About 100 people showed up for the Memorial to Overdose Victims on Friday night. While it was heartbreaking to see loved ones in mourning, it was inspiring to hear words of hope especially from those who had experienced loss firsthand.
One of our sharers was a young lady who lost both parents within a few months, her father to suicide, her mother to a heroin overdose a few days before her high school graduation. Kellie talked about her desperate efforts to help her mother during the years of addiction, the guilt, the what-ifs. She talked about the help she received from family, friends, and the community to get her life on track. Which she has. She went to school, is about to start an externship, holds a job and is engaged to be married. (For more of Kellie’s story go to http://www.cosmopolitan.com/politics/a8349038/heroin-addiction-pain-killers-orphan/ to read an interview done with Cosmopolitan.)
Lenore shared about a ritual she has adopted that is a metaphor for our grassroots efforts to help in the growing drug crisis. Lenore looks for pennies discarded or lost and when she finds one, she says a prayer for the tortured souls suffering from addiction. Lenore found a penny in the parking lot where we were meeting. It was crusted with dirt as if it had laid there abandoned and forgotten for a long time. But at its core, it was still worth something. What the penny needed was some cleaning up, some care, someone to value it and not cast it back aside thoughtlessly. Maybe it is only one cent, but one cent is value. It is not worthless.
Other sharings were just as poignant and meaningful as Kellie’s and Lenore’s.
When we got back from our moment of silence on the football field, a rainbow had appeared in the sky. From a distance, it appeared that the rainbow curved to the ground on top of our meeting place in the parking lot.
A penny for our thoughts.
The Q-View 