This website and blog is dedicated to the memory of Ashley, my beautiful, funny, and fiercely loyal little sister.

Like so many others, Ashley struggled with an addiction to opioids. It controlled her in ways that were hard to understand, and eventually, it took her life.

Watching a loved one struggle with addiction is an intensely painful experience. You want with every fiber of your being for them to get better, but you watch helplessly as they descend further and further into their addiction. You beg, plead, pray, and hope for their sobriety. You visit them in rehab, or in jail, or in the hospital, and you hope that this will be the thing that turns them around, that makes them stop, only to feel crushed when you discover that it wasn’t. Through all of this, you never stop caring about them. You never stop loving them. And, your heart aches for them. Your heart aches for the person they were and the person you know they can be. And, when addiction finally steals that person from you forever, your heart breaks and you’re left with an emptiness that words simply can’t describe.

Addiction is horrible and traumatic, for both the addict and everyone that loves them. It’s made worse by the social stigma of drug addiction. In this country, we disparage addicts because they made a “choice” to use, ignoring science and brain chemistry. Instead, we choose to shame addicts and their families.

This website and blog is a promise to Ashley to try to change perceptions of addiction, help eliminate the stigma, and to help addicts and their loved ones cope with the shame.