Good Guys vs. Bad Guys

Note to reader: This is part of an ongoing series about the life of my youngest son, Charlie, who died in July 2022. It’s a love letter to the unspoken places of mothering, parenting, divorce, and grieving. Most of this series is behind a paid paywall for now. If you are new here, you can start at the beginning.

“I’m so proud of you for sticking by your mom, being strong for her when she needed it. Going on adventures with her not knowing what the outcome would be. I am so impressed that as a 8 year old kid you had the strength and courage to take on new cultures, countries, new lifestyles.” ~ Excerpt from a letter Charlie wrote to himself two months before he died from an overdose of a fentanyl-laced drug at the age of 27

There are no good guys or bad guys in this story, only layers of truth and silence. My challenge is to stay connected to love and forgiveness while telling the truth. And in families, everyone has their own truth of the same experience.

I’m not going to tell you everything that happened. I am going to tell you the atmosphere my kids grew up in and the impact of silence and secrets because I wish I could have read a story like mine as I was trying to navigate life as a mother and wife and then life as a mother and ex-wife.

We were a ‘good’ family. Where we failed in the marriage, we tried to maintain a good divorce. For many years after the divorce, Butch and I tried to create a version of family that still felt loving; holidays together and weekly family dinners offered some sense of stability for the kids. But underneath that the family was dividing in deeper ways and Charlie was growing up in the middle of it.

In our family, pain was often hidden to protect the people causing it. That silence shaped Charlie, and it shaped me. I’m sure my unexpressed pain shaped my other children as well. What was left unsaid became part of the injury. When the wound comes from home, it can be especially hard to heal because the child may not have a safe place to process it.