For those of you with a facebook account

Please consider becoming a friend of Henry’s Fund on Facebook. And if you are willing to help spread the word, that would be great. Just post a link to Henry’s Fund on your own Facebook page, Twitter account or blog, and ask your friends to join us in raising funds for addiction treatment for kids ages 12-20 whose families can’t afford the help they need.

Commercial Free special on drug addiction

From Katie Allison Granju:
"On Wednesday, October 27th at 7pm EST, WBIR-TV in Knoxville, TN will broadcast a 30 minute, commercial-free special on how drug addiction impacted one child and one family. You will be able to view the show on-air if you live in the WBIR television viewing area, or if you live anywhere else in the world, you can watch it in its entirety online at WBIR.com on the same night it airs on TV.


By sharing our family’s experience of losing Henry to drugs as honestly and openly as possible, WBIR hopes to help many, many people understand in a more personal way how deadly prescription drug abuse is, and how it is killing so many sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, friends, coworkers and neighbors.
This is only one story, my son’s, but it represents the losses that so many families are experiencing every single day, as their children and other family members die from drug addiction.
WBIR is receiving ZERO advertising revenue for this lengthy, primetime special. They are offering the special on-air and online as an amazingly generous act of community service. In a time when media companies are struggling to stay afloat, WBIR continues to truly walk the walk with their clear and powerful dedication to bringing news and information to those who need it, Straight From The Heart. I was lucky enough to work as Online Producer at WBIR between 2004 and 2008, and I can tell you that everyone who produces their shows and online content takes their commitment to meaningful community journalism very seriously.
At the end of the special, there will be clear information presented for people who decide after hearing Henry’s Story that they or a loved one needs help NOW with addiction to drugs or alcohol.
This was my son. He was a drug addict, and drugs killed him. He was only 18 years old. Please plan to watch Henry’s Story with your children - on-air or online – and talk with them afterward about what they heard."

Please read: An act of Kindness for Henry

Please consider performing an act of kindness tomorrow in honor of Henry Granju, the boy I've posted about who died from complications from a drug related beating.  From Katie Allison Granju's blog:

"Hi folks. This is Katie’s sister, Betsy. As many of you know, tomorrow is Henry’s 19th birthday. It’s going to be a hard day for the family so I wanted to do something to honor it without any pressure.
Here is the plan. I’ve created a Facebook group called Acts of Kindness for Henry. It’s my hope that tomorrow lots of folks will perform an act of kindness in his honor and post it on the group wall for our family to see. If you want to participate, CLICK HERE to join and do something nice."


Here’s the link to the page for posting your acts of kindness. Thank you all so much. Tomorrow will be a special day for the recipients of the kindnesses:
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=152180344820439

The physical connection between a mother/child

A beautifully expressed post about the physical link between a mother and her child's body.  Again, from Katie Allison Granju, who is working through her grief by writing at once beautiful and horrifying posts.  She writes of loved ones telling her that her son's body was "just a shell" and how she understands they are trying to comfort her, but then she writes a perfect description of how a child's body could never be just a shell to a mother.  I believe I would feel exactly the same, I think she captures those feelings perfectly. 

An excerpt from the post that I particularly relate to:

"To a mother, her child’s body is inextricably tied to her own, at the cellular level. My child’s healthy (pre drug abuse) exceptionally lovely (still, even with the drugs) body was a source of great pleasure and pride to me during all the years he inhabited it.

“I made that…I grew that…” I would sometimes think to myself with a smile as I watched his long, musical fingers play the guitar or when I saw his natural physical grace on a skateboard.
Henry’s body came from my own body. I grew him in my belly, catching a first glimpse of his features on a grainy ultrasound screen. I felt him kick inside of me, and then I pushed him out of my body – the hardest physical work I’d ever done. I cradled him in my arms for as many years as he would let me, contentedly enjoying the feel of his physical weight against my chest. For 18 years, I worked as diligently as I could to ensure that he would be physically healthy and strong by carefully choosing the food he would eat, the vitamins he took and the immunizations he received. I marveled at his physical growth, marking annual milestones on the walls of our house as he got taller and taller, and making sure that he had bigger shoes and longer pants with each growth spurt. I noted his weight and length in the meticulous baby book I kept until he went to kindergarten, and I saved baby teeth and locks of baby hair to remember these parts of his physical being at particular moments in time.


Protecting Henry’s body, as well as those of his younger siblings from pain and discomfort has been my primary daily concern for my entire adult life – since I became a mother at 23 years old. When my Henry was little, I zipped him into his cozy pajamas each night to make sure that his body would be warm enough, and even when he was a teenager, I would go into his bedroom while he slept to be sure that he had enough blankets covering him on extra-cold nights. I made sure he brushed his teeth and I hounded him to be sure he’d slathered himself in sunscreen when we went to the beach or the pool.

I reveled in the physical beauty of that amazing head of wavy brown hair and in the twinkle in his gorgeous brown eyes. I loved the way his mouth would curl to one side when he smiled. Til the day he died, I knew just how to find the cowlick at his hairline, and I could tell you the placement of the moles on his temple and on his lower belly. I was the keeper of the history of every little scar and every birthmark Henry carried with him. I knew the precise length of his fingers and his eyelashes, and I can still feel the way his tiny newborn head fit into the palm of my hand when I rocked him to sleep. I loved his distinctive speaking voice, and I still hear it echoing through our house when I am home alone, calling out to me.
Like most mothers, I knew my child’s physical being so well that from the time he was born that I could have been blindfolded and still would have easily picked him out of a line-up of same-age children simply by smell or touch. I remember all the nights when I soothed his fevers, changed soaking wet sheets and wiped up his vomit – the essential tasks of mothering that bind us to our children’s sheer physicality in a way we are never connected to any other human being.


I loved my child’s body from the first moment I laid eyes on it, just before midnight on October 7, 1991. In the first years of his life, I tenderly bathed him, changed him and brushed his hair, and then I performed the exact same intimate physical caregiving for my sweet boy during the last weeks of his life, when he was totally helpless and dependent on his parents once again.


No, this child’s body, his physical being was not “just a shell” to me. It was a precious gift that I loved fiercely and completely for 18 years, until that heart-shattering moment on May 31, 2010, when I had no choice but to leave my son’s still beautiful body in the care of strangers at the hospital. Leaving that hospital without my son was the worst thing I have ever experienced. The pain I felt as I walked out the sliding glass doors into the oppressive summer heat on that early evening just two months ago was a cruel counterpoint to the elation, unbridled joy and sense of purpose that I felt on the day I first walked out of another hospital in the same city, 18 years earlier, proudly carrying my gorgeous firstborn son in my arms."

Again, a reminder to cherish your babies, you never know what lies ahead. 

More on addicts

I suppose I'm naive, but I was shocked by Katie Granju's story-an installment-of her son's treatment at a children's hospital.  She's compulsively writing as a way to cope with her grief at the loss of her 18 year old son.  I understand this impulse.  So many aspects of her son Henry's story highlight aspects of society that need a great deal of work.  (off the top of my head: our ideas about addiction and addicts, the way addiction is handled by the medical community, how families of addicts are treated.)

Many other people are pondering it too......

An article written by a local music crittic and former addict on Henry's death.  Beautifully written. 
An excerpt:

"it was all I could do not to pull over and hold my own son close to me. Because the world is full of Henrys — young, amazing people with endless potential who don't realize the consequences of their decisions; who meet tragic ends; who leave behind a legacy of beauty marred by an end that's dark and ugly; who leave so many people, loved ones and strangers alike, asking themselves why."