By Wendy Watson
t started in the back row of a church pew.
I was there to support a friend whose uncle
had just died from an overdose. The
sanctuary was thick with grief—shoulders
hunched, eyes swollen, silence broken only
by sniffles and shifting feet. I wasn’t there for me.
But somehow, that day became one of the most
defining moments of my life.
I watched the widow—my friend’s aunt—stand
composed yet clearly hollowed out. You could
almost see her spirit sagging under the weight of
exhaustion and sadness. And suddenly, I wasn’t
just witnessing her pain—I was living it. I saw
myself standing in her place. I saw the same
hollowness forming inside me, the sleepless
nights, the heavy heart, the quiet despair.
The truth I had been avoiding became clear in
that sanctuary: I was staring into a possible
future. I wasn’t being shown a hypothetical—I was
being shown a warning.
Just days earlier, I had uncovered the truth: my
husband had been hiding a cocaine addiction for
over four years. And in the years following his so-
called “recovery,” he had quietly replaced it with
alcohol—now drinking nearly half a gallon of
whiskey every three days. It wasn’t recovery. It
was a redirection of the same demons.