How do you deeply love someone through addiction, mental-health struggles and chronic chaos—without completely losing yourself in the process?
In Part One of this deeply personal two-part conversation, you will discover:
- How to remain connected to yourself while someone you love is engulfed in chaos
- The critical difference between loving someone and losing yourself while trying to save them
- How love can continue without enabling destructive behavior
- What it takes to find meaning, purpose and even joy after devastating loss
- Why surviving the unthinkable can become a profound catalyst for self-evolution
Ann Marie Farino joins Karen Love Lee to share the extraordinary and heartbreaking journey behind her forthcoming memoir, Chronic Chaos: A Son's Addiction, a Mother's Love, and Her Quest to Find Joy.
Ann Marie loved her son, Richard, through years of addiction, mental-health challenges and escalating family chaos before losing him to suicide. Yet this conversation is not solely about how Richard died. It is about how Ann Marie survived, evolved and learned to live again without denying the depth of her love or the magnitude of her grief.
Karen brings her own double-ended connection to this conversation: surviving a suicide attempt herself and later losing her beloved sister to suicide. Together, Karen and Ann Marie explore both sides of suicide loss—the internal suffering of the person who wants to die and the life-altering journey faced by those left behind.
This is The Power of Self-EVOLution in its rawest form: discovering that even when you cannot control or save someone you love, you can choose not to abandon yourself. You can grieve, love, evolve and gradually reclaim your capacity for joy.
Preorder Ann Marie Farino's book, Chronic Chaos, before its October 13, 2026 release:
https://www.amazon.com/Chronic-Chaos-Addiction-Mothers-Quest/dp/B0H7YNBT8J
