#117 – Vanessa Hurr

A Tribute for International Overdose Awareness Day

Vanessa Hurr is an award-winning editorial portrait Photographer and resident Corporate Development guru for Lionrock Recovery.

Her journey from entrepreneur to Lionrock teammate began in March of 2020 when a world-wide pandemic put a quick halt to her life as a photographer in the live events industry. Within weeks of coming onboard the Lionrock team to assist with an unprecedented influx of Americans seeking substance treatment, she lost her big brother, Matt, to an overdose in April of 2020. Even with an age difference of 5 years, Vanessa and her brother had an especially close relationship that was built on a foundation of friendship and a shared love for music. The grief and sense of loss surrounding his death was compounded with extreme isolation due to Covid. The result was a calling to action and a dedication to the task of supporting people who are seeking treatment and freedom from substance abuse.

Vanessa divides her time between Madison and Chicago with her husband and 2 little boys. Her life as a Photographer, in addition to being a dedicated part of the Lionrock team, is evolving as she adds the title of Cookbook Author. Vanessa will be traveling the US throughout 2021-2022 with a private chef to support and document a person’s journey through recovery via food! Vanessa’s goal is to provide insight into basic cooking skills and also share individualized nutritional information to people who might not otherwise have access to essential dietary knowledge that supports their recovery. She wants to set people up for success, no matter what stage of recovery they’re in, so that they can feel empowered when preparing meals for themself and/or their loved ones.

Additional Information

Episode Resources

• The Beacon Website | https://thebeaconhelps.org/

Connect with Vanessa Hurr

• Instagram | @vanessahurr

Connect The Courage to Change

• Podcast Website | lionrock.life/couragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Instagram | @couragetochange_podcast
• Podcast Facebook | @thecouragetochangepodcast
• Podcast Email | podcast@lionrock.life
• YouTube | The Courage to Change Playlist

Lionrock Resources

• Coffee & Coffee Alternatives | lionrock.life/shop-products
• Support Group Meeting Schedule | lionrock.life/meetings

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Episode Transcript

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Coming up on this episode of the Courage to Change.

Vanessa Hurr:

A few hours afterwards is when I got a call from my mom saying that they had found Matt at the motel and that he had passed away. There was no relief in getting a phone call like that. So of course you envision it a million times over in your head as to what that’s going to look like or sound like. And I just remember having to pack a bag and trying to get in the car and there’s balloons and gifts and stuff from this party. And just having to say I can’t put them to bed tonight and just give them a kiss for me and I have to go. And we got there before the police got to the motel, and we just sat with him. And at least you’re surrounded with your family, but we were just crying for not just the loss of life but the life that we had wanted for him.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Hello beautiful people. Welcome to the Courage to Change, a recovery podcast. My name is Ashley Loeb Blassingame, and I am your host today. We have Vanessa Hurr. Vanessa is an award winning editorial portrait photographer and resident corporate development guru for Lionrock recovery. Her journey from entrepreneur to Lionrock teammate began in March of 2020 when a worldwide pandemic put a quick halt to her life as a photographer in the live events industry. Within weeks of coming on board the Lionrock team to assist with an unprecedented influx of Americans seeking substance abuse treatment, she lost her big brother Matt to an overdose in April of 2020. Even with an age difference of five years, Vanessa and her brother had an especially close relationship that was built on a foundation of friendship and shared love for music.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The grief and sense of loss surrounding his death was compounded with extreme isolation due to COVID. The result was a calling to action and a dedication to the task of supporting people who are seeking treatment and freedom from substance abuse. Vanessa divides her time between Madison and Chicago with her husband and two little boys. Her life as a photographer in addition to being a dedicated part of the Lionrock team is evolving as she adds the title of cookbook author. Vanessa will be traveling the United States throughout 2021 and 2022 with a private chef to support and document a person’s journey through recovery via food. Vanessa’s goal is to provide insight into basic cooking skills and also share individualized nutritional information to people who might not otherwise have access to essential dietary knowledge that supports their recovery.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

She wants to set people up for success no matter what stage of the recovery they’re in so they can feel empowered when preparing meals for themselves and or their loved ones. Vanessa is a beautiful, beautiful person. And she was able to help us get to know her brother Matt in a way that I so appreciated the person that he was before addiction took over. And we got to talk through what happened, what it’s like now and what it was like experiencing grief through COVID. I hope that you enjoy this video recorded version of the Courage to Change, let’s do this.

Christiana:

You are listening to the Courage to Change a recovery podcast. We’re a community of recovering people who have overcome the odds and found the Courage to Change. Each week, we share stories of recovery from substance abuse, eating disorders, grief and loss, childhood trauma, and other life-changing experiences. Come join us no matter where you are on your recovery journey.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Can you tell me a little bit about your family and where you’re from?

Vanessa Hurr:

Well, my siblings and I, we grew up with my mom and dad in a very loving home in Deerfield, Wisconsin. Super, super tiny, two gas stations, no stoplights.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

No stoplights, all right.

Vanessa Hurr:

No stoplights, not one. As a larger family, obviously I’m one of four. My older brother Matt was my oldest sibling, he was five years older than me. And then came my sister Sophie, she’s three years older than me. And then I have a twin brother and his name is Chase. And in a town that small, it was nice to have such a large family. And we would just create the excitement around us. Matt especially loved to play in the woods surrounding our home and up at our cabin, which we would go to on the weekends, which is a [inaudible 00:09:34]. It’s north of our home in Northern Wisconsin.

Vanessa Hurr:

You get involved in sports and things like that. And Matt was in little league, he was in boy Scouts, my sister and I were in girl Scouts. And it was a very ideal upbringing. I’m sure you know the older you get and the stories that you hear from other adults about their upbringing is sometimes horrifying. And my sister and I say to each other all the time, we’re like, “Wow, we had no idea that we had such a loving, caring, nurturing home.” My dad owned his own psychotherapy practice, my mom worked for him when she wasn’t at home with all of us kids. And it was just a very progressive mindset, very open, very loving. Never overindulgence in drink or drugs in our home. Standard amount of rules like most households. If you wanted your allowance on a Friday, you did your chores all weekend long. And it was just very sweet and quiet for the most part.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I mean, that’s really incredible for me to hear because I often wonder who are these people who are having a normal childhood? I don’t come in contact with them. And then I start wondering, I’m like, “Oh my gosh, does everyone have a gnarly childhood and all these things?” You give me hope, although the no stoplights. And I wonder how much the control of the environment was helpful, I’m sure a lot. And I think that’s an important point for us to remember as parents as well, which is something that we say in the field when we’re talking to families is you didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it, this is not your fault. And you didn’t create it, you didn’t cause it, you can’t cure it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I look at my little boys and I say this on the podcast a lot, I know exactly what I’m working with. I see it right now. I can tell you exactly what it is right now, and I see it. Which reminds me how genetic it is because I’ve seen it before there’s any reason and with things that have nothing to do with substances. So very interesting in how you can be raised in a family that has that normal childhood. So often we look to those things to explain why it is that someone would do these self-destructive behaviors. And you’re a perfect case study of this is the childhood. However, sometimes I talk to people, a sibling who says what you say, and then the other sibling with the substance use disorder has a completely different perspective growing up in the exact same home, that’s also valid.

Vanessa Hurr:

100%. Well, I also think those memories that I have of us being children and riding our bikes, you go to the fair and things like that. But as you get older and you’re a teenager and there’s more access and privacy to things that you shouldn’t be doing, that’s also the downfall of being in a very small community because there’s not a whole lot to do.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right. In my experience, the communities where there’s not a whole lot to do, the whole lot to do ends up being drinking.

Vanessa Hurr:

100%. Yep, absolutely. So when I was around 11 or 12, we moved to a neighboring town, and so my brother was going to a different school. He and my sister ended up going to a private Lutheran high school. So they went to school in the next town over and they were bused there. But as he became a teenager and my parents would feel more comfortable leaving town on the weekends, I remember when he would have parties at our house as one does when your parents leave. And that was the main course of action, it was just drinking. I don’t remember any of his friends bringing anything other than that into our home. But of course, that’s a lot of my memories from his high school days. But he was still maintaining, and he was on the wrestling team, and he would go to prom. And he was dating, and he had a job. So those days I still just have a lot of really fun memories at our home growing up because again, nothing very much felt out of balance. That all felt very normal and exploratory.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Did he report in any of the treatments things that indicated that he didn’t feel that way growing up?

Vanessa Hurr:

I remember him saying to me specifically that he felt at some point that he was treated differently by our parents being the oldest sibling. And I’m not sure if that meant in terms of the rules of what he was able to get away with, what he wasn’t able to get away with, where the bar was as far as what was expected of him. He was so gifted mathematically, and he took that with him into his college years. He traveled abroad for an entire semester in Mexico and was speaking Spanish. And I almost wonder if as that first child. And then of course, I’m the youngest of four, so things were pretty loosey goosey by the time I got older. But I didn’t understand that from him at the time when he said those things to me. But I get that now when I talk to my two little sons about things. Things hat our youngest could get away with, I will go to my oldest and be like you know better than that or you’re not doing that or X, Y, and Z. So it’s just different.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

We have a lot of jokes about this. As a twin mom for my first kids, it doesn’t apply to me because I was instantly a mom of two. But I see it very much in people, how they are with their first kid, how they are with their second kid, how they are with their third kid. And there’s all the jokes about how they have everything, they’re in every picture. You have every milestone, this, that, the other. And then less with kid two, less with kid three, what have you. I’m the oldest of three, so my little sister, we have endless jokes about how she … By her senior year in high school, she would joke that she was just roommates with my parents because they would text her to see if she’s even home. And she would say things like, “I’ve been here for four hours,” whatever. This totally different mentality. I see that as having been the oldest, you don’t know what you don’t know and then you learn along the way.

Vanessa Hurr:

100%.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s just part of parenthood, I guess.

Vanessa Hurr:

I guess. Oh my gosh.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When did you start to see a change or a difference in your brother? Something that was like, “Huh, that’s not-

Vanessa Hurr:

It’s strange because when I grew up with Matt and when we were younger, he and I were very, very tight, and we had a very close relationship. There was obviously a giggle of kids at all times, me and all my siblings, and then everyone’s friends that are over all the time. But it never seemed to occur to him that it was uncool to have his little sister tagging along. And so he and I always spent a lot of time together, he loved music in incredible amounts. He always had a lining around his bedroom wall of Rolling Stone covers, constantly introducing me to music. He was playing Metallica, and The Clash and Violent Femmes and Notorious B.I.G. And then when he was old enough to start going to concerts and things, he would always bring me back some swag from the merch table.

Vanessa Hurr:

And maybe it was a button or a sticker or a t-shirt, something I could take with me to school the next day, which is cute. But as that progressed into high school, then you see the partying, which again I didn’t think was terribly out of the norm. And then when he was in his early 20s, I was getting ready to leave for college. And that’s when there seemed to be a shift. A lot of his 20s and 30s are very foreign and foggy to me because the majority of the information that I was getting was second-hand news. And it normally wasn’t good news. I knew that he received a six-figure settlement from a car accident that wasn’t his fault. And around that same time, he moved to Minnesota with a girlfriend. And it’s my understanding that that really helped kick off what he was able to get his hands in and in large quantities and really surround him with people that I’m sure he thought loved him, cared about him but that were more or less partners in crime. And I know that that’s when the meth use started.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What was the car accident, how bad was the car accident?

Vanessa Hurr:

I’m not sure if that was when he came back for a visit or if that’s when he returned back from living in Minnesota. But he came back to the Madison area where my family was living. And it was New Year’s Eve, I was living in Florida going to school. But it was New Year’s Eve in Wisconsin, it was freezing. And he was out with a bunch of friends, he was at a bar. He met a girl and it progresses to kissing and things. And then they head outside, I’m not sure if they had the intention of going somewhere, but they got into a friend’s car. And they must have thought that they were just getting sleepy, that’s my assumption. As it turns out, there was a hole in the tailpipe and the car was filling with carbon monoxide.

Vanessa Hurr:

Everyone inside the bar is obviously drinking and partying. The friend left his car, he was going to drive it home from the bar that night. And when they came back to find the car the next day, my brother i in there, and the girl that’s in there with him has died. And Matt spent the next few months in a hyperbaric chamber in the hospital so they could try and squeeze the carbon monoxide out of his body. And from there on out, it was a completely different playing field. Not only did the substance abuse escalate, but the way he was not only conversationally, with the way he acted, it was very much more childlike, and especially in the decision making process. Things that you would do in your 20s and 30s didn’t necessarily mirror Matt’s thought process and how he was absorbing information and interacting with people. It was very hard for him to be able to socially interact in a way that he felt comfortable.

Vanessa Hurr:

And I think that drinking or whatever he was on really him feel more comfortable meeting girls, going out, making friends, all of those things that you want to do in that stage of life. And it was really hard to see. But again, a lot of this information I would get on a phone call from family, my sister, my parents. And as a sibling, I’m sure your siblings explain this to you too, but you’re angry and frustrated and disappointed. And I’m having conversations with him and I’m like, “What is the problem here?”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Right, figure it out.

Vanessa Hurr:

Right, figure your shit out. But again, that waxes and wanes because you love them and you want to support them, and you want to be a shoulder to lean on. So it’s very much a back and forth, a volley, if you will. The highs as you know are really, really high. I remember coming back and watching him walk the stage at his graduation from college and being so incredibly proud of him. And we went out to eat afterwards as a family to really celebrate him and show him how proud we were. And then the lows were so low when he was on a bender. He’s going from apartment to apartment or he’s homeless and he’s on the streets. And I remember visiting him in a county jail once, and he and I both had a good cry. And I just said, “Let’s let this be the last time we do this. We don’t have to do this again, let’s not do this again.” You tell me what you need, and we’ll do it. And so we repeated that process and repeated it and repeated it.

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [0:22:31]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What did you think about addiction and substance use? You have an interesting angle on this in that your dad was a psychotherapist. So your dad has some amount of significant training and understanding. What was your understanding of substance use disorder and what was going on before you came into the field?

Vanessa Hurr:

My knowledge was always very limited. But in our households in terms of my brother Matt was that treatment is always the answer. And we explored that from a multitude of directions, whether it was tough love, working as a team to try and get him to come to the other side, are you willing to go to treatment this week? I’m sure we all played a role in facilitating somehow his poor decision-making. And we all would take turns saying, “I can’t talk to him this week, he’s off the rails. I’m getting phone calls 20 times a day about what he needs, you deal with this this week.”

Vanessa Hurr:

So it was nice to be able to have the other people to go to and say, “I don’t how to do this. He’s calling me, and he’s hungry, but I don’t want to give him money. I’m going to go get him a sandwich,” or, “I’m going to go with him to Target, and we’re going to go pick out a sweatshirt and a few things that he needs,” or, “I’m going to go get him a haircut. He’s feeling really down, I just want to spend some time with him, I’m going to take them out to lunch.”

Vanessa Hurr:

And to that extent, you’re just doing the best you can and rewarding especially good behavior and wanting to keep him with building momentum when he’s on a dry run and he’s on the wagon and he’s doing really well. And then really going to my mom and dad and seeking answers as to what their preferences were and what next steps were. Because there was a lot of times where I didn’t know what to do, and especially when things were tumultuous. And if I was living out of state at that time, leaning into my siblings and my parents and saying, “What is the plan?” And then there was a time after he got out of county jail, there was a three-year period of time. He was at a men’s halfway house, if you will. And that seemed to get him on a trajectory upwards. And he was working at a hardware store, large hardware store chain here in Madison as a manager. And he loved it, and he’s a doer and a builder, and he’s a yes man.

Vanessa Hurr:

And he thrived in that role, and he’s making money. He had a car again, freedom. And he moved into a house that my brother owned in Northern Wisconsin, very close to our cabin and was just crushing life. He was happy, he looked good. He was eating well. And you could just see that the boost in spirit and the momentum he had built was really boosting his confidence. But there was always so many times where he’d come to me and he’d say, “It’s not only hard to meet friends up here because it’s very isolated, but I really want to go play pool with everyone,” or, “I really want to go play volleyball, but everyone’s just getting wasted afterwards.” Or, “I really want to go on a date with this girl but she says, “Hey, do you want to get drinks after work?” And I don’t know how to talk to her about that.”

Vanessa Hurr:

And I don’t feel like I was as helpful as I could be now being in this role that we’re in because I didn’t have the answers. My knowledge and my skillset were so limited that I probably said something stupid like, “Well, why don’t you just go and not drink,” as if that was an option. And of course, it is. But I feel so much better prepared now, of course too late in the game to be able to support him and continue to help him with those situations.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I can completely empathize. And no matter what anyone says, we’re always in those situations going to ask, could we have done something differently? Maybe I said the wrong thing. But the reality is having been to lots of treatment, it would have been something they covered, that they talked about. And there would have been people he could have reached out to who would have known ‘the answers’ And there’s sober community, whether it’s Alcoholics Anonymous or other support groups that could have helped with that. So the good and the bad news was that you weren’t the cause and you weren’t the breaking point on that. But I can imagine as I would even with my kids now who are alive and well, I still think about what could I have done differently in the last four years.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

You want to do the best you can, so it makes complete sense. I think it’s one of those things where as you were describing your brother, all these other young men that I know were popping up in my head who have passed away, similar situations, struggle connecting, very talented. Ended up isolated and just couldn’t connect with a community which, which created an isolated environment. And isolation fuels alcoholism. We call alcoholism, it’s a disease of isolation. I can see the whole thing playing out. Your brother it sounds to me like there was a really deep desire for your family to have him tell you what it is that he needed. I heard you say, tell us what you need, tell us what you need, and we’ll give it to you, we’ll do it for you.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I was having flashbacks of conversations that I’ve had where people who love and care about you want you to be able to tell them, what do you need to get better? And you’re telling them I want to get better, I don’t want to be doing this anymore. And they’re saying, “Okay, what do you need from us?” And they’re willing to do anything, and the problem is that we don’t know what we need. And we desperately want to, and we make shit up. And we think that this might work. If I took this medicine or I went to this place or I saw this therapist and I joined this club or whatever we think, I got this job. We guess on what we need, but the truth is that we don’t know what we need.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And it’s one of the most frustrating parts of being the person, the addict, if you will, the person with the substance use disorder is you can see in other people’s eyes the desperation, you can see in your family’s eyes the desperation. You know what you’re doing and you wanted to stop, and you literally can’t do anything or give any reason or come up with a solution. And it’s so frustrating for everyone, for absolutely everyone.

Vanessa Hurr:

I 100% believe that. And again, it’s the conversation between like, well, what do you need, and what do we think you need? And as a family you’re constantly on call because someone is going to get a call in the middle of the night from wherever he was. After that three-year period of time when he relapsed and it was a very dramatic fall from grace, we had collectively decided that since we couldn’t get him into an intensive inpatient in Wisconsin through like a Medicare or Medicaid program that we were able to do that through California. So now he’s in California in Long Beach at Changing Spirits getting treatment. And they’re feeding us information. Again, a lot of it is second-hand news because you’re like, “Okay, well, I talked to this person at the treatment facility who talked to mom, and the next step is this. But then he left and now we don’t know where he is.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Who’s with us now?

Vanessa Hurr:

Right, exactly. And he’s on the streets. And I think the only thing scarier than him falling off the map here in Wisconsin, you don’t hear from him for a couple of weeks and you’re calling hospitals trying to figure out where he is is getting a phone call from a hospital in another state that says, “Hey, someone found him on the street, he has third-degree sunburns from being passed out on the sidewalk. He’s here at X hospital.” And then you’re like, “Could this get any worse? Is this how this is all going to go down?” And then ultimately he ended up coming back, but it’s always all hands-on deck, always.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

He’s lucky because that’s not the case for everybody, he’s lucky. And there are people out there who cannot be saved. And I’ve had had to see that, and it is heartbreaking and frustrating. It’s interesting because, and I don’t know if you experienced this. I’ve talked to people who have been through what you’re talking about, even my mom used to say that the one thing about me being locked away somewhere was that she knew that she wasn’t going to get a phone call that I was dead. It was this crazy relief even if it was bad, whatever it was. She would say, “Even if you were home and using, I at least knew you were home. It was just this relief that I wasn’t going to get that phone call.” And I think in some ways some people have told me that there’s this horrible feeling of relief that it’s finally over when they get that phone call is that they knew it was coming. And there’s this obviously horrible feeling you losing your loved one and also a feeling of relief that the suffering is over for everyone.

Vanessa Hurr:

See, that’s so strange to me because when I thought Matt was no longer suffering that I would feel a sense of relief, and I haven’t felt that yet. And when he was incarcerated during the time that that pandemic hit, we get a phone call and they say, “Okay, well, Matt’s not a violent offender anymore, so we have to let him out of the jail.” They don’t offer you any place, we can’t have him here. It’s COVID, everyone’s freaking out, things are very scary. He goes to stay with my parents because there’s nowhere else for him to go who ended up putting him in an extended stay motel situation. And I’m calling treatment centers, and I’m calling him. And I’m saying, “Are you open to treatment again?” You don’t know how long he’s not going to be incarcerated.

Vanessa Hurr:

Things were still very weird and new surrounding coronavirus when it happened in March of 2020. And then it was my son’s first birthday, and we were having a Zoom party as you do during COVID. It was April 26th. And I remember my family members joining in with me, we all sang, we had cake. It was a beautiful sunny day. And a few hours afterwards is when I got a call from my mom saying that they had found Matt at the motel and that he had passed away. There was no relief in getting a phone call like that. So of course you envision it a million times over in your head as to what that’s going to look like or sound like. And I just remember having to pack a bag and trying to get in the car and there’s balloons and gifts and stuff from this party.

Vanessa Hurr:

And just having to say, “I can’t put them to bed tonight and just give him a kiss for me, and I have to go.” And we got there before the police got to the motel and we just sat with him. And at least you’re surrounded with your family, but we were just crying for not just the loss of life but the life that we had wanted for him. And that was just so shitty. And to hear your parents make sounds while they’re sobbing that you’ve never heard before is just, again, you’ve envisioned it a million times as to what that will look like. And I never in my wildest dreams could have envisioned it like that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Were all your siblings there with you?

Vanessa Hurr:

No, my sister was there, my parents were there, and I was there. And my twin brother was still living in Seattle. So he ended up coming in shortly afterwards. But it was just a surreal day. And we were getting little bits of information from people that were also at the motel about who had been there with him and how late this other person had been there. We can see what’s transpired in this motel room. And so of course, they’re going to do a toxicology report. And we already have a good understanding of maybe what’s happened. But of course, we ultimately found out that he had ingested a lethal dose of fentanyl with the cocaine that he had been ingesting, which wasn’t really what I had expected. I suspected an overdose, but really that was just more devastating but also blatantly obvious too.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Stay tuned to hear more in just a moment.

Christiana:

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Christiana:

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PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [0:37:49]

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The thing that’s terrifying to me hearing about that aside from all of the really obvious things is that people are putting fentanyl in cocaine. I’m sure that your brother didn’t know that because most people who get cocaine aren’t looking for an opioid. And that’s the kind of climate that we have today that didn’t exist when I was a kid the same way. And it is really, really terrifying. Doing cocaine, you could get really addicted, it could be bad. But for the most part, most people, again, most people weren’t going to overdose on cocaine. The odds were not there. Putting fentanyl into some of this stuff is just, I don’t know, I don’t even know what to think about that.

Vanessa Hurr:

Terrifying. And as someone who has experimented with a lot of things, it had never dawned on me that’s what could happen. To lose a sibling to that and to know that it takes the teeniest tiniest speck yep for this to happen is devastating. It makes me hurt for other families, it makes me hurt for young people that wanted to experiment or explore any number of things. Oh my gosh, it’s just too much, it’s very sad.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. You joined a club you didn’t want to be a part of.

Vanessa Hurr:

Peter said that to me once. And it was very nice to be with a community of people. I’ve been a professional photographer for almost a decade. And when coronavirus happened, of course, I have all these clients that suddenly need to cancel their contracts and can no longer host the live events that they were envisioning. So I was out of work and quickly was able to fall in with the Lionrock team. And I just felt like, when this all went down, I was exactly where I was supposed to be. And to be with people that not only were able to speak a language to me during my grief in a way that I could understand was a way that a lot of the people around me especially during such an unnerving time didn’t know how to talk to me or didn’t know how to show up for me. And it was very bizarre.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

That’s really interesting, I hadn’t thought about that. It was funny because when we were recruiting Peter, you report directly to Peter who’s our CEO and is my father. When we were going through the resumes and the requisitions, I was very specific with the team that I wanted to approve the person who was going to be the right fit because I know him very well and I know what he needs, that sort of thing. And it was very funny because I watched them all, and I was positive, he wasn’t sure and I was like, “No, this is your one, watch the whole thing to the end,” whatever. He’s like, “Oh, you’re totally right.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I very much had this strong pull to you specifically. And my father is someone who lost a sibling and fought the same fight with the parents, the phone calls, the trying everything, the anger, the not talking, all this stuff. And you end up being three weeks after you start at the company. And you weren’t in substance use disorder, you were a photographer. This was not an obvious next step. So the fact that you were all of the things … Not an obvious next step. The fact that you were where you were when this happened, actually, it was very surprising to me. I was like, “Wow, you really are experiencing exactly what it is that goes on, what our clients feel, what the families feel, what we’ve felt.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I was really grateful that you were getting that exposure and that community in a way that you had access to it. You’re right, a lot of people don’t know what to say. And from what I’ve heard with suicide as well, friends of mine have said that people when a loved one dies from some type of self-inflicted something that there’s stigma around it. And people are uncomfortable and don’t know how to talk about it and might even talk about it in derogatory ways. And of course, I’m so involved in this community, having grown up in Alcoholics Anonymous and having been to treatment forever. I don’t experience a lot of that normal stuff because most of the people in my life are very, very well-versed. Was that something that you experienced where there was any negative or awkward conversations about how to support you as a result of the type of death that Matt suffered?

Vanessa Hurr:

No. In fact, I almost feel like it was the opposite. I had so many people that messaged me or emailed or texted or sent me Instagram messages that shared their own stories with me. Not only from their own personal struggle, which you would never know behind closed doors or of their spouse, of their children, of their friends that. I had one incredibly kind message that I revisited over and over, and over again in the weeks after Matt’s death. And he talked about how he had been incarcerated with Matt. And he just talked about Matt’s personality and his kindness and the camaraderie and friendship that he showed this other person when they were in this incredibly hard situation and they’re detoxing. And they’re in jail for an extended stay.

Vanessa Hurr:

And I just thought, wow, I was not expecting love to show up in that way. And at the same time, it was heartbreaking because people would normally come to your home to bring you food, take you out somewhere, do all these things. And there was just no room for that. And the waiting game of trying to be able to have a memorial for someone and honor them when the world is-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

As a result of COVID.

Vanessa Hurr:

Right. When the world has shut down is non-existent. And so we waited, and we waited. And then I believe it was June when we finally we had memorial service for Matt. So it was outside, it was a beautiful sunny day overlooking a lake where he fished frequently. But up until that point, there was a few people, and I will never forget the kindness and the generosity and the love that they showed me in creative ways due to COVID that they expressed their sympathies for me. I even had one girlfriend that showed up once with tacos and [inaudible 00:45:26] and chips, COVID be damned. And she sat with me and we just cried into a [inaudible 00:45:33], that was it. Bt it was really hard for people.

Vanessa Hurr:

I’m sure that there were people that wanted to come and be with our family but were too scared, and they had their own reasons. But that’s heartbreaking in its own sense. But there was people that I will just always be thankful for that said, “I’m going to come. I’m not comfortable being around other people, I’m going to be in my car in the parking lot. I want you to know that I’m here.” Just the things that people did because even if they didn’t understand exactly what we were going through, they loved my family and I, and I just appreciated that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah, yeah. Many of us don’t know how to show up for people in those times or what to say. And sometimes literally being there knowing that you’re not alone or some sort of any gesture is important. It sounds like that made a huge difference. Especially the stories, that was huge.

Vanessa Hurr:

Yeah. There was one line, I had written a post on Instagram about what our family was going through at the time and that people were seemingly attracted to or were messaging me about it. And I just said that Matt’s battle with addiction that ultimately took his life wasn’t and never will be his defining characteristic. And it seemed to be a common ground that a lot of people understood. And they said that’s the way that I feel about what happened to my spouse or my partner or my sibling. And I obviously didn’t realize when I wrote it, but I was appreciative that people could connect with me in that way and that they understood what I was trying to say.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. What you were trying to say was this disease was not who he was truly under all of it.

Vanessa Hurr:

Not even in the slightest. When I think of Matt, I think of the fact that he won tutor of the year twice at his college. I think of the blonde hair, little boy with the bull cut that would ride around on his bike. He was silly, and he was kind. And as my sister’s husband would say, he’d be like, “He’s the nicest one out of all of you.” He had his own battle with addiction, but that’s not the way that I think of him not even in a heartbeat. I think of my big brother that took care of me, watched out for me. At a minimum, he was a friend to me. And growing up siblings can be especially heinous to each other, builds character, right?

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Totally builds character.

Vanessa Hurr:

But that was never the case for him. And that will never change because of how this went down, not even a little bit.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What did he do teach you? What did all of this, this whole from start to finish, what has his life taught you?

Vanessa Hurr:

Empathy. There was so many frustrations around the chaos that was constantly kamikazying around you when someone is in the throes of addiction and homelessness. And really learning to take a pause and just be with them no matter what stage of recovery they’re in or not in and just being with them. And that’s why I feel this point … Knowing what I know now, I no longer feel like I can say not my problem. I don’t get to sit back and not talk about it or facilitate a conversation or volunteer at the homeless shelter that he would stay at or do the incredibly important work that we do at Lionrock because there’s too much knowledge to share. There’s so many things that would have been so beneficial to my family had I known about Lionrock years ago. So it’s unfortunate that I was so late to the game with the tools that I could provide to help him. But I know that now. And gosh, there’s so much work to be done. Don’t you feel like that sometimes, there’s so much to do and there’s so much to share? It’s crazy.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I think that one of the interesting things for me. A lot of time people are really cryptic when someone dies of an overdose or whatever it is on social media, family members. I talk about this regularly, which is I recover out loud. That is not always pretty, but I insist on having the conversation. And what I have found is that by doing that, I have opened up a doorway for many people who would not otherwise be willing or able to have a conversation about what’s going on. Also, that as a result of doing that, people when they get into situations they didn’t think they’d get into, they think of me because we’ve had the conversation or because I’ve posted about it or, again, recovering out loud.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I think the family members are really important piece of that because we are one in a system, a family system. And that family system is suffering when someone is in the throes of addiction. And that family system is also affected when that person’s in recovery. I don’t know how long it took my family to stop waiting for that phone call, but I can guarantee you that every now and again it crosses their mind they could still get it. And now after 15 years of sobriety, getting that phone call would actually be a whole other ball game because when I was 19 years old and a kid, I didn’t have anything. You would have lost a child, they would have lost a child. But now they would lose their grandchildren’s mother, it’s different, the stakes get higher in some weird way.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

The longer I’m sober, the more serious it gets. And that’s not something I really thought about because I just thought, well, no, you stay sober longer, that’s better, that’s better, that’s good, that’s the goal, and it is. The stakes get higher, a lot higher, and it doesn’t mean you’re out of the woods. And that’s such a confusing part of it for family members. People expect me to talk about it just because of the field I’m in and where I’ve put myself. But when people like you post about it or talk about it and someone reaches out who knows you or knew Matt, and they’re able to tell you their story, they’re able to send you something about Matt. They’re able to say I was incarcerated with matter or they’re able to say my spouse went through this.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And like you said, you’d never know otherwise. Because you’re open about it, it gives people this permission. And when you talk about, we have all this work to do. I feel like the more we have these open conversations where we’re not showing up with shame about it, we’re talking about it as this person had Alzheimer’s and their brain deteriorated. It’s something that happens. The person with Alzheimer’s, the person they ended up being was not the person they were for all those other years. My grandmother who passed away as a result of Alzheimer’s in her end, she looked nothing, that was not the human being who was my grandmother. It was her at the end. And so talking about that process, if I’m talking about it in a way that’s shame-based, then I want to hide it. Things that are shameful we want to hide. So when we talk about it without shame, we’re opening the door for other people.

Vanessa Hurr:

A million times over. And it was a family discussion initially about how we wanted to talk about it and what the narrative was. Initially, my parents would never have wanted to do anything that might slander his name or shed a negative light. And what my sister and I always came back to is that there was no shame in Matt Wheeler. He was kind and generous and the guy that would give you the shirt off his back. He just so happened to also have an addiction that cost him his life. And so our narrative was always one of this is what happened, that’s not who he was, we love him. If you need support, try this. And we openly talk about it because we know just how many other families struggle. The older I get, I have so many friends that are in recovery or that are dealing with issues.

Vanessa Hurr:

And especially now that I’ve been more closely in communication with people that have reached out since my brother’s passing, it gets easier and easier to have a conversation about. Now, of course, I’ll have days when we’re working, and I’ll feel like I’m having a completely normal day. And someone will say something and just tears. It’s hard to talk about sometimes while we’re still processing. It’s barely been over a year since he passed. But at the same time, it’s more therapeutic than it is anything else to work through the grief and to get more knowledge about all of the things surrounding his addiction, other people’s addiction. And as we talk about at Lionrock the art of recovery, what can we do to continue to show up for a community of people so there isn’t shame and stigma in activities that make life so wonderful? What if you could show up to a race and instead of getting a drink ticket for the after party, they could give you a ticket to grab a coffee or a smoothie?

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [0:56:02]

Vanessa Hurr:

What if there’s a special space where we can carve out where you’re with like-minded individuals who also want to do fun things in the community? And it’s not surrounded by booze because I always go back to my brother saying, “I really want to do this and I’m sober, but I don’t know anyone else who is.”

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I thought about doing a post about this recently. My youngest sister is getting married, and she had her bachelorette in Napa.

Vanessa Hurr:

I saw.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

When you were talking about your brother, I was thinking about this like, “I’d like to go do this.” She had her bachelorette in Napa. And I love wine, oh my God, I love wine. Probably because it’s alcohol and sugar, so sign me up. And I can’t be in a winery, I’ve tried, I can go to bars. Over the years I’ve been able, but I cannot do wine tastings. I can’t be there, it’s too much for me, it overwhelms my system whereas being in a bar does not. And so I couldn’t figure out, how am I going to show up for my sister? How am I going to do this? How am I going to be a part of this celebration show? And I was taught different things right in my community.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And one of the things that I was taught was that we can bring someone who’s sober with us. And so I asked my sister if I could bring my best friend who’s sober. And luckily, my best friend’s been a part of all of our lives forever, and she said yes. So my sober best friend came with me. We drove all the girls around, we were the DDs. I didn’t go to the wine tasting, I hung out with my best friend at the house that we rented in Napa. I didn’t go on the things that we’re drinking, but I got to go to the dinners. I was there in the off time, the downtime. They were drinking in the house, that didn’t bother me.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I knew I’m 15 years clean and sober. I know things that are triggering, and I also know the stakes. Sometimes I think to myself, these are the types of things to talk about because they’re the hard skills, ask if you can bring someone with you, bring a sober friend, meet a sober friend. But in order to do that, you have to have had a sober friend. You have to have sober people you can call. And I think that’s what it comes back to is being a part of a sober community of people who are doing the same thing you’re doing is really important because that’s where you’re going to get the nuggets of how to do this day-to-day. What to do if you’re overwhelmed by the feeling to drink or use or what to do if you’ve been devastated and need that anesthesia, what do you do if your family, whatever it is.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

And I so often see people, they get the abstinence piece but they forget the community part. My family is part of that sober community. They’re not sober, but they speak the language of sobriety or they’ll tell me to call my sponsor. That network, it’s invaluable. I think you have this precious gift through the pain, which is always where the gifts come from. Through the pain of being able to reach other family members and talk to them about how to simultaneously remember who they were while also offering support to people who are not in that place, who are beyond who they were.

Vanessa Hurr:

A million times over. And I just think about how … Oh, gosh, sorry, I don’t even where to go with that. Just another one of the many things that you would have wanted for someone you care so much about to have been surrounded with not even just their family. Because I’m sure sometimes it’s like your family is just talking in your ear, and you’re over it. And you don’t want to get another call from your baby sister or your little sister or your parents. But just to have had more people in the community that we could have or he could have curated to lift him up on days when he had a hard time lifting himself up or just making it through to the next day because sometimes it’s just one more day, just get through today, tomorrow’s a new day.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yep. What is something, advice or words of wisdom, however you want to phrase it that you would give to someone who’s at the beginning of the grief process who just lost a sibling or a loved one to this disease and is looking down the barrel of trying to go on? What is some advice that you could give them, something maybe you wish someone had said to you?

Vanessa Hurr:

The grieving process is such a strange one, especially when you have like young children at your home. My kids were one and three when my brother passed. Kids don’t understand personal space or the grieving process, and that it’s-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Kids have no chill.

Vanessa Hurr:

Right. I would tell people to just let the grief wash over you. And when you’re ready, use that grief to propel you forward into using it for the greater good. Take what you’ve learned and take the struggle and do something with it. Because every time we’re able to do something really powerful with the work that we do at Lionrock or when I go to this homeless shelter, and I clean the kitchen every other Friday because to me it feels like a basic human need to be able to go to a safe place and get a meal that’s been prepared in a kitchen that meets or exceeds health code standards. I would say, put your grief to use but take care of number one first.

Vanessa Hurr:

I feel like, and this is just a personal thing, I wouldn’t expect everyone to feel this strongly, but I feel like silence and a failure to act at this point would be a betrayal to not only my brother but my family and my friends because I know too much. And there’s a lot that can come out of this horrible thing that’s happened. And I would also encourage people to just chill out a little bit if people don’t show up for you the way that you assumed that they would. Because there was so many times where I felt hurt because people didn’t know how to talk to me about it, it seems like, or show up. And it turns out that they did in the way that they knew how, and it was perfect, it was just different than I expected. And I’m appreciative of that.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Expectations are future resentments as they say. It’s super hard, it’s super hard when you have ideas about how it’s going to be, and then it’s different. It’s not necessarily bad, but it’s just different.

Vanessa Hurr:

It’s just different.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

But you expected it to be something, so your brain automatically is labeling the experience. Well, I think that the beauty of having this conversation is in that I get to know Matt and the listeners get to know Matt. And so many of us can relate to the the story of Matt of like this isn’t who we are, this is something that happened. And this is where we ended up. And the family component is without a doubt one of the least talked about pieces of addiction. And it is so, so, so, so important. So the work that you’re doing, being vocal about it, talking to people about it is really, really important because so often the family has no idea what to do. It isn’t their fault, but they can affect. The family can help, and they can hinder. There are ways to reach out to professionals or reach out to people who know about this stuff. And I think you’re going to be one of those people, that resource. And you’re now recovering, you’re now part of that community.

Vanessa Hurr:

In a way that I never could have expected. But truly, I’m flattered to be a part of this community now because it’s opened up an entire world that I never even knew existed.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. Well, we’re happy to have you. And thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. The memory of Matt Wheeler lives on. And I look forward to seeing all the stuff that you’re going to do because I know you’re going to take this and make this something huge and amazing and help a lot of people.

Vanessa Hurr:

We’re hoping to. hope people will follow along in the future. I’m going to be traveling around the country over the course of the next year. I’m going to be writing a cookbook with a friend geared towards people-

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

What kind of cookbook? In recovery?

Vanessa Hurr:

For people in recovery. Again, going back to Matt, he and other people that I’ve encountered in my life that were in the throes of addiction, it was not uncommon for them to be getting entire meals from 7-Eleven or have a freezer filled with hungry man meals because instead of using their younger years to really hone in on things like cooking skills or learning how to do their taxes, you’re getting high or getting drunk. I want to humanize and shed some light on these people that are amazing human beings but also happen to have substance abuse issues. And also set them up for success no matter what stage of recovery they’re in by cooking with them, sharing with them some dietary health benefits and ways to prepare food and just really tailor a meal that’s suited to them and their specific recovery.

Vanessa Hurr:

And I always come back to how can we continue to set people up for success in a way that I wish I could have done more for my brother or for people that I’ve known in my life that I care about that are still in the recovery process? As you know, it’s a lifelong thing, but it’s going to be an adventure. And we’ll see how it goes, but it’s going to be fun. I’m excited about it.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Are you going to be documenting these travels? What’s the travel plan?

Vanessa Hurr:

Yeah. So we are still in the early stages of bringing on people that are interested in being a part of this project. But I’d love for people to share their story with us, and I would obviously document it from a photography perspective. And then also they’ll have access to a private chef where they can talk about things that are really bothering them in the recovery process, whether it’s inflammation or if it’s something as extreme as cirrhosis and lifelong ailments as you get your body back to a place where you feel good about yourself and you feel healthy because fit in and fit out. It doesn’t matter if you’re a female or a male or what your economic statuses or where you live or your upbringing, it’s people from all different walks of life.

Vanessa Hurr:

And I want to share that and showcase who these humans are in the same way that I knew who my brother was. Because if we had been able to come to him and say, you want to have a date with that girl, you don’t have to go out. Why don’t you prepare a meal for her? Why don’t you offer to cook for her? Or why don’t you have some friends over and make a meal and have a barbecue or find a way to connect via food? That’s so essential to our health and how we feed our body and our brain and how we set ourselves up for a healthy lifestyle.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Yeah. I love that, I love that.

Vanessa Hurr:

It’s going to be fun.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Where can people find you, reach out to you, follow your progress and look out for this cookbook?

Vanessa Hurr:

Instagram is the best way. It’s my name Vanessa Hurr, H-U-R-R. And we’ll just be posting updates and reels and all that good stuff. It’s going to be fun, and it’s going to be an adventure. And we’ll be across the US all over the place throughout 2022. So it’ll be a long project, but I hope people really enjoy getting to see this immense labor of love that we’re working on and how we can show up for people that are part of this huge, huge community.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

I love it. And you also wanted to put The Beacon website they helped your brother tremendously. That is www.thebeaconhelps.org, the B-E-A-C-O-N helps.org.

Vanessa Hurr:

They were instrumental in giving him a hot meal on a day when he was on the streets, providing resources to him such as where he could find a bed to lay his head at night. I remember going there one time during his recovery process and working on his resume in the computer lab that they provided for free. So it was an incredible resource for people that needed a safe haven for a day, for an extended period of time or just for a hot meal. So I love The Beacon.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Awesome. Thank you so much, Vanessa.

Vanessa Hurr:

Thank you for having me, it’s so good to see your face. You’re a wealth of information, I appreciate this conversation, I appreciate you. And thanks for letting me do this today, it’s helpful to talk about.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

Well, you did a fantastic job, thank you so much.

Ashley Loeb Blassingame:

This podcast is sponsored by Lionrock.life. Lionrock.life is a recovery community offering free online support group meetings, useful recovery information and entertainment. Visit www.lionrock.life to view the meeting schedule and find additional resources. Find the joy in recovery at Lionrock.life.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [1:06:20]