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Heather Kopp is an author and editor whose work explores addiction, recovery, grief, and the complicated relationship between parents and adult children. Her critically acclaimed recovery memoir, Sober Mercies (Hachette 2013), endorsed by Glennon Doyle, tells the inspiring story of her own—and her son’s—journey to long-term sobriety.
For years, Noah seemed to thrive in recovery, building a stable life after addiction.Then, in 2015, he made a series of reckless decisions that ended in a violent tragedy in which he was killed by police. (To read more about that story, see “The Myth of Monsters” below.)
Since then, Heather has sought to understand her son’s path to violence and how she was blinded to danger. She hopes that a forthcoming memoir about her experience can speak to other parents whose children are in crisis and won’t seek help.
Here, she continues to write about her healing journey, lessons learned, and how we keep living when the people we love can’t be saved.
[Note: I cleaned up my blog and left only a few posts for now. More to come soon.]
The Myth of Monsters
From the get-go, my son Noah was a skeptical kid who took little at face value. When I would tell him, “There’s nothing you could ever do to change how much I love you,” he would take it as a challenge. “What if I robbed a bank? What if I punched Nathan in the face?…
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Remembering Lizzy-Pie
It’s suicide prevention month, and my heart tells me that it’s time to talk about Liz, a young woman I met through recovery back in 2012. I still remember the first time we met for coffee. I was taken by her apple green eyes. The wisdom beyond her years. Her quickness to be vulnerable with…
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Find It in Your Heart
The album, as you’ll discover, was partly inspired by Noah, and the theme of that loss runs heavily through it. Taylor writes, “The songs on the record exist somewhere in the place between the death of my brother, and my need to carve out a bigger life. When my brother died in 2015 I realized…
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