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Pattie Vargas and Being a Grief Educator
45 Plays15 days ago
Pattie’s life is a testament to the profound strength of the human spirit and the ability to find purpose amid overwhelming pain. After facing the heart-wrenching challenges of having two of her three children struggle with substance use disorder, Pattie’s world was further shaken when her son, Joel, lost his decades-long battle with the disease in 2017. In the wake of this profound loss, Pattie became determined to better understand the family experience of addiction. She has since used her own lived experience to support and guide others who are navigating the isolating and stigmatizing road of addiction and loss.
As a Compassionate Bereavement Care™ Certified Provider and Kessler Certified Grief Educator, Pattie works with individuals, families, and communities impacted by loss. She is a Peer Parent Coach with the Partnership to End Addiction, and co-facilitates their online grief support community, and is the host of Finding Hope After Loss, Grief Support groups for The Happier Life Project. She is also an Advisor and facilitator with the Hopestream Community, certified in the CRAFT and Invitation to Change models. As an advocate for recovery policies, she is a California State Organizer with the Recovery Advocacy Project, serves on the RCO/RCC Advisory Committee, and was named the 2022 Architect of Recovery by CCAPP (CA Consortium of Addiction Professionals.) Her book, Secrets, Scars and Heart Shaped Jars, shares her family’s journey through addiction, loss and recovery.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Host
00:00:20
Speaker
Welcome to Destination Change, a podcast where we talk recovery, treatment, and more. I'm your host, Andy Fiedler-Sutton, with the National Behavioral Health Association providers, and I use she, her pronouns.
Patty Vargas' Personal Journey
00:00:30
Speaker
My guest today is Patty Vargas.
00:00:32
Speaker
Patty's life is a testament to the pro profound strength of a human spirit and the ability to find purpose amid overwhelming pain. After facing the heartbreaking challenges of having two of her three children struggle with substance abuse disorder, Patty's world was further shaken when her son, Joel, lost his decades-long battle with the disease in 2017.
00:00:49
Speaker
In the wake of this profound loss, Patty became determined to better understand the family experience of addiction. She has since used her own lived experience to support and guide others who are navigating the isolating and stigmatizing road of addiction and loss.
00:01:02
Speaker
As a compassionate bereavement care certified provider and Kessler certified grief educator, Patty works with individuals, families, and communities impacted by loss. She is a peer parent coach with the Partnership to End and Addiction and co-facilitates their online grief support community and the host of Finding Hope After Loss, grief support groups for the Happier Life Project.
00:01:22
Speaker
She is also an advisor and facilitator with the HopeStream community, certified in the Craft and Invitation to Change models. As an advocate for recovery policies, she is a California State Organizer with the Recovery Advocacy Project, serves on the RCO slash RCC Advisory Committee, and was named the 2022 Architect Recovery Bicycle.
Understanding Grief and Addiction
00:01:39
Speaker
architect of recovery bi yeah Her book, Secret Scars and Heart-Shaped Yars, shares her family's journey through addiction, loss, and recovery. Thank you for joining us today, Patti. Thanks, Angie. Thanks for having me.
00:01:50
Speaker
First of all, you know apologies for your loss. I have ah lost plenty of people in my life, too. ah you It never happened. You never get over it. I know ah it even.
00:02:01
Speaker
i mean, I lost my dad when I was 12 from lung cancer and I still miss him. So I know what that's like. Your bio kind of already goes into it but kind of talk about why, you know, you decided to to use your background to help others instead of, you know, just being something that you have to yourself.
00:02:20
Speaker
Yeah, so I was working as a consultant when Joel died. um Most of my professional career was was in the IT t space, then moved into behavioral change for organizations.
00:02:39
Speaker
Thought that was really important. It is important work. It's it's great work and it's very supportive of of organizations and so forth. But when Joel died, I lost my mojo. It just, in the light of that, it just didn't matter anymore.
00:02:55
Speaker
So struggled for a while trying to figure out what was I going to do with the rest of my life and how was I going to find some sort of meaning in my life, not a meaning in his death, but a meaning in my life moving forward.
00:03:09
Speaker
And through a lot of self-searching and a lot of self-education and so forth, realized that some of the the biggest values that I could bring to the world in light of this was an understanding of what addiction does to families and how lonely that journey is, how stigmatizing the whole world of addiction and mental health um is.
00:03:33
Speaker
And so how could i help in that? How could what we went through be something that would help somebody else? So that kind of led to ah becoming more involved with family advocacy groups, doing support, coaching support and so forth with families, and then ultimately moving into coaching families through their grief. That was where the nexus really came together. And it was like, this is where I'm finding the most meaning in my own life is coming alongside those who have come to this catastrophic loss, you know, where there's life, there's hope.
00:04:11
Speaker
When they're dead, there's no hope. So how do you come alongside folks and shore them up and be part of their own recovery process? Now, one of the things I typically ask ah my guests is, you know, we call this podcast Destination Change because ah we realize that recovery is not a one-stop-fits-all. It is a journey that you travel all over.
00:04:33
Speaker
One could almost say the same thing about grief. There is no one journey through grief. Yes, there's the five stages, but you can go all through it. Talk of kind of the corl that correlation between addiction and and the grief process.
00:04:45
Speaker
Yeah, so the term one size fits all should never exist anywhere, period, because one size does not fit all anywhere. When we're talking about finding recovery from addiction or finding support in our mental health journeys, what works for me is not going to work for you and is not going to work for this next person.
00:05:04
Speaker
It has to be meaningful. It has to be relevant to that individual in order to give them back agency in their life. Let them find the path that is going to work for them. So I am very supportive of multiple paths to recovery because again, what worked for one person is not necessarily going to work for another.
00:05:24
Speaker
In our experience, having had two kids go through this, they went through them all. You know, they went through, you know, hardcore cold turkey withdrawals. They went through 12-step programs. They went through medical assisted treatment.
00:05:38
Speaker
All of these things have their place and they're valid and so forth, but it doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be the end-all be-all for you. When it comes to grief, what I find comforting is, again, what might not be comforting to somebody else.
00:05:55
Speaker
The things that people say to you when you're grieving, you know, go all the way from what a stupid thing to say all the way to that was the most helpful thing anyone could have said, you know, so we try to just provide a safe place where whatever you say is
The Impact of Stigma on Grieving Families
00:06:13
Speaker
okay.
00:06:13
Speaker
However, you're feeling is okay because it's you, it's your pain. It's what you're holding inside and we don't have the right, nobody has the right to tell you that you are grieving wrong or you are you know you should be over this by now, you should be better by now.
00:06:33
Speaker
You mentioned the five stages of grief. David Kessler you know came up with the sixth stage of grief, which was finding meaning. And the thing about those stages, and and even Dr. Kubler-Ross said those were never intended to be linear.
00:06:48
Speaker
They were merely a label put on a type of emotion or feeling. And we don't pass through them in a linear fashion. You you you know pass through step one, you're on step two, suddenly you're right back to step one, and then you jump over to step four, and sometimes all in the space of a single hour.
00:07:09
Speaker
And that's what leads people to think, I'm not doing this right. I ought to be over this by now. Or by unhelpful family members and friends saying, shouldn't you be better by now?
00:07:20
Speaker
It's because we think somehow you pop through all these steps, collect the badge, move on, and you're all better now. Grief is a lifetime. Love is a lifetime.
00:07:31
Speaker
Why do we think grief would be any shorter? Exactly. What would you say are some of the biggest hurdles or barriers to be able to move forward and in either grief or addiction treatment or both?
00:07:44
Speaker
The commonality in those two things, I think, is stigma. There are family members, and this might be a parent, this might be a sibling, it might be the child of someone who is has lost their life to substance use, but That will come into our grief groups and it is the first time they have ever talked about their loved one's experience.
00:08:09
Speaker
After they've died is the first time they actually feel like they can talk about it coming into one of our spaces, right? Right. Because it is so stigmatized. That kind of death is as stigmatizing as when they were alive.
00:08:27
Speaker
So the same thing that keeps us from talking about our loved ones having a substance use issue are the same things that we carry into their death. Stimma and shame need to be brought out into life. It's light that kills those things, right?
00:08:43
Speaker
Talking about them, making them openly accessible to find help and to find resources. is what kills stigma and shame. It breaks my heart when folks, and this was our experience, was that the this same...
00:09:02
Speaker
hiding that went along while they were alive carries through to after they have died. One thing somebody said in one of our groups one time was, where was the meal train for my kid when they died?
00:09:17
Speaker
You know we do a meal train because your your kid died of cancer or your mom died of a heart attack or whatever, and everyone comes together and they set up a meal train. Doesn't so much happen in losses to substance use or mental health issues.
00:09:31
Speaker
So that's the sad part is that that stigmatizing behavior and that shameful feeling that some of us carried just moves on forward into
Supporting Grieving Individuals
00:09:42
Speaker
grief. And that is a barrier to seeking help.
00:09:46
Speaker
Now, nowadays, for better for worse, it's a good bet we all are grieving something, especially post-COVID. But of course, one of the big things people worry about is, what can I do? What can I say? And as you said, you know, everybody's experience is different, but I'm sure there are some general tips that you can you can give out to, you know, to alleviate that feeling of what can I do? What can I say? Mm-hmm.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yeah, if if you're encountering somebody who has just suffered a loss like that, you know, sometimes folks say, well, I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything. That is the worst, you know? I mean, it's almost not saying anything, not acknowledging the loss is almost worse than some of the dumbass things people say, which we'll get to in a minute.
00:10:27
Speaker
But if you don't know what to say, simply saying, I am so very sorry. How sincere is that? That always lands well with with me and with most of the folks that I that i coach.
00:10:44
Speaker
Just simply saying that you're reaching out a hand of empathy. you know Don't say, I know how you feel. ah My dog died last week. We just had to put my cat down and it killed me. I mean, it just was was you know just heartbreaking.
00:11:02
Speaker
But it's not the same as laying my son to rest. you know So all of these these losses are important and they're valid. And every loss is...
00:11:13
Speaker
is ah is a heartbreak. But don't say, I know exactly how you feel because because you really don't. you know Somebody said to me, was my favorite, particular favorite.
00:11:28
Speaker
They said, well, you know your son died of a self-inflicted wound. I have no idea why they thought that was necessary for them to say or on what planet did they think that was helpful.
00:11:41
Speaker
But I believe that where it comes from is this fear of if this happened to you, it could happen to me. So I need to push it away. i need to make it so...
00:11:54
Speaker
That isn't a thing. it only happened in your, you know, weird little isolated circumstance and your kid did it to himself. So therefore it's not going to happen to me. So trying to understand where folks are coming from sometimes is, is exhausting. Grieving is exhausting.
00:12:12
Speaker
um asking a griever to understand what somebody meant is is really unfair because we're already carrying a heavy load, you know? So I don't need to psychoanalyze you on top of everything that I'm dealing with, you know, too.
00:12:26
Speaker
But, you know, among some of the other unhelpful things are people who feel So in the same camp of of people who say I have to press it away because if it happened to you, it could happen to me, are the people who have to find a reason why it happened.
00:12:40
Speaker
So they have to somehow step in the the shoes of God and explain why this was necessary. Also not helpful. And again, Maybe it comes from the same place. I have to somehow rationalize this or justify this because the idea that the universe is chaotic and random is just not comforting.
00:13:01
Speaker
you know So like I said, when in doubt, just say, I'm so sorry. That's it. Now, I know different cultures obviously grieve differently.
Cultural Perspectives on Grief and Myths
00:13:12
Speaker
how ah you yeah i'm assuming you incorporate that, especially now and you know when the world is becoming smaller and smaller every day. but How do you incorporate that in your grief counseling?
00:13:22
Speaker
I follow their lead. So in Western civilization, we are not real comfortable with outbursts of emotion, with demonstrative expressions of grief like other cultures are.
00:13:37
Speaker
you know So I kind of go with them. How are they showing up? How are they expressing themselves? And that's what I come alongside and support them in. I have my own way of grieving, but it's not necessarily going to be the same way that someone else grieves.
00:13:53
Speaker
So I have had to learn that those folks who are outwardly demonstrative with their emotions, that's where they're going and that's how they're dealing with this.
00:14:06
Speaker
It's my job to just make space for that. It's not my job to convince them Not job. That's the terrible word. It's not my right to convince them that they should be dealing with something in a different way or a more orthodox way or a more um subtle way or or whatever, you know, whatever label you want to put on that.
00:14:30
Speaker
Now, you've already touched on this a couple of times, but um why are we, for the most part, I guess, embarrassed by grief or or don't want to show grief or or scared of it at that that that as well? Why do you think that is a thing?
00:14:46
Speaker
you know i've I've heard the term that we are a grief illiterate society, and I think that is a very appropriate statement. So even folks that are going through clinical training, for example, they're learning how to become a licensed therapist or any kind of therapist or even a ah physician, they're given very little education on grief.
00:15:14
Speaker
They're geared toward fixing something. And grief is not something you can fix. Right. So I think that if you if you go right to the nut of it, that we don't even train our professionals how to deal with grief.
00:15:29
Speaker
How is the rest of society supposed to be comfortable with grief? We also are a very happiness person. You know, were we're really have this happy culture where we love stories that are tied up, you know, with a neat bow at the end.
00:15:44
Speaker
We like to watch a TV show that everything is solved at the end of 47 minutes. And it just to confront something that. that you realize there is no fix for and there is no ending for is not comfortable. It doesn't go along with what we've been educated to believe.
00:16:02
Speaker
Right after Joel died, ah woman came alongside to help me in my grief. And her son had died nine years before. And she was very helpful. She was very kind, gave me a lot of insights into things. But I remember thinking,
00:16:22
Speaker
God, it's been nine years for you. and you can still talk about this like it happened yesterday. and I thought, I won't survive this. i How do I survive this?
00:16:34
Speaker
If it's going to feel like this nine years from now, how am I going to survive? Because we think somehow someone's going to give us a pill, they're going to a story, they're going to give us a massage, they're going to psychoanalyze it out of our head, and somehow it's going to all be
Grief Education and Advocacy
00:16:51
Speaker
better. and It doesn't, it isn't better.
00:16:56
Speaker
It changes over time. and We get to a place where the sharp edges are not as sharp and and we're able to hold that grief a little bit closer in our hearts, but it doesn't go away. Like like you mentioned you know earlier, that doesn't go away.
00:17:11
Speaker
There is no end to the grieving. Just like I said, we will love them for our whole life and we will grieve them for our whole life. Those two things go handin hand in hand.
00:17:22
Speaker
Yeah, for me, I know ah another recovery thing that I feel applies to grief is the concept of ah one day at a time, no day but today. You you can only focus on...
00:17:33
Speaker
today. You can't use your excess energy ah worrying about tomorrow or regretting what you did yesterday. And so I feel that that's another thing. You talked about training ah and being trained in and grief educating. You yourself are a grief educator.
00:17:49
Speaker
This is going to sound like a simple question, but how does one become a grief educator? So I have taken a number of courses, did a lot of research on people in the grief space that that resonated with me, you know people that I could admire, that I had read their works before and and so forth.
00:18:09
Speaker
Obviously, David Kessler was was one of those, and i received my certification from working with him. Dr. Joe Cacciatore is very skilled and knowledgeable in kind of the end-all be-all when it comes to traumatic grief.
00:18:23
Speaker
So studied under her as well. And i do think that just like in substance use treatment, there is no replacement for lived experience.
00:18:37
Speaker
So you can have all of this head knowledge, but if you don't know how it feels in here, It sort of just stays up there in the head. The most profound experiences and the most the deepest learnings that I have had gleaned have come from people who have also walked the journey.
00:18:57
Speaker
They may have a lot of letters after their name, but they've also lost someone that they love and and particularly lost to lost a child you know that they love. So I guess you could go to school and try to pick this up without the experience, but it feels very hollow you know to me.
00:19:16
Speaker
When I was looking for a therapist myself, I specifically wanted somebody who was grief-informed and meaning, had a lived experience with it.
00:19:27
Speaker
And the therapist that I have now, after much trial and error, but the therapist I have now works in hospice. she is you know, confronted with grieving families on a daily basis and and has suffered loss herself.
00:19:42
Speaker
So that makes makes a big difference. You know, like I said, head knowledge and heart knowledge are two different things. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, you mentioned that the person in hospice and you yourself, you're you know, you're, I guess, surrounded by grief is the best way to put it.
00:19:58
Speaker
Obviously, that's going to be an emotional pull on yourself as well. So I'm going to kind of use a question i typically ask when I ask writers. How do you kind of keep yourself from getting burnt out from from making it making it that drain and and where you keep going on?
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah. You know, this is another place where there's just ah an intersection with people who work in recovery, whether we're talking about substance use recovery or grief recovery or or trauma recovery or any of those things.
00:20:25
Speaker
We do it because we care, because we love, because we want to give back. So there's a ah very real thing of compassion fatigue, sad story fatigue.
00:20:37
Speaker
And you you alone are the only one who can manage some of those boundaries and know what are some of the things that are going to keep you sane and keep you grounded while you are immersed in some pretty heavy, sad stuff.
00:20:51
Speaker
So you've got to practice a lot of self-care. And I know when I say self-care, a lot of times people just go, oh my God, seriously, are we going to talk about that? you know How many massages can I get? That's not self-care. I mean, it is self-care. It's a great thing.
00:21:03
Speaker
But that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is knowing when you have hit, you've hit a limit. It's time for me to go outside. It's time for me to go walk around. It's time for me to go outside and pull a weed or play with my animals or talk to my spouse or call a good friend or you know anything like that.
00:21:22
Speaker
Something that gets you back to ah different place in your in your heart and mind, right? and And we are the only ones who can know what that is. So I never do back to back to back to back sessions. I don't.
00:21:38
Speaker
I try to make sure that there's a lot of downtime in between all of them so that I can, you know, kind of digest what just happened and let it go. i i have a ritual that I do where I, when I start a session with somebody or with a group, I light a candle.
00:21:55
Speaker
And when the session is over, I say a prayer or a meditation or a mantra for those folks for whatever happened in there. And then I blow the candle out and it's a, it's an ending of the, I have to let that go.
00:22:11
Speaker
And then Take some deep breaths, walk around, do a little meditating, and then go into the next one. And it's also important, too, that it's not just in the work that we're doing, but some of the things that surround us outside. i mean, we live in a very chaotic, um frightening world right now.
00:22:28
Speaker
And so having to step away from some of those things, too, when you work in a compassionate field, I think you are more susceptible to feeling all
Writing and Publishing Experiences
00:22:39
Speaker
the feels very deeply. So things that are going on in the world that are frightening or are cruel or are concerning hit you on an even deeper level.
00:22:49
Speaker
So if you take those things and and add into them the actual work that you're doing that is very heavy, really have to establish some um very strong boundaries and strong self-awareness.
00:23:03
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I mean, you talk about the chaos of the world and you mentioned compassion fatigue, which I first time I heard it was back in the early 2000s. One of the things I know I do is like I have an email folder that I've labeled politics. And then if I'm not ready to deal with what's going on, I just throw things in there. That way, when I am ready for it, it's still there, but I don't have to see it in my inbox, if that makes sense.
00:23:27
Speaker
Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about your book. Were you already speaking about your experiences before you wrote the book or did it come after or before? Yes and no.
00:23:41
Speaker
So the book was originally released without Joel's story as a part of it. And it was released by a ah women-owned publishing company.
00:23:54
Speaker
And their market was for happy stories, overcoming stories, great stories of success in in business or life you know from women.
00:24:06
Speaker
And so that was where I started the book. And as we were winding down and gearing up for all of the the release and the PR and all that kind of stuff, Joel died.
00:24:17
Speaker
And i didn't want to do the book anymore. But I was contractually obligated to go through with all of this. So the book was first released.
00:24:29
Speaker
And, you know, I would go and do a speaking engagement about the book. And the whole time I was thinking, God, you're such a fraud. Because you're you're talking about these great overcoming things and your son just died, you know. So it was...
00:24:43
Speaker
it It was really upsetting and so forth. And I finally had to say, and i i can't do this anymore. i I just can't. Stopped mentioning the book, didn't share it anymore. And so after ah few years, I thought...
00:24:59
Speaker
You know, the the stuff that's in that book is still important and it's still valuable. It talks about and went through a very unexpected and traumatic divorce in my early 40s and basically had to start all over again with my three kids. and And that was an important story to tell about, you know, how do you go through that? Yeah.
00:25:18
Speaker
but Joel's journey was very much an impact of that experience. So I thought, I really want to tell the whole story, you know, that it wasn't a, yay, we've succeeded, blah, blah, you know.
00:25:31
Speaker
So pulled out the contract, reviewed it, went back to another publisher and said, can tonight can I take, do I own this book? Can I do this again? You know, and, and got some legal guidance there and so forth. So Ended up kind of pulling parts of the old book out, keeping it, and then adding in our family story through addiction, which was, you know, with Joel and his struggles and ultimately his death.
00:25:59
Speaker
And then my daughter's struggles as well, you know, and how she went through her her own addiction and we almost lost her as well. And so that and then moved into my advocacy and the work that I'm doing now. So it was a much more satisfying book to me. And it's it's a book I'm proud of now to to share with people. and it sort of felt like a the shoe, you know, first shoe
Practical Tips for Grief Support
00:26:24
Speaker
dropped. And just when you think you're just fine, the second shoe drops, you know, so that's sort of how it happened. So, yes, I did it before and then I did it after. And, you know.
00:26:34
Speaker
Long answer to a short ball question. Now, um you are hosts, grief support groups, and our audience is a wide range. We have people who are just starting out and people who've been in the industry for years.
00:26:47
Speaker
But as you mentioned earlier, too, even people who've been in the industry for years may not necessarily know how to deal, you know, to, to, and interact with someone who is grieving through this.
00:26:58
Speaker
What are some of the tips and tricks you would tell a counselors in terms of how to like maybe run a support group or how to help your their patients or clients? Sorry. Yeah. So I think folks that work, especially in the recovery community, they need to have some grief coaches in their back pocket.
00:27:16
Speaker
You know, they need not everybody wins their battle, right? I mean, that is just a fact of life. Not everyone wins the battle with addiction and mental health. And just knowing that that is ah possible outcome for some of the people that they're working with, they should have these resources available and and be able to say, here's here's somebody that you could reach out to, or here's ah an organization that does grief circles or or what have you.
00:27:44
Speaker
Because again... If you haven't gone through that loss, it's kind of kind of difficult to um to provide that kind of grief support to somebody.
00:27:55
Speaker
Everyone can be empathetic. Everybody can be kind, right? And that, you know, they definitely should be that. But recognize that their skill set might not be in helping somebody recover through their grief. You don't recover from your grief, but you recover through your grief.
00:28:14
Speaker
What would you say is the biggest lesson learned for you since you've started doing this? Wow. There's a few. i would say you don't know what you don't know.
00:28:27
Speaker
and And you have to forgive yourself for not knowing what you didn't know. the Probably the most common thing that we deal with in the grief circles is the guilt that people are carrying.
00:28:40
Speaker
I should have done this. ah should have known that. I should have seen this. Guilt is ah is a really, really heavy emotion that they bring into the rooms.
00:28:51
Speaker
And it it's something, you know, even here we are, it'll be eight years in November since we lost Joel. I'll still, every once while, I should have seen that. What, you know, why did I ignore that?
00:29:04
Speaker
It still will pop up. And it's not, it's not the truth. You know, everything that you think is not true. You know, that's a real thing is not everything that pops into our head is a true thought.
00:29:15
Speaker
But we have to learn how to forgive ourselves for not knowing what what we didn't know and have the humility to to keep trying to learn and to keep being open to to new things and things.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, for myself, I had a good friend that died by suicide in 2007. And still today, I'm occasionally I'm like, man, I should have done more. i should have reached out to him more. You know, i I should have done something and maybe that would have stopped ah So I definitely relate to that.
00:29:49
Speaker
Well, you know, on that that topic of guilt, Kessler said that our minds would rather feel guilty than helpless. We do not like to feel helpless.
00:30:02
Speaker
So in place of that, we ascribe these superhuman powers to ourselves, right? And then because we didn't save them and we didn't change the world, then we're guilty, right? So we would rather feel guilty than helpless. That's ah it's an amazing thing that our minds do to us.
00:30:22
Speaker
Now, you mentioned, you know, obviously this has been almost eight years. ah You've been doing this for a while. What would you say are some of the things that have changed, some of the things that are different now than when you were first starting out talking about this?
00:30:36
Speaker
I would say one of the things is there's a lot more resources for families than there used to be. When we were first realizing that Joel's addiction was not a phase, he wasn't going to outgrow it, you know,
00:30:51
Speaker
There weren't a whole lot of resources out there for families, support resources. Lots of places that would take your money if you were willing to send your kid there, you know, right? that But not a whole lot of community type support.
00:31:04
Speaker
And as that began to improve and and find more resources there, um then the grief resources began to fall in line behind as well. Because like I said, we don't win every battle.
00:31:18
Speaker
You know, not every family has a happy ending. So we have to be able to provide more and more opportunities for people to find the brief support that they need, whether that's face to face, online, in a group, one on one, whatever that may be, whatever they want it to be.
00:31:35
Speaker
There has to be more and more of that. And it I'm a ah big believer in affinity grief groups, you know, so a ah group that is focused on substance use loss or focused on suicide loss or something is is sometimes more helpful than just an open generic group.
00:31:54
Speaker
we all lost somebody kinds of group. Although those are one of the first ones I went to was exactly that kind of thing. And it was very helpful for me. So you have to find what's going to work for you.
Challenges and Focus in Advocacy Work
00:32:06
Speaker
And if the first place you go doesn't work for you, then go to another one and go to another one and keep finding, you know, whatever is going to work for you. But I would say just the, what has changed is more access and,
00:32:19
Speaker
What I would like to say has changed but has not is the infighting and the um things that just reinforce my way or the highway, those kinds of things. i you know And I'm not sure if that comes from a competition for limited resources or exactly what causes that. you know But I would like to see that become a little less strident.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. ah Let's talk a little bit about your advocacy work. For those who are familiar with NBHAP, we have an advocacy section. ah We also interviewed our advocate in episode 13. So we've talked a little bit about, you know, kind of what what it takes to be an advocate and all that. But for you, kind of give me, I guess, your elevator pitch of what you focus on and and what your advocacy is geared towards.
00:33:12
Speaker
So mine is always focused on the family lens. There's a lot of things that we could be advocating in the substance use and mental health space. There's a lot of things that need to be fixed, right?
00:33:24
Speaker
lot of ugly warts and problems and and issues. I stick within my lane of of what this meant to us as a family and and what policies are being contemplated that are detrimental to families.
00:33:39
Speaker
And that's where I tend to focus my advocacy on. So I advocate for... including families in the addiction recovery process.
00:33:51
Speaker
A lot of times we would send our kids, you know, having had two out of the three into rehab, but it was like a black box. You just send them in there and don't call us. We'll call you, but make sure the checks keep coming and sort of thing.
00:34:06
Speaker
It is a family disease. you You know, it's, we are all impacted by that, you know, and so we should all be involved in the recovery as well. So policies that are looking more to do that, to decriminalize some of the addiction world. I mean, like I am very much opposed to drug-induced homicide laws because now not only do we have one kid who's dead, now there's another kid whose life is ending because of this too. that And that's not to say, boy, that's going to be a shitty soundbite on a website somewhere. So be careful with that one. So hang on a minute.
00:34:41
Speaker
There needs to be justice, right? Right. criminalization does not necessarily equal justice. So i speak out for forced treatment, speak out against forced treatment.
00:34:54
Speaker
I speak out against drug-induced homicide laws, and I speak out against anything that separates the family from the treatment story or the recovery journey. So those are the areas that I really advocate in.
00:35:08
Speaker
Well, same question as I asked with regards to the becoming a ah grief educator. If someone wants to be an advocate or be more of an advocate, what kind of suggestions would you give? What kind of tips? What are your lessons learned?
00:35:21
Speaker
Educate yourself. Right. Because usually the thing that leads us to want to advocate for something is an emotion. It was an experience, you know, sort of like, I'm going to get involved with this and I'm going to, you know, bang this drum and I'm going to go testify and I'm going to all of these things.
00:35:36
Speaker
And if you're not armed with all the information, then you're not really doing much good. and And it just kind of muddies the waters and and so forth. And people end up fighting and disagreeing and and all of that kind of stuff. So if you decide, anybody can be an advocate.
00:35:53
Speaker
It doesn't mean going and testifying down at the Capitol in Sacramento. It it means... speaking up for what you believe in So anyone can be an advocate, but at the same time, make sure that you know exactly what it is you're advocating for.
00:36:08
Speaker
There were so many times that I thought I strongly believed in something, only to do a little bit more research on it and find myself coming around to another side, or if not being turned around in my thinking, at least coming to a place of understanding where they were coming from.
00:36:26
Speaker
There is not a time that I am going to speak somewhere. If someone has said, would you come and speak about X, Y, Z, that I don't do a ton of research, even if I feel like I'm very well versed in that subject.
00:36:40
Speaker
I still want to know what are people saying right now? What might have changed on the ground in the last year since the last time I spoke about this? Also, if you don't know anything about it, then just shut up.
00:36:51
Speaker
I mean, there there are things I don't, I just don't know. And i I may have a knee-jerk reaction to it. I may have a feeling about it, but I don't really know.
00:37:03
Speaker
So if you don't know, just don't say anything or say, ah that's not really my lane. you know I can't speak to that.
Resources and Closing Remarks
00:37:12
Speaker
Boy, we'd be in a good place if people would do that. That would be a much better world, yes.
00:37:20
Speaker
Now, you know, this is kind of a on the nose question and we've talked about it throughout the entire podcast, but I always like to kind of ask my interview guests in the end, why do you do it? What is your goal for, for doing this?
00:37:34
Speaker
to make sure that nobody ever feels so alone and isolated and scared like we were. ah it that That's pretty much the bottom line. And, you know, the idea that nobody needs to suffer alone. Nobody needs to walk this journey alone. Nobody needs to to walk a grief journey alone.
00:37:56
Speaker
i don't want anybody to have to do that. Now, I also always like to ask my guests, what kind of resources do you recommend to others that you use on a regular basis? You've already mentioned David Kessler a couple of times.
00:38:08
Speaker
Are there other books or other websites or newsletters that you would recommend if somebody wanted to kind of get be deep into this? Yeah. Any of the writings by Dr. Jo Cacciatore, and that's spelled exactly chicken Cacciatore.
00:38:22
Speaker
So she wrote a tremendous book called Bearing the Unbearable that I read early on after Joel died. So that's a great resource. As well as Hope Stream is a fabulous podcast.
00:38:36
Speaker
The organization End It For Good has a great podcast as well in terms of living with addiction, ah navigating through that journey. So e there's there things that will support you in your recovery space as well as things that will will help you in the in the grief space.
00:38:55
Speaker
And just, you know, stay on the the leading edge of things that are changing, um things that are new techniques, new developments, new new treatment modalities, all of those things, as as well as, you know, I mentioned the the scary stuff that's going on now, the funding cuts and things like that. Let your voice be heard. If you you feel like like this is not a place to be touching because of the benefits that it has brought into our into our world, you know then make sure you're speaking up about that as well.
00:39:27
Speaker
Great. Now, this is obviously not your first rodeo. You've done plenty of other podcasts. Was there something that you wanted to talk about, but we haven't, or that you thought i was going to ask, but I didn't? No, not really. I mean, just a ah suggestion you for future podcasts. So you don't have this and in this podcast, but you might want to reach out to folks from Net Recovery.
00:39:47
Speaker
I don't know if you've ever heard of of them. Net Recovery, they have a device called the Net device. That was what my daughter used to get sober. It is a neuroelectric device.
00:39:59
Speaker
therapy. It's external, it's non-pharmaceutical, non-invasive treatment for opioid disorder and actually any kind of addiction. That's the future podcast suggestion.
00:40:13
Speaker
yeah Awesome. Now, for people who want to talk to you more about this topic, where can they find you? How can they get ahold of you? Probably the best place is to go to my website, which is the resilient journey.net.
00:40:27
Speaker
And boy, do I wish I had chosen a different name because that's a really long one and people always misspell it, but it's the resilient journey.net. And there you can contact me. You can see what I'm working on currently. You can find out about our grief circles that we run.
00:40:43
Speaker
and anything I'm advocating for at the current moment. I totally understand about the long name. There's a reason I don't put Fiedler in any of my social media platforms because no one seems to know how to spell Fiedler.
00:40:59
Speaker
It's those eyes and knees. Yeah. exactly Well, it's the German note. I've determined. i think So anyway, you've been listening to destination change. Our guest today was Patty Vargas. Thank you for being here.
00:41:11
Speaker
Our theme song is sun nation by pizza and used via creative commons license by the free music archive. Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can get more listeners. In the meantime, you can always see more about the podcast, including show notes and where else to listen, on our website, www.nbhap.org.
00:41:30
Speaker
If you have any questions for the podcast, please email us at info at nbhap.org. Thanks for listening.