was, you know, hyperactive and I became defensive and you know, she said Yeah. never done this before. Don't know what you don't know, and ultimately I'm trying to be so much more forgiving and understanding of myself for that, that despite my education, even despite some of my personal experience I'd, I. Never raised a child before, nor had a frame of reference for what it might look like. And it was this process of discovery and learning along the way. And as I was, we, you know, diagnose him, and he had the same experience as Emily did where he didn't respond to medications in particular and wasn't always, though he had such restlessness, Hyperactivity didn't entirely seem to fit. That felt a little bit, Okay. piece felt a little bit more like you know, my, my husband and my youngest. It's so interesting how there's so many different features and it's complex. Right. Here we are, you know, after their deaths trying to figure out what, what was it and what could we have done differently? And I think part of that is societal pressure on mothers as well. Like we are supposed to raise these perfect children in an imperfect world. And when I say imperfect point, who I mean imperfect, you know, those outside influences at some point have so much more impact on our children than we do anyway, but. We do get as mothers and as educated people, we, we think that somehow we've got this power that we don't really have. I've been reflecting on that in a number of different ways. One is that many of us in our approximate generation, Take our job as parents. Seriously. We may, may have been in the workforce, we may be simultaneously working outside of the home while raising our children or have the opportunity to, you know, for a time I was able to do full-time parenting and you know, frankly, I think I would've been a better mother if I'd been able to also, do my, my work, which I love as dearly as I do at the same time. But the truth is that we take it so seriously. We're so hard on ourselves. We think we are supposed to know when we couldn't, we're grasping at various straws and just trying to understand. Who is this child and, and how do I best support him or her And I end up speaking to a lot of my young clients who are first time mothers or, mothering children or, or young fathers for that matter about this. We're so perfectionistic and sight of the fact that there are gonna be moments where we're imperfect and they're imperfect. Mm-hmm. And the love still counts. You know, the love that we gave them, the love that they had for us. That still counts. And even after their deaths, that maybe even counts more than anything else that we went through with them. I couldn't agree more. I'm sure you feel the same way I do, but I could not love. Not while he was here or thereafter. I could not love my not an ounce, not even the teeniest tiniest touch more than I do. And so we do our best and we do assume we've got power to control so much that is beyond our control. Yeah. And Christopher has taught me, that Was often in fear and that I appreciated even while he was here, the importance of at least attempting to let that go. And I try to continue to practice that when his death terrified me. I tried to take care of myself in different ways so that I can be, a, a. Less fearful mother with my other children because Right. believe that fear, even though we've got all sorts of reasons to feel it, it doesn't do us any favors. I chased Christopher off and I was trying to track him down. I was trying to, I, I, I had this illusion that I could, and short of locking him, I mean, they're just really, nor would I have. Wanted him to be any different. because that was part of what made him beautiful. Right, and I, I did the same things like I tracked Emily. I tried so hard, I just to save her in so many ways and they all failed, and in the end, you're left with their loss. but as I've said, and I know every parent has said this, I would go through all of that again to have her in my life for those 21 years. And I think that's it. It's hard to take the part where you're grateful for having them and combine that with a horrible loss and fear that goes along when you know the worst can happen. a loss, a death could happen to your spouse or your other children, but not to live in that fear. That's the trick. It is true., Being a therapist in some ways has been an advantage as a griever, because had to learn to practice some of what I would to anyone else, you know, to Hmm. Extremely compassionate and gentle with myself, which is really not my typical mo and it, it means allowing myself to. into the feeling and, and in some way I couldn't have helped. I was so saturated with grief that I couldn't have helped but lean into it. But to kind of recognize that it was messy, that there was no you know, being the face of, of grace necessarily. So there was this coexistence of gratitude and, being traumatized. And so in that early period of time, I was trying to feel restored to safety I was activated that I could potentially lose. Another child as well. You think you need to attempt to steal yourself for the worst because your innocence has been Right. Right. Right. Like your entire life shifts. I remember having this thought after Emily died that this is not how things were supposed to go. This is not supposed to be, I don't want this to be my story. I reject this. Yes. know, Yes. that. Right? Good luck with it because it is what it is. And so accepting what is is a process that can take years. I will actually never not be right, the loss of my son. And it took me seven years to feel back to myself again. That then still doesn't mean that there aren't periods where I am because grief ebbs and it has its flows where I'm not taken back to my knees. And our society is grief and tolerant. Our society says. You know, you get three days off work or whatever it might be, and hop back to it and, you know, move on. And I've, I've talked about this ad nauseum that, you know, you don't move on, you move forward. But society doesn't really tolerate, you know, I'm seven years out, you're nine years out from the death of our children. Just stop talking about it already. Just go on with your life, put it behind you. And people used to. in the last generation, they would just not talk about it. nobody talked about it in the house. Yeah. Yeah. have to say I loved, you know, I, I think I turned to my publicist and I provided her with podcasts that call to me. And this idea of grieving out loud, know, I have the benefit of been part of a self-help community that, really espouses vulnerability. And then of course I encourage that with my clients. And I really believe that being vulnerable does promote connection. We have to get more comfortable with this subject. In reaching for beautiful, I say, you know, if I can survive this, if I'm enduring it then me the honor and give my child the honor of acknowledgement of empathy, of leaning in Having it be okay to be uncomfortable, having it be okay to not know what to say about it, but please don't retreat from me and make me feel, or I shouldn't ever say make me feel. But for me, I felt further alienated by Yes. discomfort. just as I had as the mother of a bad boy, right? so that kind of being on the receiving end of unintentional judgment and discomfort it extra hard. And so if you can, Just put your hand on someone's shoulder or just let 'em know that you're sorry for what they've been through. That's, that's all we ask, right? Right, and there is a sense of discomfort when you have a kid who's troubled and you're going through that you feel like you're the only person in the world dealing with this, and people do distance themselves and reject you. I think they're so afraid. I. Of something like that happening to them. I think it has more to do with the person and then after they die, then they really reject you. Right? Um, Not everybody, but there are definitely certain people that distance themselves dramatically from you. And I think it's that they don't want that, even that idea to be part of their world. and I understand it intellectually and I don't want to sort of even come off with any semblance of what might appear to be bitterness. I just feel like I owe it to other grieving parents to let people who. Not grieving the loss of a child in particular, know that at least for me so welcome any opportunity to, you know, we wanna be able to maintain our bragging rights. I wanna be able to Yeah. Christopher, , and I always will and so please let me. How has the rest of your family fared after this loss? it's so interesting because that was one of , your podcast episodes that Hmm. listened to was two of your living children. I know you had a, a stepchild who was not present for the interview, but I wondered what it would be like to have my son and my daughter weigh in. I think it would be, again, similar to what I was picking up when I listened, I'm always so sensitive to Caroline and Williams, like a respect for their own experience i, I have such loyalty that I speak to it to some extent in the book, but I, I don't go into it very much because it's their, their journey, It's their story, right? But I. I think we all need to respect the fact that everybody's gonna respond differently and in their own way and give them permission to, so for my daughter, if it was that she was extremely angry for my son, if it was that he retreated for my husband, if it was that he that. You know, extremely busy and I just wanted to curl up in a ball. You know, we all had our different ways and those even go through stages because the process is so complex. I. Right. And I think we have to give others who are impacted by the same loss. The same grace we give to ourselves. And that doesn't always happen because we don't understand why they're responding or how they're responding to this horrible thing. But I saw all the same things that you just mentioned. I'm the one that got busy, so I can do that too. But yeah, I mean, we all, we all have different ways and I really saw that in my own children. You could even hear it in that conversation, how differently they responded. And I sort of addressed that at the beginning. One of them didn't even listen to the podcast after it came out, which tells you a lot right there. If you'd like to hear the podcast I recorded with two of my children, you can find the link in this episode. Show notes. While you're there, we'd be grateful if you left a review and shared this podcast with friends and family. Every single share helps spread hope and support. Meanwhile, Sally says, her children not only grieved for their brother's death, but also carried the heavy burden of watching him struggle with substance use disorder while he was alive. Our other children had already grown accustomed to this sibling up all of the. Right, Air in the room not being around for periods of time or not necessarily being the kind of sibling that know, was worthy of the legendary status that they then maybe have when they're gone. So I think there's all of those things and, grief, of guilt grief. The inevitability, especially as a mother whose job, or at least I. Prescribed identity or assigned task is to keep your child alive. And when you cannot you are going to respond to that kind of powerlessness and mean, extreme powerlessness. With the only agency, you know, which is to think about what you could have or should have done. And the truth is, I've come to discover and reconcile and process that I don't think there was anything I could have. Right. Right. And I, I, I think I know that too, or part of me knows that right after all these conversations. back and forth with it too, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And so the book, was that therapeutic for you, reaching for Beautiful to get it all out on paper? And did it help you writing it? Hugely because I began writing it to Christopher, I began actually texting it in sort of journal format, letting him know, what sort of desperation to connect I had, letting him know that I knew not where he'd gone. Letting him know what it felt like and how much I missed him. And if you'd read the first draft, you'd probably get pretty quickly bored But then ultimately became. My memoir and it captures the year and a half of time after he passed. It's a little bit of an amalgamation of my grieving because it didn't come out until recently, which is nine years later. And I also wrote about in many drafts I captured his life and what it was like to raise him because I did have that impetus to want. People, even if they haven't lost a child, but if they've raised a child that's different in any way an addict to feel less alone as well, because I don't think we're talking enough about any of these things. And so, I love having the conversation about it just to destigmatize and to sort of help parents know how isolating it is when you're. You're up against the decisions that you, you described like, well, do I send him away? Do I not send him away, do I? And then you're sort of the recipient of judgment for the choices You do. And you know, I remember one of the things I wrote about was, just somebody sort of hearing that some other mom had spoken about how I failed to control him. And you know what it was like. Oh my gosh. I, I, I couldn't, I, I tried Yeah. Yeah. I felt, the shame I felt The shame, the shame, the shame. And it's unfortunate that, that even happened, but it, of course it does. And I guess I've learned so much that there's so little we can control in another human being, even our own children. And it's just a, a difficult thing. And I think by writing this book, you are truly helping other parents feel less alone because when you're in the thick of it, I. You don't know the things that you know in hindsight, right? No, and, and so while I thought there might be some value to speaking about what it's like inside grief, I also do think that there were things I could reconcile in the writing of it, that it was healing to be able to recognize how I kept coming up against my own guilt and regret and self pity, and how I kept trying to choose to. on my gratitude, how I needed to do everything in my power to survive this every single resource possible. I needed to receive help instead of being exclusively the giver of it. I needed to develop a belief that Christopher is here and with me in spirit. I've really come to feel that he. Was always and certainly is a part of me. you know, I love Helen Keller's quote, that is all that we love deeply becomes a part of us. he is, you know, certainly with me. so I try to embody all of his qualities And that can be comforting, right? That can be comforting. To believe that your child is with you, to actually feel it, I think can be a great healer in the grieving process. it's magical I respect anyone's right to believe what they will, but, one could easily also talk themselves out of, oh, that's just a coincidence, or this, and, know, he's not really sending you signs, Sally, you know, and instead, I, I really think that being open to, you know, I'm a deep feeler. I feel him, and I trust that I do. I trust that I do and I trust in the signs that he sends and they've been pretty remarkable. Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think I'm about where you are in believing that as well. And I, over the years, it's been so interesting to me to see how that's evolved. Mm-hmm. But the fact that I'll take those signs because you know what? It makes things better and that's what matters right now. I mean, she's not coming back, but I'll take the signs and I'm not gonna explain them away. Anything could be explained away right by the rational brain. But there's another part of our brain that is emotional and feeling and wired for spirituality that I think we fail to tune into too often. And connection, you know, connecting to him, connecting to other parents connecting myself and my own heart writing. Promoted that, you know, I even ended up in a writing group with other women who were, writing memoirs about their own challenging experiences, you know, and so then any place where we can connect and keep our hearts open, connecting to Christopher's friends, serving helping form causes or supporting causes in our children's honor, which I know you're doing. So this feels, feels good to me. Yeah, I agree. I agree. So I think we're on the same page there, and I so appreciate you sharing uh, this book with us that you've written as well as this very meaningful conversation. Thank you so much, Sally. My pleasure, really loved being with You can learn more about Sally's book, reaching For Beautiful, a Memoir of Loving and Losing a Wild Child in the show notes of this podcast. Be sure to join us again next week for a new episode of Grieving Out Loud. In the meantime, you can find hundreds of past episodes on our website at Emily's Hope Charity. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope. And courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wonnenberg King and Kayli Fitz.