Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation New York (Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation)

The Frostick family lost a beautiful baby girl last month. I have been a member of their extended family, and they are kind, loving, beautiful human beings dealing with the unimaginable. I also understand addiction as I am a therapist specializing in co-occurring mental health and addiction disorders. And I am a recovering alcoholic. Before going further, I beg you to please not leave hateful, intolerant comments on this post. This only furthers the misunderstanding of addiction and hurts the living members of this family and baby Charlotte’s memory.

There is a horrifying opioid epidemic in our country. Addiction and mental health issues are at an all-time high. People are dying, and families are being destroyed every day by addiction. No one, and I mean no one, is born thinking they or their family members want to or will become addicted. Once addiction sets in it is incredibly difficult to stop as addiction is a disease that hijacks the brain. Good people have addiction. This is not a disease of morality.

What we are lacking in this country is adequate, affordable, accessible help for mental illness and addiction and support for families with addicted family members. There is tremendous shame and stigma around addiction. I ask everyone to get educated. Hazelden Betty Ford, Ted Talks, and PBS offer educational videos. The opioid epidemic, including fentanyl, is particularly devastating and deadly. It is heartbreaking.

Please learn, and if you are angry, devastated, grieving, or sad, please turn this into action. Blaming, shaming, and hating will not help. What will help is banding together and doing something about our addiction epidemic. In the spirit of living in the solution, I have set up a Go Fund Me in memory of baby Charlotte. All proceeds will be donated to the Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation, a highly reputable non-profit organization specializing in the research and treatment of addiction. Give $1 if this is all you can afford. If you can afford more, please give more. We need to help, we need to educate, we need to act, and we need to create the change we want to see. Please let this post go viral in memory of baby Charlotte.

Below is a beautiful prayer with a message that I believe is fitting regardless of religious or spiritual orientation. It is a reminder of where to focus our attention and hearts.

Lovingly, Tish Rutledge (Aunt Tish Frostick)

Prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace!

That where there is hatred, I may bring love.

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness.

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony.

That where there is error, I may bring truth.

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith.

That where there is despair, I may bring hope.

That where there are shadows, I may bring light.

That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted.

To understand, than to be understood.

To love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

—Saint Francis of Assisi—