Some thoughts for addicts in recovery to consider when tackling sobriety and parenting.

My son and his girlfriend have struggled with deep heroin addiction for more than five years now.

I am raising their son. Due to the multi-substance abuse during his prenatal months, he has 12 separate diagnoses and is special needs.

With my experience as a nurse and as the parent of addicts, I share today words of direction and encouragement to parents who are trying their best to raise a child during their recovery from a heroin or any other drug.

There was a time in my…

My Prior Personal and Professional Ignorance

Previous to my close and persistent involvement in a loved one’s personal experience with severe detox, I had only read about substance detoxification in nursing school and only heard snippets about its effects from past patients in my nursing career and on public forums.

I never saw my ex-husband, who finally passed away from his meth addiction in 2014, go through detox…nor did he ever talk about it, even when we were married. He was always gone doing drugs elsewhere.

I had no first-hand experience with it until our 17-year-old son became addicted to…

A woman, somewhere, needs this today.

I’m reading fellow Medium writers’ posts on Facebook and feel the familiar taunt of perceived failure rising in my chest.

Each author had the time today to think of an inspiring quote, to journal their accomplishments, or to just give advice on how to grow one’s writing career.

I would really love to call what I do at home a writing career…I would really love to actually write, undisturbed…even for an hour a day.

Instead, I have been home for most of the past month with my now-sick four-year-old grandson, Charlie, whom I am…

Disclaimer: This story is about addicts. It does not mean to wrongly imply in any way that every homeless person is an addict.*

Someone’s daughter is holding a sign up at the light. I cannot look directly at her, as the shame on her face is so loud. She looks years older than she is. Methamphetamines have sordidly robbed her of her integrity, her looks, her health…her humanity. As a nurse and a mother, I can detect that she is not even 25 years old. …

Is that Trump I hear in the background?

I am stumped to confer with the consensus

that he has won anything

but a resounding kick in the pants.

Hard to imagine a unified state

after what he has pulled…

hard to believe we are better off

now than when he walked in.

But, that’s what he’ll say.

Breaking free of a tyrant

proves stickier than just removing him.

His residue will linger

His hatred beleague Her

This country we once stood for at anthem.

Now no anthem rings truer

than the one seeking justice, truth and fairness

to the ones…

How to stop the hideous crimes against children…go and get them. They are prisoners of a war.

Make us faceless in our dreams

As we war to stop the screams

Of those who small and terrified

Are stolen innocent to lose their lives

Make us swift, silent, deceptively sleek

As veiled, as they, to reveal the meek

We will rip them back from your dark

And flee on foot and leave, no Mark6

You won’t know where

You’ll just hear the Word

And not one will lose their voice to the Herd.

Flat on the floor we fight for their…

The long, lonely road of living true to your self

To truly live against the grain, one must accept that they will never be popular, never be part of the in-crowd, and will most often be at the center of controversy and rejection by the very expression of their innate nature to move past everyone else…going the opposite way.

The nonconformist knows this choice is first and foremost…not a choice. It just is. …