it felt like a life-or-death situation. It, it really was, you know? you realized you had a kid with a problem on your hands. That's what I always say, I had a kid with a problem on my hands, and I felt like I should be able to solve it. I felt like I should be able to do the research, talk to the experts, figure it out, get her the help she needed, and everything would be okay Yeah. My husband and I both met at Yale in grad school. I feel like we had spent our whole lives thinking hard work is gonna pay off. One day I went for a run with my dogs and I saw his car at a nearby park. And I looked over in the window and there he was, and he had tinfoil and he was doing something with fentanyl. And, um, I knocked on his window and he was so ashamed of himself. And, uh, said, "You know, put that away and, and come home. Let's figure this out." And I really hoped we could. I thought, okay, we'll get him, you know, the best of the best. Money is no object. Like we'll live homeless if we have to. For opioids is you have a seventy to ninety percent chance of relapse after going to, uh, rehab for opioids. And if you're spending a hundred thousand dollars each time, you'd think that that we would have a few more tools that could fight this monster You'd hope. You'd hope. But it is such a crapshoot in so many ways, and some people survive and others do not, and there are no logical steps A, B, C you can take. And I, since Emily's death, I've had so many people ask me, like, what will-- what are the steps? What should we do? What is… And I, I'm always like, if I knew that, my child would still be alive. Yeah. My next guest came to me through grief and through poetry. She never knew that she could write. Katie Rizzo lost her firstborn son to addiction on September 17th of 2024, and in the months that followed, she noticed something remarkable when she described it. Grief is somewhat like pregnancy. The first months brought nausea, not the kind you can name, the kind that kind of moves through your body, and man, you- it's tough to cope with. And then came numbness and what she calls the showing, that season when you need the world to know about what you're carrying. And she'd never written poetry before her son died, and then suddenly she had no other language. She was writing to reach him across the veil. And then at one of the hardest moments, she found a piece by musician Nick Cave about asking grief to sit beside you rather than running away from it. She calls it her delivery. Katie is still early in this journey, just a couple of years now, not even two full years, and as she is walking it with extraordinary courage and honesty. She's here today because she knows that there's other parents out there like us, parents who've lost a child in this way to something stigmatized, something the world doesn't always make room to mourn openly, and she wants people to know they're not alone. Katie, welcome to Grieving Out Loud. Hmm. Thank you I am so touched that you're talking to me just about a year and a half following Nicholas's death. I remember those. I'm eight years out. I'm so much farther along on this grief journey than you, and I remember the horrible pain of those first, I would say, like four years. Four. I mean, and I hate to say that to you because you're a year and a half out, but, uh, just thank you for, you know, opening up and taking the time to talk to us Oh, you're so kind. I remember really early on, I went onto, uh, Facebook and I was on a, a site for people who had lost their kids, and the, um, administrator said, "If you say this is getting worse every year, we will kick you out of here. You can't keep saying that." And I thought, "Oh, I'm, I'm in for some really difficult times Yeah, I always say that the first year is really… And I did a lot the first year too, as you're doing. I was very public. I spoke publicly and, and did a lot that first year. But it was also shock. I was in shock. Looking back, I realize I was in shock. And the second year, I call it depression. I mean, I was just so depressed. Everything felt so grim. And the third to going into the fourth year, for me, and I know everyone can be a little bit different, for me was more acceptance. Acceptance that this is what has happened, this is how it is. And that's not an easy place to get to Mm-hmm. Yeah. Um, I feel like spent my whole life being a mom, and when I watched Nicholas… I mean, I, that's-- I just loved being a mom. And so when Nicholas started his addiction journey or our family's addiction journey, um, I just became this huge proponent of and learning and researching, those tools, I think, have helped me a lot in grief because the minute it happened, I got on the internet and was like, "Are there other people out there who have gone through this? Like, I know there are, but I've never met them. I've never, I've never heard of this." Like, I started reaching out immediately. And also, I have a really good group of girlfriends, one in particular who just came over, moved in, started buying grief books, and started-- we started reading them out loud. Like, it felt like a life-or-death situation. It, it really was, you know? We've-- You know, we, we-- I have two other kids, and friend Laura kept saying, like-- And my husband. Like, "You, you don't have to not feel this, but you have to stay here." Right. Right. And amazing you had that support. Yeah One thing that you just said that struck me was when Nicholas, you realized you had a kid with a problem on your hands. That's what I always say, I had a kid with a problem on my hands, and I felt like I should be able to solve it. I felt like I should be able to do the research, talk to the experts, figure it out, get her the help she needed, and everything would be okay Yeah. My husband and I both met at Yale in grad school. I feel like we had spent our whole lives thinking hard work is gonna pay off. And when we got-- when Nicholas came home with those kind of glazed eyes and our family kinda got thrown into this chaotic period, I kept, like, coming to my husband, and his name is Nick, and so my son's name is Nicholas. I kept looking at Nick and saying like, "We can do this. Like, you and I have the tools. Like, we just need to read more. We need to do more. Like, w- how are we gonna logic our way through this?" And unfortunately, I don't think that there is any logical way through. I feel like once the hooks of addiction get in there and really mess with kid's brain, especially with how strong things are today, I don't, I don't know. I, I, you know, I was trying to look up rehab statistics just if there are any recent ones, and all I can find for opioids is you have a seventy to ninety percent chance of relapse after going to, uh, rehab for opioids. And if you're spending a hundred thousand dollars each time, you'd think that that we would have a few more tools that could fight this monster You'd hope. You'd hope. But it is such a crapshoot in so many ways, and some people survive and others do not, and there are no logical steps A, B, C you can take. And I, since Emily's death, I've had so many people ask me, like, what will-- what are the steps? What should we do? What is… And I, I'm always like, if I knew that, my child would still be alive. Yeah. And I think when you are, when you go to s- you excel in school. You mentioned, you know, you went to a prestigious school and, um, you know, you do well. You figure the rest of your life out in that way. But this is a beast that almost many times cannot be tamed. So let's talk about Nicholas and what happened. How old was he when he started using, and what did he start with? So I think it started in high school. He, he really being in his own body. He was, uh, into sports. He had a lot of injuries. He really well in soccer. I think soccer was a place where he kind of found his voice. And also soccer brought with it, you know, a lot of knee surgeries and broken bones. So Uh he started getting put on for painkillers, and I also think he had anxiety. Um, he went to the high school that I taught at, and, um, he got prom king, which I was like,"Wow, that's pretty cool. I'm, I'm guessing he would be, know, thrilled." he was horrified, and he didn't wanna go. And I was like, "Here, I'll give you a beer. You can get up there, and, you know, it'll be 10 minutes." And, um, he chugged the beer, and he looked at me, and he said, "Mom, you have no idea what's going on." And so I, I think that he was smoking pot to manage his anxiety. So I think that's where it started well, and I cannot even count how many parents I've talked to whose child's addiction started with the two things you just mentioned, s- surgeries and being prescribed opioids before your brain is fully developed, and also using marijuana before your brain is fully developed. I've done entire podcasts about this and how we know so much more now than we did even a few years ago about how this strong marijuana, the strong THC content Mm-hmm. really impacts the developing brain. And every person who I have met who has recovered from, or was rec- in recovery from opioid use disorder, started with marijuana. So it's not unusual Yeah. I hope you scream it from the rooftops. We do. We do. And , we have an education curriculum that's teaching kids about the dangers to their brain, uh, for substances, especially before their brain is fully developed, no matter what that substance is. I'm not saying any mind-altering substance is a good thing for a kid. Um, but we do know those early prescriptions for opioids and the marijuana use is a real threat And now with the gas station drugs, I'm, I Oh, horrifying. Horrifying I think at the end when Nicholas, he was in a rehab, um, and I feel like it was his one last chance. Like, that was the one time that I saw his eyes clear, and I thought, "Oh, you know, is it. This is our, this is our beautiful story." But at that rehab, and I think they were doing the best they could with what they had, um, they were letting kids go to a pot shop, and the pot-- they said the pot shop owner knows he, they can't get pot, they can't get THC, but they can get nicotine and other herbal remedies. And I was like, "Okay, these people know what they're doing." But at the time, I think that he got Kratom because the rehab said, "Oh, he's dis- starting to disassociate, but he's not testing positive for anything." I was like, "My son has never dis-" I mean, he, h- h- when he's high, he will kind of act like he's not here. But there's, that's… And they kept saying, "Well, maybe there's a new, you know, um, maybe this is new. Maybe he's, you know, gonna become schizophrenic," or, you know, they're throwing all these words around, and I was like, "Wait, he's n- he's never displayed this, this feeling of, like, not being in his body. Can we look at what he's putting in it first? I mean, it may be something else." Um, and you know I can't believe that the rehab would allow people to go get these substances. And, um, you know, I've heard, uh, the tall cop do his presentation about substances in these gas stations, and we've done a lot of lobbying in our state to try to control what's, you know, at least license these vape shops, smoke shops, but they're selling a lot more than nicotine. They're selling things like kratom, which can act as a stimulant and also as an opioid, and there have been kratom deaths. I've reported on kratom deaths. And so I have they're just… Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's scary everything that's out there, and the amount of educating that the public needs, that our kids need, is just tremendous. B- for, for a rehab center to not know that is scary We've reported extensively on Kratom and so-called gas station drugs on our website, emilyshope.charity. We've included a link in the show notes. As calls to poison control centers involving Kratom continue to rise, lawmakers are weighing how to regulate the substance. The FDA has formally recommended that the DEA classify concentrated 7-OH as a Schedule 1 drug, but that was over a year ago, and the DEA is still reviewing that recommendation. 7-OH is a potent byproduct of the Kratom plant that binds to opioid receptors and has shown a high potential for abuse. At the same time, many medical experts warn that Kratom itself may not be safe. The FDA has urged consumers to avoid it, citing risks of addiction, abuse, and serious health issues, including seizures and liver damage. Meanwhile, the Trump administration's Homeland Security secretary is facing criticism after financial disclosures revealed an investment of up to one million dollars in a company that sells Kratom. For more in-depth reporting and the latest developments, visit emilyshope.charity. we had started talking about Nicholas in high school and the surgeries and the anxiety and, you know, the use of marijuana, obviously prescribed opioids. He lived to 25. What happened between those years of his teenage years until 25? So he got a D2 college schoft- scholarship for soccer. He went to, um, CMU, Colorado Mesa University. Um, I think he, I think he and his roommates all suffered from anxiety, and I think they all decided to, um, use pills. Um, by the time he graduated, he came home, and I thought, okay, normal partying behavior is gone. Now we can get into, you know, being an adult and he's got his, you know, he'll have his feet underneath him. He moved in, started a job, and right away I realized, uh, he just had those sleepy eyes all the time. One day I went for a run with my dogs and I saw his car at a nearby park. And I looked over in the window and there he was, and he had tinfoil and he was doing something with fentanyl. And, um, I knocked on his window and he was so ashamed of himself. And, uh, said, "You know, put that away and, and come home. Let's figure this out." And I really hoped we could. I thought, okay, we'll get him, you know, the best of the best. Money is no object. Like we'll live homeless if we have to. And we found somebody who was willing to give him, um, an opioid a- um, agonist, you know, uh, a shot once a month. And that worked for a little Oh, so you're, what you're talking about is like buprenorphine, um, you're talking about a medic- med- medically assisted treatment for opioid use disorder, Yeah. right? that worked, and the doctor was like, "I'll give this to you for two months, but then you have to promise, you know, you'll get off of it." Oh. So now I'm s- I know. bad advice because no reason to get off of it. If he had stayed on it, he may still be alive today I feel like the medical establishment is all about m- money, and I… That seems so judgmental, but from my experience, I didn't ever… I never came across somebody who was like, the- we're gonna help you." It was about, um, you know, "Your insurance isn't paying," or, "This is what your insurance will pay for," or I don't know. But in And case there's also some stigma still among providers and others around, even though it's become easier to prescribe, around medications for opioid use disorder. The idea, the false idea that you have to get off of it. Yeah. the, the idea, you know, it's, it, it, you're replacing one drug for another, all of that. And, and I, I know people who've lived for years, you know, on this prescription medication, productive lives, married with children, holding jobs, and there's nothing wrong. We, we prescribe medication for all other kinds of issues Yeah, the stigma is just too big right now. So he was told he has to get off of it, and then what happened? But then, you know, he went right back to smoking pot and the whole this, you know, it- pot w- he'd grow a tolerance to it, and then I think he started on pills. I-- We ended up-- My husband and I, um, joined Al-Anon, which is a self, um, help group for people who love somebody with addiction, and that was helpful. um… got to a point where we decided that having Nicholas in our home healthy for anyone. And so you had younger children at home Um, they were in college, but they came home over the summers. Yeah. But also it just, you know, we were all, we were just fighting and, you know,"Please get off." You know,"I can tell you're high.""I'm not high." "I can tell you're high." It just, Yeah um, testing him by tricking him, by turning off the water to the toilet is something that I've done. in any case, he got an apartment and moved out, um, and I, I think things got worse then. Uh, in Arizona, you can do a 72-hour mental health hold. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. I don't know what my thoughts are on that. So, um, Nicholas started stealing money. He started, um, he had a check of ours, and he was cashing it every day, the same amount every day, the same check every day for a month. Um, and so we went to him and said, "Hey, you know, you've sto- you've, you've stolen over $10,000. It's not the first time. can choose rehab or jail." And he chose jail. So we finally to the police and said, "What do we do?" Like, want my kid to go to jail." And they said, "Try the 72-hour hold," which we did. And during that, um, he had such bad withdrawal symptoms that he ended up in the ICU for six days. And then, you know, he ended up in, in a, a rehab that he lost his bed because the insurance didn't sign something. I don't know. Even though we said we'd pay. And then he ended out- outpatient there, and that's when he was disassociating. Um, and so he ended up in an outpatient closer to home. It just sounds like one nightmare after the other. If you could wave a magic wand, Katie, and I don't expect you to have the answers, but if you could wave a magic wand, what should have happened when you found out he was stealing? I mean, what, what, how should we respond in this country?'Cause I've been talking to a lot of people about that lately. Like, we know what h- what, what has been done for decades, Right especially by maybe the medical system, hasn't worked s- and the rehab system. So what… money at it. Yeah So what, what would you, what, looking back, and hindsight is 20/20, what could have been done differently? Well, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but I think that if you have shown that you have an, uh, a, a, an addiction to opioids like my son did, or to meth probably as well, I think that y- a year somewhere safe Mm-hmm. a minimum is the best thing you could do for them. I wish that there was a system that would've said… Do you know Nicholas? He wanted to get clean. He was so ashamed. I wish there was a place he could have gone and said, "For the next year, you're here." And um, And not I would be maybe be a perfect solution, but I agree with you. I've, you know, 12 to 24 months is what it takes for the brain to heal. If instead of sending people to jail or to expensive rehab centers that just churn them out every 28 days, if we could have a place where we could basically, like, sentence people, take, take abandoned nursing homes, I don't know, or, or a facility like that, and have the pro- yeah and have the proper care along with medication-assisted treatment and what we know are the gold standards and any other, uh, thing that helps with substance use disorder, have those all available to people. I mean, that's what we should be doing. Immediate access to treatment that is long-term Yeah. Your show where you talked about 72,000 people who died last year, Right that's not a success story. It scared me. And the year that Nicholas passed, there was 80, and that's a plane, a commercial jet plane going down every day. And if you think about how many kids that is, it's just too many, and how many families that are being devastated. If you'd like to listen to our previous episode, Why 72,000 Deaths a Year is Not a Success Story, featuring a Stanford addiction researcher, head over to this episode's show notes. We've shared a link. And while you're there, we'd appreciate it if you'd just take a moment to rate and review this podcast, give us five stars, and share it with friends and family who may find it helpful. Together, we can raise awareness about the drug epidemic, decrease the stigma surrounding the disease of addiction, and hopefully get more people the life-saving help they need. It's worth the investment in looking into how are we gonna deal with this. And I think our homeless population would go down dramatically if we actually the problem Right. And we treated it as a disease of the brain, a disease of the mind, and we, we took it seriously and we didn't stigmatize it. And yeah, so many of these things. And so you mentioned that, you know, he, all these things sort of did not really serve him very well. No happened before his death? Um, he was kicked out of his outpatient rehab unbeknownst to us for not participating. So, um, I think Nicholas went home, and he knew that fentanyl was dangerous, and I don't think he wanted to die. He had of laundry running in his washer. he called and said he was gonna come over to dinner, and then he never showed up Yeah. So ultimately his cause of death It was overdose on opioids and So Xanax basically, yeah And they were all… When my husband went over to his apartment, he found all the prescription pill bottles. I don't know why Nicholas was saving them for the last three years, but he was. people are like, "Oh, he probably was gonna sell, like put something in them and sell." I don't know what he was gonna do, but he had hundreds of empty prescription pill bottles from the same, um, doctor. Really? So really like a pill mill type doc. Well, why would somebody continue to prescribe him these? Yeah. And, um, exactly. I tried to, I tried everything to s- 'cause I don't want another kid to die from this. Um, I called our, um, attorney general. I, we worked with them. But in the end, the people that pres- or the person that was prescribing it prescribed pills every 18 days, which is the legal maximum. And, um, unfortunately, after Nicholas passed away, I got a, a letter in the mail with an authorization for 30 more visits with that physician. What a disservice. Like, w- why wouldn't this physician get him help? Why would he continue to feed the problem? That's angering and, and there's a saying in Al-Anon, "How free do you wanna be?" I could, I could get eaten up by the, all the little things that happened, Of course free. So I'm… I feel like, uh, my, my sons, uh, when I was really angry about this, one of my sons said, "Mom, if you get rid of him, there's gonna be another one that pops up." And they're probably right. And so maybe, I don't know. And I think Nicholas was buying, um, opioids as well because as we both know, once you're addicted, you have to take more and more and more. So Right. Right, just one channel, um, he had there. But yeah, I'm so sorry that all of this happened. And then when I introduced you, I talked about your poetry, so, and comparing grief or the loss of a child to pregnancy, which I find so fascinating, so interesting. Tell me about that Um, well, after he died, people kept calling and saying things I could not understand. Um, like, "Your son's obituary is gonna go live," or the mortuary was like, "You can come pick up your son now." And I was like, "I can pick him up? What?" It just none, nothing made sense, and so I started writing everything down, kind of journaling. Um, and at the end of a well, about, uh, nine months in, eight months in, as I was journaling, I was like, the only way to express how deeply I was feeling or how bizarre everything was, was in poetry. And I kind of felt like, that I was writing with him, but I could at least try to give words to a memory or a feeling. And for those few minutes when I was writing poetry, uh, I could breathe, and I don't know. There was just a sense of peace and maybe because this has so much stigma of like, what's wrong with you that you didn't, like that you left a pill-sized hole in your kid, that I could write about the beautiful things just so that I could remind myself that it wasn't me and it really wasn't Nicholas. once brain got kind of like in that poison, there was nothing we could do. Yeah. hi- hijacked, once his brain got hijacked by substances. And you're right. And I think especially as moms, the society wants to blame us first, uh, parents in general, but moms first. And then, uh, I've heard it all. I've heard all of it, and people have no idea everything. And if they had to walk in your shoes just for an hour when you're dealing with a kid who has an issue and a problem, and the way it permeates the whole family, um, people would stop blaming. But I understand what you're saying. And writing, writing blogs has been a great outlet for me, and I love it that you were able to find some peace and, and that was such a healthy thing for you to do, 'cause there's a lot of other alternatives that you could have done that wouldn't have been as, as productive or as healthy as writing. If you're a mother grieving the loss of a child, dear friends of mine, moms who've lost children to fentanyl poisoning and overdose, are hosting the Sisters of Strength Warrior Moms Retreat October 9th through the 11th at Wildwood Hills Ranch in St. Charles, Iowa. It's a weekend of healing, connection, horseback riding, and creative remembrance with women who understand. This weekend isn't about forgetting, it's about remembering with love. The link and details are in the show notes. I hope you'll join us Would you read me one of your poems? Sure. Uh, this one I just wrote this morning, so um, so it's called Meat Hooks. Photos of us from the last years tell our story, no words needed. You lean on anyone, usually me, while dad pulls away and your brothers hang their arms in disbelief. Zooming out, something else appears, and his tentacles take up most of the space. I'd say he was an uninvited guest, but I think you'd say he wasn't really there. Zooming in, your skin is pockmarked with four-pronged lines in varying degrees of red, the only evidence that we didn't let go. That's beautiful. And thank you for writing that, and I think you should do something with your collection of poems. How many have you written now? I've written too many, but, um, I post them every day, and a part of… I wasn't sure why, but it, at first it was because I was just screaming into the void, like, Nicholas was here. He was important. Right I love him. I'm still proud of him. I felt like there were people talking behind our back, which they probably weren't, but I just felt that way, right? Um, and I wanted them to know that he died from opioids, and I wasn't ashamed of it, and that He was important and his life mattered. And so, um, yeah. And, uh, when I f- when my husband and I started going to grief groups, uh, I started meeting more and more parents who were really lost. And I started thinking about taking my journals and my poems and publishing them, because I can't tell you how many people I know who, as you said, were in the shadows. have a dad in one of our groups right now who, um, isn't answering any of our texts our phone calls. I think he got laid off, and I'm really worried. He lost his son two years ago when we lost Nicholas, I'm really worried about him. I, I don't know what's happened to him. And he's not the first one. I keep watching moms on Zoom who have their, um, lights off or have turned their cameras off and who are just so full of shame, and they're just lost. There's, you know, if a, if we talk about a plane ride of k- of our kids are going down every day, that's a plane ride of parents. Yeah. And people, and I've, I've written a blog called Collateral Damage, and people don't think about that. They don't think about the ripple effect of one death of someone's child, one death, and how that can impact in such a profound way so many others, and al- often in a negative way. So to find creative, healthy outlets like writing poetry, that's why I say it's a wonderful thing to do, and your words will help other people Yeah, I hope so. It's a really, um-- I think what you've done with your shame is what Brené Brown talks about is, is telling people about it and normalizing it, because in the light it goes away. Um, but there are just a ton of es- especially women that I know who haven't told their families, uh, or, you know, anyone about what their child died of. Their child just died, and when people ask, they're like, "I can't talk about it." Um, and maybe on the outside that seems like, oh, it's not that big of a deal, like who cares what they died of? But it's a huge deal. And I don't know, there's something really freeing about being able to tell people that he was a, a wonderful kid and he was loved and he came from a loving family, and that it, it was the drugs and it wasn't that he was a bad person with low willpower or something like that. Right. Right. These are so often some of the most sensitive, wonderful people who fall victim to substance use disorder, and I think I always talk about the lost potential to the world of the kids that we've lost. Mm. And, uh, when you are talking about honoring him and, and, and that he cannot be forgotten, and that your pain also can be used for something to help others, I think that's one of the most noble things that you can do. And how has your, how has the rest of your family coped? Well, I feel like we are a really good Al-Anon family, and I am doing a lot of the emotional work for my husband and I. but… And that's not really fair. My, um, my husband's doing okay. He didn't tell anybody at his work. No one knows, and I just find that amazing. The day that Nicholas passed, Nick, my husband, emailed his, his boss and said, "There's been a death in the family." And then, you know, two weeks later he came back, and it was never spoken about. Um Oh my gosh. Well, there's, there's a workplace failing somebody if you ask me. And I've had someone on this podcast to talk about workplace and how grief needs to be addressed within the workplace. I mean, I've, I've also talked about how I know a couple of moms who got fired'cause they had to go back to work right away and they couldn't function, right? Because the workplace is… There's no room for grief in the workplace, and we need to make room for it. And it makes me kind of sad for your husband that he has to put that on a shelf and act like it didn't happen and he's okay, 'cause he's not okay. No, and we're never gonna be okay, and I nobody's okay after this happens. Yeah I feel like that's been the big message is is my life now, and it's just not okay, and I'm gonna have to get comfortable with that. Right. You learn to carry it. You learn to carry it. And w- so what about your other kids? So I have two other boys, and they both are in grad school. I think, you know, I think they're, they're carrying it their own way, and I'm trying to be very respectful. There's lots of really good support groups out there for siblings. Neither one of my boys has chosen to be a part of that yet, but maybe they will. Um, I'm really excited. My middle son is coming home today, and he's bringing his girlfriend, and we're gonna go on vacation together, so I'm And to see something to look forward to, something to still live for. I think that's what our other children can bring us, and they carry the burden of grief, but they carry it very differently than we do. And each individual child also processes it and deals with it in a different way. Um, but just to hold those others. We know how precious life is and how quickly things can change Beautifully said. My youngest, when he, he called with some bad news, and he called and said, "This is not at all near the level of Nicholas, so don't even… Yeah, but you And but yeah, but you know bad things can happen. I mean, I think we all think in some way before s- tragedy strikes our family that we're somehow, that's not gonna happen to us. We're in sort of some denial that, How do you trust the world again? It's hard. You just put one foot in front of the other every single day and you move forward, carrying their memory with you. Yeah. Yeah I feel like I'm just gonna sit in this pit of despair and sadness and rubble, and people can come visit me. Yeah. You know, and I, I do think that we have to sit there for a while, but I don't think we have to sit there forever. Okay uh, resiliency is a, is a real important thing. I have said this, and I've said this to many audiences that I speak to, that we all get thrown into the pit of despair. Pit- your pit may look different than my pit. Some of us splatter at the bottom of that pit, and others bounce back up, right? And, and this is what… It might take some time, but this is what you're trying to do through your poetry, through spending time with your other children, having something to look forward to, even though that can feel daunting sometimes because the burden of grief is so heavy Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I so appreciate you sharing Nicholas's story. And, uh, is there a way for people to read your poetry? Sure, yes. So, um, if you follow me on Instagram at, uh, katierizzo007, or I have a website, it's katierizzo.com. We'll put a link to your website. Yeah, we'll put a link. Okay have a book coming out about, with my memoir, and, um, it's called The Trimesters of Grief. And then I have another one coming out with some of my poetry called N- None of Them Are You, so Oh, I love that and I can't wait to read them. So keep writing and keep talking about Nicholas, and thank you for sharing his story with us today Thank you And thank you for listening to this episode of Grieving Out Loud. Tune in each week for a new conversation, and you can find hundreds of episodes anytime on our website, emilyshope.charity. If you have an idea for a future episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can find our contact information in the show notes. Thank you again for listening. Until next time, wishing you faith, hope, and courage. This podcast is produced by Casey Wonnenberg King and Kayli Fitz