Shattered and Still Standing

This book is about a 20-year journey of a daughter with her drug addiction, managing what she needs without enabling her. Learning about love and the loss of losing a child to drug addiction. Holding on to faith, friends and family and finding the grace to live and not feel lost in guilt from finding joy and laughter after the loss. At the same time remembering the early years and the life we built with so many obstacles and creating a stable life. Also finding the warning signs of drug addiction and what we can do as a family to find the necessary resources for family members with drug addiction. It is not your fault if someone dies to their drug addiction. At the same time, it is not their fault they are caught in this illness. Dying from drug addiction is no different than losing your life to cancer. We need a better system than what is in place for this war on drugs and it starts with one family at a time sharing their stories, their warning signs and what we can do as a society to better support this terrible illness that takes so many lives.

Our legal system does not provide the support needed to keep drug abusers sober, it punishes users without the proper medical attention to find the underlying issues that plagues a user. Many drug abusers use because our medical system does not provide the proper medical needs of these underlying conditions. If this is not found and provided, the war will continue and we will lose more family members to drug addiction.

This book hopefully provides some insights to other families who have lost family members to drug addiction and provide parents with the hope that their children's legacy can be shared without focusing on the drug addiction but the life they so desperately tried to live.