HOST (Jennifer) (00:02):
Hello, welcome to this podcast called Finding Inspiration. It's a 20 or so minute weekly podcast where we interview someone with an amazing story. After the show, I know you're going to feel energized, invigorated, and inspired. I'm Jennifer Weissmann. Welcome to Finding Inspiration. Today, we are talking about another pandemic, but it's not Corona. We're talking about the ongoing, unbelievably dangerous opioid crisis that is accelerating across the world. Accidental overdose from opioids is surging in almost every zip code. In the state of Vermont alone, the number of accidental deaths has increased 57% since 2019. These numbers are staggering. Today, we are speaking to a woman whose son Sam died at 20 years old from an accidental opioid overdose. And the focus of our talk is not just about the opioid crisis, but also about how Kris has moved forward. She wrote a book called ‘Grief, Garlic, and Gratitude’, and it’s about how she has put her life back together. And it's a very, very inspiring and difficult story. I'm sitting here with Kris Francouer. Our conversation today starts in a very sad way. It's a story of her 20-year-old son, Sam, who died in 2013 from an accidental opioid overdose. But the focus of what we're going to talk about today is how Kris moved through with her grief with what she calls “conscious and deliberate gratitude.” Kris then wrote a book and she tours around the country. She shares her insight with other parents who are grieving an unspeakable loss. So welcome Kris.
GUEST (Kris) (02:10):
Thank you so much for having me.
HOST (Jennifer) (02:12):
So take us back to 2013. It was October, and I want to spend talking about Sam and what happened. And then I want to ask you to share your incredible ability to transform a horrific experience into something to help you move forward and live a joyful life. I don't even want to say positive, but something where you can pick yourself up again and move forward with your life and find joy again. So can you tell us what happened? We'll talk next about you transformed yourself.
GUEST (Kris) (02:47):
On October 9th, 2013, we got a call from my mother, and it started with – “Kristen, you need to come up here. They think Sam is dead.” That is not the call you ever expect to get. It was 5:34 am in morning. We jumped out of bed. We ran to the car and drove well over the speed limit to my parents' house, which is about 15 minutes away from our house. Our thinking based on the phone call was that perhaps Sam was still alive. We had no idea at that point what had happened. But as we drove into their village, we knew that Sam was dead because we could see that the ambulance and their lights were off. There was no urgency at that point. And over the course of the next couple of hours, we learned that Sam had died of an accidental opioid overdose. It was from a fentanyl pain patch that he put in his mouth. He died at my parents' house. And he was the light of all of our lives and was exceedingly close to his grandparents. And yet he died in their living room.
HOST (Jennifer) (04:09):
That must have been an unspeakable loss for them as well. To find your grandson deceased in the middle of the living room. That's a horrible, horrible thing. I read your book and I saw that there were a lot of accidental fentanyl patch deaths in your area in Vermont around that same time. It seems to be an epidemic --- and specifically the fentanyl with patches. The other thing that was interesting to me was that it was seemingly purposely kept out of the local paper because Middlebury College is in that area of Vermont – called Addison County, Vermont.
GUEST (Kris) (04:51):
Yes. We found out because the medical examiner accidentally let it slip that there had been multiple fentanyl deaths from pain patches in the last six weeks in our local area. Exactly the same how Sam died but none of them had ever made the press. It didn't make the paper, it didn't make the local news stations, anything. Clearly, there is an epidemic and problem. We live 10-minutes south of Middlebury College in wonderful Addison County Vermont. Middlebury College does not want to have the reputation of being a hotspot for illicit drug use and opioids in particular. That wouldn’t go well with parents of college students. Middlebury and local officials were working very hard at keeping that image away from our area and the parents, so they didn’t publish anything. They even blocked a treatment set open nearby. Middlebury College and the local officials really worked hard at making sure it looked like we didn't have a problem in this lovely town in Vermont. And a raging epidemic was happening and it was hidden. Regarding Sam, my parents knew that Sam at times was using substances. They had locked up everything else in their house, including ibuprofen, but had not locked up the fentanyl pain patches because they didn't know. None of us knew at that time that the opioid patch would be deadly through overdose. We just didn’t know the dangers of these patches -- the fentanyl patch.
HOST (Jennifer) (06:05):
So putting the patch in your mouth with a fentanyl pain patch is the same rush that you would get with fentanyl in any other form?
GUEST (Kris) (06:13):
Yes, absolutely. But it's even more instantaneous because it goes through the membranes of the mouth and goes directly to the brain. It’s immediate.
HOST (Jennifer) (06:23):
I see. Okay. All right. So that's an interesting side note. Kris, I’m curious, how is the overdose situation in Addison County Vermont now?
GUEST (Kris) (06:33):
It continues to be awful. It is an epidemic across the United States. It's an epidemic across the world. Vermont continues to have an exceedingly high rate of opioid abuse. There isn't a day that goes by that you don't pick up the paper in Vermont and see that there have been another, at least one, if not multiple overdose deaths.
HOST (Jennifer) (06:59):
That's horrible. We're going to go back to that terrible day. In October 2013, you found out Sam passed away. Over the course of the next few months, how did you pick yourself back up again? What did social media do for you?
GUEST (Kris) (07:21):
So one of the things that happened immediately, you know, with the first 12 hours after Sam's death was just playing cold shock. I mean I have one or two memories from that day, but very little. The darkness and grief of losing him were overwhelming. About three days after his death, I stood down by our barn with our alpacas, looking at the animals with my cousin who had lost his brother at 21 to a heart issue. My cousin stood with me and he made the comment: “If your other kids lose you like I lost my mom when Mike died -- I will come back and kick your butt.” And I thought a lot about that. I thought about how we had three living children.
GUEST (Kris) (08:17):
Our first grandchild was about to be born. We still had a kid in high school and I couldn't, no matter how much I wanted to crawl into bed and never come out. I couldn't do that to my other children, to my husband, and to the people that were around us. The day after Sam's celebration of life service, I was standing out on our back deck. It looks out to the mountains and it was a beautiful, clear sunny day. And suddenly on a sunny day, there was this incredible vertical rainbow -- not horizontal but vertical rainbow stretching across the sky. This rainbow went up and down and it looked like from our house that it was coming directly from the cemetery where Sam's ashes had been buried. I wasn't the only person that day who saw the rainbow. Sam's friends were posting the pictures of this rainbow and commenting that it seemed to be coming from the cemetery. On that day I wrote a post on Facebook that even in the midst of great sadness and darkness, there still were moments of beauty. That rainbow is the cover photo on my phone because that was such a beautiful moment. And it started me on the recognition that I needed to see what I could be thankful for in my new life.
HOST (Jennifer) (09:47):
I’m a mom myself. I cannot imagine what you've gone through. I'm almost curious if I can use that word -- in the days and months after Sam's death – how did you actually do life? What were the specific techniques you used to get yourself up and out of bed every day, make breakfast and have a normal life? What exactly did do?
GUEST (Kris) (10:10):
The first thing I did was to adopt an online habit of every single day I posted on Facebook what I was grateful for that day. It could be a little thing. Well, it wasn't a little thing at the time, but my assistant one day brought me a box of the really soft Kleenex with the lotion in it. Sam used to call me every day at lunchtime. And now every day at lunchtime at work, I would cry because I knew he wasn't going to call. And she brought me soft Kleenex. And that day I wrote a post about being grateful for soft Kleenex. Sometimes it was really big things like the day we found out that Sam's friends had planted a tree in his memory in one of his favorite spots. And every day I wrote on Facebook about something for which I was grateful. By doing it online, I was holding myself accountable for making sure I did it. I couldn't at that point necessarily say to people, thank you for what you're doing to support us, but I could write it down. And often I was writing in the middle of the night, but I would post what I was grateful for on that day. And as I continued to do that, and I did it consistently for over 30 months and I still do it very consistently, but not necessarily every single day, the light began to come back into my heart, into my mind. I began to be able to laugh again, to be able to find joy, because I could see my heart will always be broken, but I could see that there still were things in life that were worth being excited and joyful about. And people were showing us, love. And I needed to recognize that too.
HOST (Jennifer) (12:15):
Was the joy you were receiving on Facebook --was it that people were responding to your postings or were it the act of expressing yourself publicly that felt good to you?
GUEST (Kris) (12:26):
Both. I would say very much both the many people responded to the posts. People also replied to my posts or shared my posts. They started posting themselves about how they were beginning to look at their lives. That's how the idea for the book developed. Various people started saying you really need to write this into a book. It was difficult. It never leaves you. Sam loved cheeseburgers. The first time I made a cheeseburger after his death was probably about three to four months after his death. And I sobbed the whole time because he was never going to walk through the door and ask for a cheeseburger again. But after that, my eyes were swollen from crying. I look awful when I cry -- that night I then sat down and wrote about the things that had been wonderful that day and doing it every time I did it lifted my heart. It made me feel connected back to the rest of the world. And it made me feel that I was reaching out to other people.
HOST (Jennifer) (13:38):
The act of helping other people and their feedback to you on Facebook gave you a sense of purpose, gave you a sense of joy, maybe a new beginning. Is that right?
GUEST (Kris) (13:49):
Absolutely all of them? Yes.
HOST (Jennifer) (13:51):
How did the book “Of Grief, Garlic, and Gratitude” come to be? I understand that you wrote a post over the course of 30 months. After writing 30 months of Facebook posts, did you print them all out?
GUEST (Kris) (14:07):
After a year's worth of posts, I got emails and Facebook messages from people saying I should turn this into a book. To encourage people to do daily gratitude. And originally I wasn't going to use Facebook posts. Originally, the book was going to be called “6.2 Miles” because Sam used to walk the 6.2 miles to his best friend's house on bare feet. So he would connect with the earth as he did it. And I was going to use that as the basis of the title. But I went to look back at the posts, there were posts that I didn't remember writing because I was so deep in my grief especially since the first year was a blur. And as I went back through and looked at them, I remembered the events around them, the details. It became the story of what that journey had meant to me. And hopefully, the process gave other grieving parents or people grieving in general, an idea of a way to look at their process and still find something good in life when you're having a bad day.
HOST (Jennifer) (15:27):
Chris, how do you pull yourself up again and go forward and find joy and have deliberate gratitude as you like to say?
GUEST (Kris) (15:37):
We’ve talked about Sam dying in October. I hate the month of October. It will forever be the month that took him from us. Going into October, the end of September, I start slipping into a funk. Saying oh my god, October's coming, we're coming up on another anniversary. And so like this past October, every single day, I pushed myself back to the idea of posting daily gratitude with a very open caveat at the beginning of I'm doing this because I'm struggling. My husband Paul was diagnosed with ALS with Lou Gehrig's disease a couple of years ago. And with that, that's a very different kind of grief, but in that process need to again be thankful every day. And so when I feel those moments of darkness where, you know, it's not that I don't allow myself to grieve, I'm very open and very accepting with myself about my grief. But now when I sense or feel I’m starting to struggle, I reach back to my toolbox every day. I am going to at least speak out loud that for which I'm grateful, but usually write it and share it in some way.
HOST (Jennifer) (17:05):
Beyond the writing and the sharing on Facebook. What other actual tools do you use in your toolbox to get yourself out of a funk and find joy in the world? Give us some more specifics.
GUEST (Kris) (17:18):
One is staying hydrated. I am a huge believer in hydration. I found whenever I have not given my body enough water in a day, I will be more prone to feeling down. I believe in walking and being outside in nature. Part of why the book is entitled “Grief, Garlic and Gratitude” are because I believe in the power of being out in nature. Gardening and looking at the sky and looking at the trees and playing in the dirt. I also believe in meditation but not always meditation, sitting, listening to a guided meditation. I find that spinning fiber can also be a very meditative act. Mahatma Gandhi talked about the idea of the spinning wheel being the ultimate in meditation. And so finding ways to look at how my body and mind are feeling. Owning that moving through it and not avoiding moving through.
HOST (Jennifer) (18:35):
What do you mean by that?
GUEST (Kris) (18:37):
I mean, if I’m in the midst of a day where the grief of losing Sam or the anticipatory grief of what's coming with ALS and my husband if I'm having a bad day with that, I own it. I name it. I say I am grieving today. I am mad today. I am frustrated, and this is why I am. And if I can't specifically say why in the beginning, I take myself for a long walk to determine what is going on with me. That's sort of the pebble in my shoe that day. And then sit with it. I talk to myself a lot, talk myself through it, journal to reach the point of accepting what I'm feeling that day. And then again, reaching back for, in the midst of that anger, frustration, whatever it is, what still happened in that day, that made the day worth getting up.
GUEST (Kris) (19:47):
You asked me earlier how I get up and put one foot in front of the other. I do have a very specific tool for that. Sam planned on his 21st birthday to get a very specific tattoo, and he obviously didn't live to do that. So his father and I both got that tattoo in memory. A year later, I actually got a tattoo that is on my foot and it signifies the idea of always making sure I put one foot in front of the other. And I often wear sandals even in Vermont, even in the winter, because I like to see that reminder of no matter what -- you have to keep going forward.
HOST (Jennifer) (20:34):
Wow, you're incredible. Someone who's had this much. Heartbreak also does not deserve to have the heartbreak of ALS. So I'm sorry about your husband Paul's diagnosis. Tell us about what you tell people. I know when the book came out, you did media tours and you spoke before large audiences. What kind of questions did you get and what were you telling people beyond your toolbox here? Was there anything else you can share?
GUEST (Kris) (21:05):
I often speak to groups of people who are grieving, but who may not have lost a child. I refer to the dos and don'ts of being with someone who's grieving. There are things that can be so helpful. I mentioned that I'm really an awful crier. And yet when I was crying daily at work, I was a school principal and I still had to look somewhat professional. One of my teachers brought me really good waterproof mascara. So I wouldn't go around looking like Alice Cooper. It was such a simple gift, but it mattered so much. Everyone, as long as they are not self-harming or harming others, should be given the right to grieve in the way that works for them. And I talk about the idea of, especially in a Judeo-Christian society, we tend to have ideas about how grief should look. And in particular, thinking about Sam, there are relatives of ours that get very upset because people leave things on Sam's headstone in the cemetery. Sometimes the things make sense and we can figure out who they are, who gave them, but sometimes they're really random. No matter what we think they matter to the person who left them and they signify a relationship. People should be able to grieve how it works for them, as long as they're not self-harming or harming others. I also though strongly encourage anyone to think about the words that come out of their mouths when they speak with someone who's grieving. And in particular with grieving parents or grieving siblings. It is very common for people to come up to grieving parents or siblings and say: “Well, at least you have three other children.” Let me put it bluntly and say stop that. Think about your own children -- which one of them are you willing to just throw away and say, didn't matter. Or equate the loss of a child or a sibling to another loss. All losses are important, there is brain research out there about the impact of the death of a child or of a sibling and not minimizing it. I have already spoken about the day that someone said they totally understood what I was going through because they had just lost their dog. Now I love my dog, but it's not the same loss. I speak often about the idea of the best thing you can do for someone who's grieving is just quietly, be there and accept them, keep them hydrated, give them good Kleenex and just be with them.
HOST (Jennifer) (24:15):
I don't know what to say. You left me a little bit speechless here, Kris. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your story, your heart, and helping people who are experiencing unspeakable loss.
GUEST (Kris) (24:26):
Thank you, Jennifer. It's been wonderful.
HOST (Jennifer) (24:31):
Thank you for joining us this week on finding inspiration. Hey, I would appreciate it. If you would do two things: 1) click on that FOLLOW and SUBSCRIBE button and 2) share this podcast with a friend. See you next week. I'm Jennifer Weissmann.