Thanksgiving Gratitude

It's been forever since I've written anything for this blog, and even longer since I've written anything of a personal nature here. But today I decided I'd stop by and write a simple gratitude list for Thanksgiving. This year has certainly been a challenge, but I still have plenty to be grateful for. So, here goes...

Some Things I Am Grateful For

Katinka (aka my lovely wife Kathy)
Love
My job with Families Against Narcotics (FAN)
My 88-year-old mom
My two sons, Sam and Josh
91 days of sobriety for Sam
Narcan
The City of Grosse Pointe Police Department
My amazing next door neighbors and their adorable boys
Great neighbors all around me
A nice home to live in
Music and the people who make it
13 years of kitty love from Ryan (RIP, sweet boy)
Mickey, the sole survivor of the Kitty Triangle trio
Anne Lamott
The Anne Lamott Quotes Twitter feed
Jason and the Clear Minds sober living house
Good health
31 years of marriage
Reasonably decent cooking skills
A sense of humor
Pizza
Live PD
Clean water to drink
My mom's cheesecake recipe
My in-laws
Random acts of kindness
Zoloft
Flannel
Brian Andreas
My siblings
Stuff my wife knits for me
The ability to help others
The Leelanau School
Sam Lamott's "How to Human" podcast
Peace and quiet
The smell of baking bread
Reasons to Stay Alive and Notes on a Nervous Planet (two books by Matt Haig)
Hope (always)

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who reads this. I hope you're able to enjoy the day with the people who matter most to you. And if you've lost people who matter to you, I hope they live on for you in the memories you have of them.

Peace, love, and good food.

What are you grateful for today?

-Dean

Book Review: Once More We Saw Stars

Once More We Saw Stars: A Memoir is a book that is at once heartbreaking and inspirational. Jayson Greene wastes no time getting to the accident that took the life of his 2-year-old daughter, Greta, much too soon; we learn about the tragedy on the second page of the book. From there, Greene takes us on a journey that includes loss, heartbreak, anger, grief, guilt, and just about every other emotion you can imagine. Just how does a young couple deal with such a devastating loss? Greene's brutally honest and beautiful writing makes the reader feel like they are right there with him, his wife Stacy, and his mother-in-law Susan ("Grandma Suz," who was with Greta when the accident occurred) as they navigate their way through the unthinkable. Learning how each one of them manages to live through such a horrible event and come out relatively okay on the other side is an inspiration.

I found myself getting teary-eyed more times than I can remember while reading Once More We Saw Stars. Some of the things that are said by Jayson and Stacy are just gut-wrenching. For example, not long after Greta's death, Stacy says, "Haven't we done this long enough? Can't we have her back now?" And at one point, Jayson writes: "A pall of societal shame hovers over everyone in this club....Children who lose parents are orphans; bereaved spouses are widows. But what do you call parents who lose children? It seems telling to me there is no word in our language for our situation. It is unspeakable, and by extension, we are not supposed to exist."

This book also teaches us about the grieving process, and how no two people will go through it in the same way. "Grief is fluid, and it is always changing," a grief expert tells Jayson and Stacy during a retreat. "Above all, 'grief is unique as a fingerprint. We can show you the stages, but they are not a linear journey. In the end, nothing and no one can hand you the map to your own grief.'"

Yes, this is a sad book. But it is also a book that reinforces the idea that people can--and do--find the strength to deal with unfathomable loss and learn to live again. Is it easy? Hell, no. But if you work hard at it, you can overcome even the worst things in life. I've never been able to imagine what losing a child would be like--until now. Kudos to Jayson Greene for his courageous memoir. Once More We Saw Stars will make you cry, but it will also make you smile. Especially after the birth of the couple's new son, Harrison, of whom Jayson writes: "Under his tutelage, I can feel a frankly ludicrous conviction growing inside of me. We--myself and my wife, the growing child in front of us and the one we never see--are going to be all right."

Take it from me: This one's a must-read.

Jayson Greene and his late daughter, Greta. 

Anna David Learned from Her Mistakes...and We Can, Too

Anyone who knows me knows that I have an adult son who has struggled on and off with severe depression and addiction for more than a dozen years. I don't try to hide that from anybody. In fact, my son's issues inspired me to become a recovery and mental health advocate. Along the way, I've read just about every book on addiction and recovery I've been able to get my hands on, including countless memoirs and self-help books by people in recovery. And I have to say, How to Get Successful by F*cking Up Your Life: Essays on Addiction & Recovery by Anna David is one of the best I've read.

David is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Party Girl, a semi-autobiographical tale about a celebrity journalist who falls victim to a world of drugs, alcohol, and sex, which leads to her self-destruction before she finally finds sobriety. While Party Girl may have been classified as fiction, How to Get Successful by F*cking Up Your Life is 100 percent authentic.

In David's latest book, she shares essays that document her struggles with addiction and her journey to recovery. The essays, which are brutally honest and oftentimes laugh-out-loud hilarious, are grouped into three sections: What It Was Like [Pre-Sobriety]; What Happened [Early Sobriety]; and What It’s Like Now [Today]. This format allows the reader to ride along and witness first-hand the progress David made on her road to sobriety (potholes and all). And while the essays alone make this book highly entertaining and educational, David goes a step further and includes a value-added twist to the end of each one.

Personally, I think the "Lesson Learned" feature that appears after each essay is the absolute best part of How to Get Successful by F*cking Up Your Life. This is where David shines the brightest, taking the frequently negative experiences of her addiction/recovery journey and reframing them into a positive lesson that she, and others, can use to improve life going forward.

For example, in the essay entitled "What Addiction Sounded Like," David talks about how cocaine, the drug that once kept the party going all night long for her, had betrayed her. "It made me unable to do anything but sit in front of my computer and shake," she reveals. And while sitting in front of her computer, trying to write, the computer would emit an annoying "BEEP!" every 60 seconds. "I lived in fear of the beep," David confesses. "It somehow symbolized just how bad things were." At the end of the essay, David shares her lesson learned--“Remember the Bad Times (So You Don’t Repeat Them)”--and provides the reader with some insightful words of wisdom.

Anna David is a gifted, intelligent, funny writer, and this collection of essays shows us that a person can make mistakes in life--BIG mistakes--and still find success and contentment. As she says in the Introduction, David hasn't followed "the typical paths. But at this point in my life I can honestly say I feel successful on all levels…not just with what I’ve achieved but with how I feel about what I’ve achieved, not to mention how I feel about what I haven’t achieved." That’s not a bad place to be, and I'm guessing most people would be incredibly happy to feel the same way. Reading How to Get Successful by F*cking Up Your Life might just help them get there.

Anna David (photo from her Facebook page)