Tara McGuire - Our overdose crisis

Tara McGuire is a mother, a steep advocate for change in the fight against overdoses, a former broadcaster, and a powerfully potent writer. Her book “Holden After and Before," gives us an honest insight into her grief, carried from the loss of her son, Holden to the opioid crisis, which Tara points out is better viewed as what it truly is: an overdose crisis. "He died because he made a mistake that day,” she says with heavy compassion for her own loss, and her son's loss, too, "He wasn't trying to die." Holden's overdose at 21 is not an isolated event. Over 35,000 families know their version of her pain from the last five years alone. That's 21 deaths a day. And while the "cause of death," might be marked on paper with the same words, the Cause of Life and the person behind it only exists once. We’re all one of one. That's the love part of the loss. That’s the crisis of One in many. Tara has turned that love for her son into proactive activism. She is now invited to speak to judges with power to change the course of treatment made available to people struggling. In this episode, we talk about the solutions—the life-saving solutions our youth deserve. And Tara drops bars in one of the most special elements of this episode. Through her prose and poetics Tara's gives voice to hope. At the top of Segment 2, we hear her read an excerpt and go into her world as she breathes in the life of her son . All of this takes us to the key emotion driving impactful change: compassion. "We need to find out why people are numbing themselves with these substances at all. Who we’re losing through this overdoes crisis are our most sensitive people." Tara says, "We need to be in the prevention business... we need to provide care instead of punishment." That part.