SHE KNOWS THINGS! –

Aug. 8, 2022 – During the three years I spent working on my new book, Raising Lazarus, my elderly mother kept asking me what it was about. At 93 with advancing dementia, no matter how often I reminded her, she couldn’t remember.

I kept the description simple: “It’s about addiction,” I said.

So it went, every half hour or so. Each time I answered, Mom would shake her head disapprovingly. She knew firsthand how sad the subject was, having been raised by an alcoholic and then marrying one. “You should write a love story instead,” she sighed.

Mom was right. Addiction is a heartbreaking, confounding illness, which is why so many loved ones, leaders, and institutions prefer to avert their eyes, hoping the problem will solve itself, or at least not touch them. After nearly a decade spent educating myself on the issue, even I am still getting a grasp on how insidious and complex addiction is, and to what degree it’s influenced who I am.

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