201: What if you believed it was all your fault?
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This Is Actually Happening features real experiences that often include traumatic events. Please consult the show notes for specific content warnings on each episode and for more information about support services.

Hello listeners, I have a brief announcement before today's episode. Starting next week and for the full month of September, we're excited to announce a special series on the show that we're calling The Long Shadow, honoring the 20th anniversary of 9-11. This will be a four-part series featuring four stories of people who worked in and around the Twin Towers, and whose jobs that day brought them face-to-face with the unthinkable. We'll take you inside an emergency room five blocks from the towers, and we'll tell you

a Port Authority office on the 68th floor, a fire company scouring the rubble pile, and a temporary morgue set up inside a Brooks Brothers department store. In the traditional style of This Is Actually Happening, we'll dive deep into the personal histories people brought with them that day, and how it transformed them over the next 20 years.

We'll also have bonus content available for those who subscribe on Wondery Plus or Apple Podcasts, including an interview between me and Dan Taberski, host of Missing Richard Simmons, and the upcoming series, 912.

We'll have more announcements and information about that next week. Again, our series of episodes for September, The Long Shadow, begins next Tuesday, September 7th, and runs for the full month of September. As always, I look forward to sharing these astonishing and powerful stories with you. Thank you for listening. There's really no way to explain how it feels when you realize one decision you made in an instant altered the life of everyone around you.

From Wondery, I'm Witt Misseldein. You're listening to This Is Actually Happening. Episode 201. What if you believed it was all your fault?

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I grew up in a small town, lived here pretty much my whole life.

My parents have been together since they were 14 years old. Very salt of the earth people. The hardest workers I've ever met. My mom was an ER nurse. My dad was a railroad conductor.

I had lots of stability when it comes to housing and things and material possessions. But my dad had some unresolved childhood trauma that created a lot of chaos when I was growing up in regards to drinking.

He drank a lot. And my mom, who was very meek and mild and docile, her main goal on earth was basically to placate him. There was a lot of tiptoeing, walking on eggshells. And I just thought that's how every dad was.

My childhood was great in a lot of ways. We went on vacations, we played in the creek, we played sports, but there was always that dark part. Like when we saw my dad's headlights pull in the driveway at night, we had run and hide in our rooms because we didn't know what kind of mood he was going to be in, what would trigger him and how ugly it could potentially get.

you know, the smallest thing. My mom didn't make his corn the way he liked. If my mom picked up a new bottle of shampoo and he would start accusing her, why are you buying new shampoo? Who are you trying to impress? My dad, when I was 16, he punched me in the mouth and knocked my front tooth out because I was defending my mom.

There was a lot of hostility there for a long time. I forgive him now, but it was just very unpredictable. My mom had a full-time job trying to keep the peace and just keep him calm. And me and my brother felt emotionally neglected because she...

She was so invested in keeping him calm. We kind of sat on the sidelines and didn't get the attention. She showed us she loved us in a million different ways. But to verbalize it or physically show affection, she just didn't have it in her because I think my dad just sucked her dry.

As ironic as it sounds, even though my dad was the volatile one with the serious drinking problem, he's the one I never doubted his love. I was always very secure in his love for me. No matter how bad things got between us, I knew his love for me was unwavering.

Whereas my mom, for a long time, I doubted that that love even existed. So as angry as I would be at my dad a lot, the end of the day, no matter how bad it got, my dad would tell me he loved me. Growing up, I've always been a larger girl. My brother and I were both overweight growing up and we are as adults now.

My mom, since she couldn't verbalize her love or show physical affection, she showed us through food, through feeding us. Down home Southern mama cooking. Because the guilt she had of not being able to be readily available, she wanted us to eat our feelings.

She dealt with a lot of food insecurity. And I think that's one thing she had with her mom growing up is that feeling of uncertainty because the food security not knowing if she was going to be able to eat. So I think it just exacerbated her need to feed me and my brother even more so.

the consequences it caused for my self-esteem. Growing up and in my early adulthood, you know, I was always the fat friend. You know, I was smart. I was pretty. I was funny, but I was the fat one. Growing up like that and being overweight really did give me a self-image that I wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough to be my mom's daughter because I wasn't a cheerleader and a homecoming queen and small and petite.

I wasn't good enough to be a girlfriend. It was hard to be at that critical point in your life and just feel like you have nothing to offer anyone. I was an extrovert. I had a lot of friends. I was kind of the loud and boisterous one. I like to have the attention. And I just really tried to make my mom's life easy because her hands were so full and

that I just, I tried to be a good kid. So that's the type of child I was. And then all hell sort of broke loose. I went buck wild. I was tired of the toxicity of my home life. I was tired of not receiving the attention and love that I felt that I needed.

I would not come home at night. I would be out drinking. I was having a lot of fights with my mom and my dad, just letting them know how angry I was and how I felt cheated out of love.

Somehow I managed to be rebellious and keep a really good cover on it for a long time. I maintained fantastic grades in school. I really lived in a lot of capacities, kind of a double life.

My friends in high school did not know about the extent of the promiscuity, the drinking, the occasional drug use. I mean, I was even telling stories that weren't true. I was making up stories just to get attention, just to get some kind of recognition because I felt empty inside.

After I graduated high school, I continued to party and run around with some pretty wild people. And ultimately, as much as my education had initially been important to me and as much as I relied on it to propel me forward, it all kind of fell apart. I dropped out of school, worked and just partied like a rock star.

And that resulted in a DUI, which was horrific. My dad, I think, was more ashamed and hurt than anybody because growing up, essentially, you know, I was my dad's beer bitch. You know, anywhere we went, my dad had a cooler, a beer, and it was my job from the backseat when he needed a beer, I would reach in the cooler and hand him a beer.

During this partying time, I was promiscuous and we were at a bar one night and there was this guy sitting near me and he offered to buy me a beer. And he said some things that led me to believe, hey, this might be a decent guy and he's actually paying attention to me and not my smaller and better looking, according to society, friends.

We exchanged numbers and we dated for maybe two months. And as the months went on, I started to realize most of our relationship revolved around drinking and being at the bar. I was at work one day. I did direct care for people with developmental disabilities. And we were having a staff meeting and this woman walks up to me and

And says, I believe that you're dating my son. And I said, excuse me? And she goes, well, I just want you to know that he is a habitual liar. I love him. He's my child, but do not believe anything he says. And I'm like, oh, well, that's fantastic.

So I was supposed to meet him that night at the bar and we're sitting at the bar and there's this girl that keeps staring at me. And I'm like, do you know this person? Who's this person sitting behind us that keeps staring at me? Do you know them? He said, no, no, I have no idea who they are. I said, okay, well, I'm gonna get up and use the ladies room. I'll be right back.

So I go in to use the restroom. As I'm coming out of the stall, there stands this girl. And she said, who are you? I said, who are you? And she's like, well, I'm his girlfriend. And I said, well, he's here with me. She goes, yeah, he's supposed to be with me. She said, you better be careful that you don't end up pregnant because I'm pregnant with this baby. And I said, well, it's too late. I think I already might be.

The next day, I was at my best friend's house. I said, you know, I'm going to go get a pregnancy test. And no matter what it is, I just need you to be here with me. I took the pregnancy test, praying, praying that I wasn't pregnant. Because mind you, I dropped out of college. I was partying all the time. I just found out the guy I was dating was not a good person. I cannot be pregnant right now.

And the test came back positive. I walked out on the front porch and I just dropped to my knees sobbing and wailing. I was just shocked and devastated and so scared. And I knew that I was going to have to do it on my own. And that was very scary because I was still trying to find myself.

I was at home one night. I said, Mom, Dad, I need you guys to sit down. We need to talk. And my mom goes, Oh, my God, tell me you didn't get another DUI. And I said, No, but I'm pregnant. And mom goes, Oh, my God, please tell me it's a DUI.

There were no real thoughts of terminating or anything like that because I knew that I would have the support of my parents. No matter how dysfunctional our relationship was at times, I knew that they would be there and they would help.

My parents were great. And the minute my son was born, they were absolutely in love. And to this day, my son and my dad are the best of friends. The love that my dad has for my son is just unlike anything I've ever seen. I think my dad just poured every single thing he had into being the best grandfather he could be because he kind of knew where he was lacking in the fatherhood arena.

In the years after my son was born, when he was really small, I had worked my way up within the company I was working for to a multi-site program manager. I oversaw the daily supervision and functioning of eight group homes for the developmentally disabled.

I was a single mom with lots of help from my parents. I was going to college. I was trying to work. It was a very fulfilling time in my life.

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And the next, something goes wrong. But with ADT's 24-7 professional monitoring, you still feel safe. Because when every second counts, count on ADT. Visit ADT.com today. So when my son turned about five, I realized, you know what? He's getting older now and more self-sufficient. I've graduated. I've got a good job. I'd like to find somebody.

I was starting to feel a little lonely. Like I love being his mom, but I don't want to do it by myself forever. I was 26 years old and back on my space, I had this really awesome playlist that had like sublime and slightly stupid. And I was really proud of this playlist. And I was like the oddball of my friends. No one liked my kind of music.

I get this random message on MySpace from this guy that said, wow, you have the most incredible playlist ever. So we talked and we decided that we were going to meet that night.

He lived in a town that was only about 30 minutes away and we had lots of similar interests. We were the same age. He had two kids right around the age of my son. And I knew the night I met him that I was going to marry him. I knew it without a doubt. I told my mom the next day, I will marry that man. And she believed me. And I married that man.

We were together about a year and a half. We were living together. We had my son full time. We had his kids every weekend. And I loved his kids fiercely. I still do. We were just this happy family. It was fantastic. I had a supportive boyfriend, a man that loved me and loved me for me and let me be me.

I didn't feel self-conscious. He made me feel beautiful and desired and sexy. And I felt so secure in his love. And it was just an amazing, warm, comforting feeling. The first time I'd ever really had that in my life.

It was almost to the point where you're waiting on it all to be pulled out from underneath you. Like, am I really worthy of this? Do I really deserve this kind of joy and this kind of love? We got married when I was 29 and I quit using birth control. I just made it very clear to him. If I don't have another child by the time I'm 30, I'm done. I'm not having any more.

I turned 30 on a Monday, found out that Wednesday that I was pregnant.

I was so excited because I felt that that was the one thing that was missing. We had a family. We had a happy family. But that was just like the one little piece of us that we could both bring into the world to permanently bond everyone together, kind of solidify that family unit.

I was ecstatic. Everything was going according to plan. The pregnancy was great. I loved being pregnant. The kids were so excited.

All the hopes and dreams and promises to myself and promises to my unborn daughter that my love was going to be given freely and purely, no holds barred. I just wanted to be pure and to give it all to her because I had had to fight so hard for that from my mom. It was just a very exciting time.

The birth of my daughter, it was a little rough. It was a long labor. But all in all, I mean, she just came out this tiny little precious six pound bundle. She was beautiful and she was perfect. And she had these huge, huge eyes for such a tiny baby. Her eyes were so big. They look like giant saucers.

I returned to work after six weeks and very fortunate. The agency I worked at had a childcare room for babies. And on my breaks, my lunch break, I would go get my daughter. I would bring her to my office. I would nurse her. You know, I was friends with all the girls that worked in that room. They would take pictures and text them to me. I could see her anytime I wanted. It was perfect. It was the perfect, perfect arrangement.

After my daughter was born, she had a bassinet in our bedroom. And so we got ready for bed. You know, I laid out her outfit for the next day.

I remember waking up. It wasn't real late, but I knew she was hungry and she wanted to nurse. So I got up out of bed and pulled the co-sleeper bassinet up next to the bed. And I laid her in the bed with me to nurse her. So I was like, well, I'll nurse her for five to 10 minutes. Just get her to calm down, get her to quit crying, put her back to bed and get back at it tomorrow.

Six o'clock in the morning, I hear my alarm going off. I lean over to hit snooze and I realize that she's still beside me and something doesn't feel right. It was pitch dark in the room and I remember just laying my hand on her chest and I started screaming.

My husband jumped up and I was screaming, turn on the light, turn on the light, something's wrong. And he jumped up and turned on the light, had no idea what was going on. And there lays my baby, cold.

This horrible kind of shade of blue around her mouth with a big wet spot underneath her that looked pinkish, almost like blood and saliva. I start screaming for my husband to call 911. I realize she's gone. I'm cradling her. I'm holding her. I'm rocking her back and forth. I'm hysterical.

I don't know if it was myself or my husband got hold of my mom. And I just remember saying, Harper's gone. Harper's gone. The paramedics showed up and I was on the couch rocking my daughter wrapped in a blanket. They asked her if they could take her from me. And I said, it's too late. And they said, we can still try.

By that time, my mom had gotten there and I said, I need you to take care of my son. He doesn't know what's going on. And I followed the squad to the emergency room. I had an overwhelming sense of terror and automatic guilt wash over me because she was in my bed and I had been breastfeeding her.

My mind automatically went to a very, very dark place that, oh my God, I have suffocated my baby. I was just in shock and I just couldn't believe it. She was gone and I couldn't wrap my head around that. But then I had this immense wave of guilt.

Like I did this and I knew I knew from that minute that my life and the lives of everyone that I loved that was in this baby's life was forever going to be impacted because of a choice that I made.

It was like equal parts shock, numbness, and terror. There's really no way to explain how it feels when you realize one decision you made in an instant altered the life of everyone around you. I chose to lay her in bed beside me and nurse her while I was laying down and

And putting myself in a situation where I was able to fall asleep with her in my bed. I was trying to do the most motherly thing you can do in nature is to nurse your child. And that choice turned into my biggest nightmare the minute I woke up.

My sole purpose as her mother was to protect and nurture her. And in that moment, I felt like I had committed the ultimate betrayal of trust my child had for me. I felt that I had done the most monstrous thing. It was horrible.

My dad had shown up by that time. So my mom, my husband and I were all at the ER and I'm like half dressed. I'm psychotic and shocked. Don't know what's going on. So I ran into the ER. They led me to where she was and there were all these people surrounding this tiny little body and she had tubes and they were trying to stick her with an IV. You know, they weren't getting anywhere with it.

And I just remember doubling over screaming, Oh my God, what have I done? What have I done? The ER doctor, she looked at me in the middle of doing chest compressions on my newborn baby and said, you did nothing. Don't you ever say that this is a classic case of SIDS.

And I just looked at her and I said, how do you know? Oh, my God, what have I done? What have I done to my baby? She said, you did nothing. And I just remember my mom trying to hold me up. And I said, please stop. Stop. She's gone.

And I felt at that point, it was almost cruel to continue to try to revive her. So I asked them to stop trying to resuscitate her. And they did. And they put me in a hospital bed and they pulled the curtain around us. And they said, we've called the coroner, but you're welcome to stay in here with her as long as you want.

I wasn't rational at the time. I was barely coherent. I remember saying, I need a diaper and a blanket. You guys cut her onesie off. She's cold and her diaper's wet.

And of course, they're just looking at me like I'm a lunatic, which I understand why in a lot of ways. But, you know, she was still a baby. So they managed to find a diaper and brought me a blanket. And I changed her diaper and I wrapped her up in a blanket and held and rocked her for a couple hours. Me and my husband and my mom were in that room until her body started becoming rigid and discolored and the lividity setting in.

I didn't want to remember her in that way. I remember a very kind nurse that was in the ER came in and check on me. And she said, is there anything you'd like for me to do? And I said, I don't want to remember her like this, but she's a baby. She can't be left alone. She said, I will stay with your baby.

She said, I promise you, I don't care how long it takes. I will stay here and I will hold your baby so she's not alone. Whether she did or not, I'll never know. But the words from that nurse are the only reason I was able to walk out of that emergency room.

We went back to my parents and I remember being numb, passing out in my childhood bed. And I woke up and my three closest friends had all crawled into my childhood bed with me and just all wrapped their arms around me. And we all just cried. I remember waking up the following morning, my husband and I,

It hit me. It's like I didn't believe that she was gone. I got up and I made a cup of coffee and we have a lake in our town. Got my coffee and drove up to the lake and sat in the shelter house and just looked over the lake, just kind of trying to process it. I drove from the lake to my house and crawled back in my bed where the sheets were still on the bed with the big pink bloody saliva stain on

I would not leave that spot on the bed because that's the exact spot that marked the location where my life fell apart. My aunt actually went and got a pair of scissors out of the kitchen. She cut that spot, that sheet, that big bloody spot. She cut it out and saved it for me. I don't know why I needed that. Grief isn't rational. It's totally irrational. It makes zero sense.

I needed that piece of sheet. I needed that for some reason. This season, Instacart has your back to school. As in, they've got your back to school lunch favorites, like snack packs and fresh fruit. And they've got your back to school supplies, like backpacks, binders, and pencils. And they've got your back when your kid casually tells you they have a huge school project due tomorrow.

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I wasn't functioning very well. I was just in a fog. I felt as though I should be punished. In my social work career and just, you know, in general, I've known of and heard of mothers in similar situations that were investigated, had their children taken away, faced criminal charges, had things like accidental suffocation on the death certificate.

I felt that I should be punished. I felt I made this choice and I needed to pay consequences. I wanted the death certificate almost because I anticipated that it was going to say accidental suffocation.

But it said sudden infant death syndrome, which really didn't mean anything to me. Because SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion. When they can't find any other reason that a perfectly healthy baby is passed away, they call it SIDS. It's not an actual diagnosis.

I just kept apologizing to my husband and my mom. Like, I am so sorry that I did this. I'm so sorry that I made that choice. And my husband at the time said, don't ever say,

say that. Never once did I blame you. Never once did I think this was your fault. And to this day, I'm sure he would say the same. Doctors and grief counselors and my mom, they tried to tell me, you know, you didn't do this. And I said, how do you know? Well, it says, what does that mean? The grief was unbearable.

The brain is a very, very powerful thing. And I think it has a very unique ability to create a protective fog when we go through a traumatic situation. Because I truly believe that if we felt the full-on effect of raw, unbridled grief, it would kill us. I wanted to die. I thought I was dying. But there was still like a hazy, protective fog shielding me just a little bit.

When you're a licensed social worker, you can navigate people through grief and trauma and healing and give them tools and resources. But when it happens to you, everything you've learned in a clinical setting, every bit of education you've had flies straight out the door. My rational mind knew what my training and education and career had taught me, but the mom in me couldn't grasp any of that.

felt like a pariah. I was already internally beating myself up so much and then I felt I couldn't escape my guilt and I couldn't escape other people, their pity. A couple times, you know, I was like, I'm done. I just want to be with her. I remember one time I took a handful of Klonopin. I woke up three days later

I began cutting myself. I was harming myself like in places that people wouldn't be able to see that would be easily hidden. I felt that I needed a punishment. I needed to pay consequences. I began drinking a lot. There was a lot of self-sabotage.

My poor little boy had to stay with my parents. I couldn't take care of him because I couldn't take care of myself. When I was awake and upright, I wasn't always coherent because of the medication and then drinking some wine with it.

It was very scary when after two weeks, my husband finally had to return to work. So here I found myself home alone, dealing with this grief and this guilt and this loss. I slept every day, every night for six months with the onesie that they cut off of her in the emergency room.

There was something about water that was very comforting. I think it's because she loved baths so much.

that anytime it would rain, it didn't matter if it was two o'clock in the morning in a thunderstorm, I was outside standing in the rain. Or I would remember I would just walk across the pool deck fully clothed and just collapse into the pool and just float there. It didn't matter if I had on socks, shoes, everything. There was something very comforting. And I think just the weightlessness of

of being in water because I was so weighed down with guilt being in the water was comforting in some sense

The people that loved and cared about me, they realized that grief wasn't rational and they were trying to be there for me. And they thought they were comforting me by saying, "You didn't do this. This isn't your fault." But all that did was anger me. As her mom, I know, "Don't try to sugarcoat this for me. Don't try to protect me. I don't need to be protected. I need to come to terms that I did this."

There's no legal punishment. There's no imprisonment. There's nothing that anyone could do to me that could come potentially even close to the hell and punishment and imprisonment I created for myself. I wasn't able to work. I stayed home. And at the time, I thought I was taking care of myself and healing. I wasn't.

My husband worked about 24 hours at a time and I was home alone drinking on my front porch and

There was this neighbor down the street that was friendly. You know, he had walked by and we'd chit chat or whatever. And I was so alone and so vulnerable. I just remember him coming up to the porch and sat down and we started talking. And the next thing I know, I wake up in my bed and he's kissing me.

I remember jumping up and yelling, you've got to go. I don't know what's going on here. You've got to go. And he's like, you know, you were drinking, but you invited me in. I said, I believe you, but this isn't okay. You know, you've got to go. And I was so overcome with guilt that when my husband came home from work, I told him,

Obviously, he was horribly upset. You know, he was forced to go back to work two weeks after losing his child, knowing that his wife is home alone and suffering. And then that's what I do. And that set the tone for things there on out. There started becoming a lot of violence there.

He began cheating on me a lot, which is never okay. But he was grieving too. I had betrayed him. And we were grieving very differently. Domestic violence became an issue because of the drinking and the cheating. And finally, I said, okay, something's got to give here. Maybe I'll return to work.

That way I'm not left to sit here and stew in my own guilt and misery all day. So I took a job as a public relations person for a big addiction treatment organization near where I live. First day on the job, I had a corner office and my coworker was like, custom here is first day we take you out to lunch. So we go in his car and we go to lunch and we,

We come back and I said, you know, there's this weird smell around here. And he said, oh, well, see that building right there? That's the funeral home. He said, in this building right here, right across from your office is the crematorium. And my heart sunk. And it took everything I had to hold it together because we had had my daughter cremated. And the label on the temporary urn was from that funeral home and crematorium.

I had to look at that every single day for two years. I was so consumed with guilt and so bound and determined that I needed to suffer some kind of consequence that I didn't deserve anything good and that anything bad that happened was very much deserved. My husband jokingly, before we even had Harper, asked me,

If I would ever be interested in having sex with another man in front of him. And I said, absolutely not. You know, I love you. I'm married to you. I absolutely not that I would never do that. Well, after the instance where I welcomed that gentleman inside my house and luckily stopped it before anything worse happened, I was so desperate for my husband's forgiveness that

I said, what can I do? I'll do anything to make this work. And even though it makes no sense, I went along with it. He said, I want to see you with someone else.

I was very taken aback. I just couldn't wrap my head around how that would offer up any kind of relief or solace or solution or anything. But in an effort to win his forgiveness, I went along with it, which ultimately became a nightmare because he kept leading me to believe that I should probably do it just one more time just to really, really show him how sorry I was.

Okay, well, this is going to be the last time. But I think for you to really, really show that you're sorry, maybe there should be three people. And then when I said, I'm done, I can't do this anymore. I've paid my dues. I woke up in the middle of the night to a man who was not my husband climbing on top of me, trying to have sex with me.

My husband had actually encouraged this man to go have sex with his unconscious wife and stood in the doorway and watched. And that was my punishment. We decided to give it one last go and he didn't come home one night. He called me the next morning from a hotel room with a woman he had been cheating with and come to find out she was pregnant.

Which was an absolute kick in the teeth. My whole world had fallen apart. I'd lost my baby. I was losing my husband. And here he went on and cheated and got someone else pregnant. And I'll never forgive him for that.

So just a few days before Christmas, my parents come and they're helping me pack up and move just a couple of days before Christmas. It was devastating. I had already lost my daughter. Then within a span of a couple of days, I lost my husband, my home of seven years. The two stepkids I love like were my own.

Lost our family pets. I had to rehome our pets. I lost what very, very little bit of self-worth and pride I had. It was devastating. And I then started planning my suicide plan.

I felt that there was no longer a place for me in this world. I didn't deserve to be here. I didn't deserve to be a mother to my son. I thought he would be better off being raised by my parents. I lost my way and I started drinking more than ever and got another DUI. I actually hit another car. Luckily, it wasn't anything serious, but I hit another vehicle with a human being inside that I could have killed.

I lost all hope. I wanted to die. I begged for death. I pleaded for death. There are two types of tired. One that requires rest and one that requires peace. And I needed peace. And I was ready for peace. I was just so, so tired.

There was an attempt to hang myself, which I didn't follow through with because I realized the first person that saw me would have been my son. There was two more overdoses on medication, prescribed medication,

I developed PTSD. My PTSD episodes only happened when I went to bed at night and I dreamed of just reliving that morning I woke up that my daughter was gone. I would wake up and it would be so real and I would wake up crying and reaching for her and screaming.

During the day when I was awake, I could self-medicate or I could distract myself or drink myself into a stupor or I could dive into a book or try to watch TV and at least redirect my mind. But when you're dreaming, what do you do?

The dreaming was my worst prison because there was no escaping that. It was just the same dream every single time reliving it in minute detail of exactly what happened and how it happened that morning. I drank a lot. I would get off work and I would condition my child that if you want to do something, we have to plan it ahead of time. So mommy knows not to drink beer on the way home.

I came home from work one day and he just wanted to go to Walmart to get a new game or something. And I said, buddy, you know, we can't. Mommy's already had some beer. And he said, we can never do anything because you're always drinking.

And that one simple statement is all it took. For some reason, a light bulb went off in my head and I just thought to myself, I've already destroyed one child and here I'm destroying this little person's life. All he wants is to go to Walmart with his mom to buy a video game and I can't because I can't stay away from alcohol long enough to do one little thing for my child.

I realized that as much as I loved my daughter and wanted to save her, my son was still here and I could still save him. So that one simple statement from my son was my turning point.

It just made all these realizations happen in my head. And I was able to kind of take a personal inventory of what I had done in my grief and the consequences of those decisions. Grief is outrageously selfish. When you are that deep in the throes of grief,

You don't think about how it's affecting others and how dealing with your guilt or self-pity or misery, how you shut other people off or you make yourself inaccessible to others. And that's what I had done for my son. Initially, I felt very guilty letting myself feel any little bit of joy or happiness, but

But then I started realizing in her honor and her memory and for my son who was still here and needed me, I allowed myself to have small tiny doses of joy and happiness and not feel guilty about it. It was a very hard thing to do and it came in very tiny steps.

I would allow myself, have a genuine, real belly laugh, like the real deep belly laugh that just exudes pure joy. I'd let myself have one of those in a moment and not beat myself up too bad. The next month I might do something nice for myself, like buy myself something and not feel too guilty and too selfish anymore.

My son is 17 now and he's six foot tall and over 200 pounds. And there's times I still crawl into his bed while he is sleeping and put my hand on his chest just to make sure he's breathing. That's the result of trauma. It scares the shit out of him, but it makes me feel better to know he's still alive. I just know that I can't go on forever like that.

My boyfriend, I do the same to him. I'll turn on the flashlight on my phone and just shine it on his chest just to make sure he's breathing. I know that's not realistic. I know that's not rational, but that's the trauma kicking in.

I slowly realized over time that allowing myself a little bit of joy and a little bit of happiness, despite what I had done, did not at all take away from my immense love for my daughter. That you can feel guilt and shame and pain, but you can also feel joy and love and happiness. It's not one or the other. They can exist simultaneously.

You can feel all those things at once and it can be very confusing. And I just had to begin on a very cathartic process of just learning to be nice to myself.

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She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up. If you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion.

And after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision. To end in a mistrial, it's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.