Typically, when I work, I work independently. That means I book and handle all of my events. However, I do work with several agencies who have me on their list of speakers and they will pitch me for events they believe I’m a good fit for. Tracy, who is a wonderful lady, at Speakers for Change lined up my trip Kingston, New York recently. New York is a place I tend to visit often the past 2 years, especially the Northern regions of the city. If you remember from following me, my last visit was in the Canton area. Kingston is not quite as North as that, but it was near the Albany area. Heading into this trip I had already been to Maryland, Texas & Oklahoma so to say I was a little tired getting there would be a total understatement. Tickets to North State New York are extremely pricey so I chose to fly into Newark, New Jersey which was a 2.5 hour drive to Kingston. I had a whole travel day build into my schedule so I left first flight of the day so I could get there and pass out as early as I could to be rested for the following day. I was scheduled to speak twice.
The Kelder Family lost their son several years ago to an opioid overdose and since the tragic loss they have stepped into action. I really commend family’s and people who do this when they lose a loved one to an overdose. Honestly, I feel it’s the only way to move forward with life and not be weighed down by shame or guilt. Often times parents blame themselves or the communities have such a high stigma around substance use disorders that they shame or make the family’s feel guilty for something that was beyond their control and something that millions of people in our country struggle with daily. We take such a different approach when someone dies from cancer or heart related issues. The loss itself is not easy to deal with for either type of situation but as people we need to do better about how we console people who have lost a loved one from the use of drugs. If I remember correctly, the family even released in the obituary how Ryan died and man, I gotta tell you, to do that takes a lot of courage but when you meet this family, courage is something they are not short of.
I truly believe that we need to stop hiding cause of death from obituaries when it is drug related. I feel it keeps stigma alive that creates shame and guilt, instead of knowing that the addiction was something a person battles, it’s not a choice beyond picking up for the first time and that no person who struggles with substance use wants to lose their life. By doing what the Kelder’s did by announcing Ryan’s cause of death they publicly stated in a sense, “We are not ashamed of our son’s death and we know others are out there suffering from the same thing.” What came next is the beauty behind something no family deserves. A life work in their community to save the lives of those battling addiction and prevent the loss of lives in the youth growing up in the very community Ryan was from.
Impressively Randi, the sister of Ryan, managed to bring together countless numbers of schools into one place for me to speak. When I say countless, there was 1600 students there and it took easily 20-30 busses to get all of those kids there. They were from different schools and I can’t imagine how many phone calls, emails and stressful days it required to make it happy but Randi made it happy. 1600 kids were in a football field to hear me share my story. I made sure to walk around and be more “in their face” so to speak so I could command their attention. I really felt like the kids did such a good job and there was a huge group of kids who reached out to me after the event. The second event was an evening community event held about an hour away in an area called New Paultz. The evening event was equally as impactful in its own way. Several people from the event that evening reached out to me later on social media to tell me how much impacted their view on a family member struggles or how it’s inspired their own struggles to continue moving forward on a path on sobriety. By the time I got back to the hotel I got about an hour and half sleep before I had to wake up and make that 3 hour drive back to the airport and head off to Michigan to speak at a state wide conference. To everyone apart of R.Y.A.N.S and the Kelder family, thank you so much for hosting me and thank you for the work you have dedicated yourselves to in your community, Kingston is lucky to have you all.
