Poetic License

I am planning for retirement now, with the help of a financial planner. I do not have a lot of money, and it will take discipline—real discipline—for the next eighteen months and beyond. I could have had more. That part is true. By the time I turn sixty‑five, I will have spent most of what I earned in my working lifetime.

But much of that money was spent trying to save my daughter. And after she died, trying to survive the life that remained.

Right now, stories about Nick Reiner are everywhere—news articles, podcasts, comment sections filled with certainty. Watching them has shaken me more than I expected. They have pulled me back into a place I know too well. Parents argue online about what Rob and Michele Reiner should have done differently, as if love were a lever you can pull harder, or withdraw entirely, to guarantee an outcome. Some say they should have cut their son off.

Those comments sting.

My daughter, Stephanie, was not so different from Nick. Would I have booted her out of my life? Never. There were times when she was homeless because she would not follow the rules at home or agree to get help. But severing love was never an option. Love was the only constant I had to offer.

Stephanie had her first psychotic break when she was fourteen. Looking back, I believe the illness had been there longer, quietly shaping her inner world before we had language for it. That night after dinner, when she finally told us about the voices, our lives split cleanly into before and after. The next day she was hospitalized. She stayed for two weeks, then entered an outpatient day program near our home in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

At the time, I was working in downtown Washington, D.C., building a career at NASA. I shifted my hours so I could attend afternoon sessions with her doctors and counselors. Later, I drove her to the outpatient program each morning and picked her up at three o’clock. I would be lying if I said I did not feel sadness and anger—anger at the randomness of it all. But she was my child. I was sworn to protect her, even when protection dismantled the life I thought I was building.

Her first diagnosis was “possible schizophrenia with dissociative episodes.” The word possible was offered like a small mercy. Later came bipolar disorder type I, major depressive disorder with psychotic features, anxiety, and the suggestion of dissociative identity disorder. Stephanie often changed the name she went by—Nikki, then later Morgan. When she died, many people knew her only as Morgan. On Facebook she was “Morgan Lilith Von Willebrand,” her page locked tight, even from her brother.

I do not believe she had dissociative identity disorder. I believe she was trying to outrun herself—to find distance from pain, from family, from a mind that frightened her. I believe the voices were real to her, and far more powerful than she was.

Stephanie was brilliant. She wanted to be a paleontologist from the age of four. Years later, she tutored statistics at community college. My ex‑husband, our son, and Stephanie used to cover the paper tablecloths at our favorite restaurant with complex math problems written in crayon. At the time, it made me feel small. I struggled with advanced algebra in high school. I didn’t understand the syntax then, and I thought the problem was me. Now I know better. It was training, not intelligence.

That same feeling—of being inadequate in the face of numbers—returned decades later when I sat down with a financial planner. The difference is that now I paid for help. Now I understand the permutations. Now I feel steadier.

As Stephanie grew older, her illness deepened. She cut herself, hiding the wounds where we would not see them. I learned the truth during a gynecological surgery, when the surgeon asked me, sharply, if I had seen her thighs. I had not. Stephanie never wore shorts. She was too old for me to see her bathing. I felt judged in a way that settled into my bones.

After that, I removed anything from our house that could be used as a blade. X‑ACTO knives disappeared. Scissors were locked away. It may not have mattered. Those who cut often find a way. Later I learned that cutting can be an attempt to interrupt psychic chaos—to pull oneself out of a spiral when the brain becomes a dangerous place.

Stephanie’s mind was a bad neighborhood. Voices lurked in the shadows, urging her toward harm. Over the years, her father and I tried everything. Community college. A GED after she rejected high school. She had dreams of becoming a surgical technician, then of pre‑med, then of any four‑year degree. Each time she faltered, we told ourselves she was getting better. Hope is stubborn that way.

We supported her financially until we were deep in debt. She would come to one of us for money, then the other. We did not keep score. We were trying to keep her alive.

She died in 2009 from an overdose of Percocet and Seroquel, with Xanax in her system. Her death split us open. For a time, I believe I lost my own mind. Grief is not linear; it is tidal.

For years, I believed that if we had only done more—if we had only had more money—we could have saved her. Then I read His Bright Light, Danielle Steel’s account of her son Nick, who died by overdose despite round‑the‑clock supervision and unlimited resources. Money did not save him either.

Now I read about Nick Reiner. I learn that his parents spent seventy thousand dollars a month on treatment that still did not offer inpatient care. I see the familiar medications, the same risks, the same impossible balancing acts. I recognize the truth I resist but know: there are limits to what love, money, and vigilance can do.

Is it any wonder I struggle to imagine a future shaped by anything other than survival? Is it any wonder I have become careful with people, keeping them at arm’s length? When your life has been defined by emergency, peace can feel unreal.

Years ago, a financial planner told my husband and me, bluntly, “You’re screwed.” We were in our forties then. We walked out devastated and filed a complaint. I did not see another planner until this past Thursday. Before we began, I asked him not to speak to me that way. I needed facts, yes—but I also needed hope.

In retirement, I will no longer be spending money on my daughter. That truth is both a relief and a heartbreak. I would have opened a vein and bled for her. I would have given up my life for hers. Instead, I am here.

I survived self‑neglect and depression after she died. I survived cancer and a stroke. I survived the loss that should have ended me. Now I am learning how to plan for a future I never expected to have.

I am here. And I have to believe that will be enough.

Namaste,
Jude