Shame. To be ashamed. How many people’s lives have been ruined because of shame? Because the fear of being shamed or of having to name your shame or the curse of bringing shame to yourself, your family, your… keeps you silent and trapped. That’s addiction. At least that has been our experience with addiction. How could a highly intelligent, affable, tender-hearted, inquisitive, happy go lucky Irishman fall down the hole of addiction so profoundly that at 47 years old, he literally stared death in the face before turning his life around? How could a feisty, articulate, challenging, fierce advocate for those she loves wife watch this happen and not find…

Little needs to be said about Dr Marry’s video read of his final post because his post said it all so beautifully. I (cursorily) apologize if anyone is tired of hearing me say this, but sharing this journey with Dr Marry has truly given me such a profoundly different sense of appreciation for him, for where he was and for where he has arrived to after clawing his way back from the brink. I suppose I almost discounted his side of this story before we put it down in writing because he never talked about it in these deep ways (or maybe I never encouraged him to talk about it…

Dr Marry wants it noted that he doesn’t suffer from an out loud reading disability; this post was hard for him to read because he was “trying to be stoic” in spite of the emotion that threatened to overtake him. For the record, I didn’t know that until this morning, and I was sitting right next to him. I guess you’re better at stoic than I have ever given you credit for, sir! My goodness, this was a test of my ability to stay patient, and my face clearly gives away my struggle. Sorry, Dr Marry. You’re so good at so many things–reading emotional content out loud is just not…

This post is aptly named. Like so many unknown events in life, each day, sometimes each hour, of this journey in the hospital was like being on a roller coaster in the dark. One moment, everything felt fine, normal even. Then the next, I felt like I was falling, plunging into an unknown chasm whose bottom I had no way of being able to see. One of the things I really appreciate about these video posts is Dr Marry’s willingness to just listen. You can see on his fact that this is hard for him. Much of this information is brand new to him as he’s hearing it read aloud…

This post is one of my favorites because I feel like to perfectly sums up how different this experience was for Dr Marry and me, how different it likely is for any user/addict and any significant other. His spiral was tight and made perfect sense in his mind. My spiral was unwieldy and out of control because I didn’t understand the core of it; couldn’t define it. And, to my utter and never ending frustration, couldn’t control it. I continue to be amazed by Dr Marry’s bravery. People are writing to me to commend me for this, and I really appreciate that. But in actuality, he’s the real hero in…

This was really hard to read out loud. It’s hard to watch. That’s good. It should be hard. These three years later, it should still be hard, and it is. I expect it always will be. The value in the writing, the reading, the speaking and the watching of this hard time, I believe, is that this is the universal element of our story. It’s not necessary for you, the reader/viewer, to have been married to an alcoholic to find the common thread in this. All that is necessary is for you to have lived, to have gone into or watched another person’s decline of any kind and to have…

Dr Marry (reluctantly) read his first blog post. Side note: Dr Marry was a more enthusiastic outloud reader until sometime in the winter of 2002 or 2003, he was tasked with reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets to Quinn and me. It was a Quidditch match chapter, and I asked him if he didn’t think he could put a little more enthusiasm into the reading–it was a SUPER exciting game, after all. That ended his exploits as a reader. I have since apologized (many times), but it hasn’t made one jot of difference, so I really appreciate that Patrick Kirby and I got him to do these posts…

This first post, the breakdown that started the whole path into our metaphorical Phoenix rising from the ashes, launches the journey from dark to light. But at the end of this post, we are still very much in the dark. The vulnerability of recording this caught me by surprise. It doesn’t really matter that this was three years ago and that we are today, in so many ways, entirely past the trauma and uncertainty of then. To say these words out loud was to give them a very different place of prominence in my life, and I was taken aback by how very present they made our past feel. Dr…