Grammy-winning singer Melissa Etheridge recently opened up about how she is processing the death of her 21-year-old son Beckett. She was speaking on the Making Space with Hoda Kotb podcast when she said her system of beliefs about love changed after her son’s death.
Melissa Etheridge, who lost her son to opioid addiction in 2020, said it was a heartbreaking experience but it taught her how to love better. “When I lost my son, I learned how much my capacity for love was,” she said.
Related: Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Accused of Drugging, Sexually Assaulting and Videotaping Woman In 1991
Melissa Says Dealing With Grief Comes With Practice
Now a mother to a daughter Bailey with her husband Cyphen, Melissa said the grief her family is dealing with is “Practice“. “Not only loving him and missing him\ and being okay but loving myself enough not to go into major depression and guilt and shame which so many families that lose loved ones to opioid addiction, just the shame is too big,” she said.
“It’s huge. So, I had to believe that there’s an over-surrounding love to everything. Everything is love,” she added.
She said there are certain days still when “the shadow comes on me“. “And I find myself thinking, ‘Oh, what if? What if I had done this? What if I had only done that?’ And that doesn’t serve me, and it causes me pain,” the musician said.
In case you missed: Was Nicki Minaj A Drug Addict?
Melissa Believes Her Son Is Still With Her
She also underlined the need to believe that her son is still there with her, which needs her “to be in a joyous space“. “So when I’m in a dark space, I’m away from all of my loved ones. It’s my job to find my space again, of loving myself, going, ‘No, no, I did the best I could. And he made his choices‘,” she continued.
In a conversation with People in September, Melissa said she looks at Beckett’s life as a “great time of living and learning.” “I can look at my son’s death as a great loss, or I can look at it as his time here was a great time of living and learning. He’s taught me so much, and I find great comfort in him in the non-physical,” she said.
The musician also opened up about her book, ‘Talking to My Angels‘, and said it helped her be “upfront and open” about his death.
You might also like to read: Covid Vaccine, Drugs And Suicide: Matthew Perry’s Death Fills Internet With Conspiracy Theories
