Ron Menard

The BenAddiction Ron Menard

The Sun is bright this morning, laying low in the sky this February morning. Temps are in the twenty's and a perfect day to peer through the back window of our cape cod style home and reflect on days gone by. For many, this would bring heartache and sorrow due to the loss of a loved one. For me it brings mixed emotions as today is the day I release a story written over seven years. "The BenAddiction" is a book about hope, about love, about a community's desire to save a life tied to addiction.

Through the seven year journey an amazing story unfolds, including the gifts and blessings bestowed upon a family from a community reeling from loss. The book speaks about the darkest of times in a family's life, and how through that battle, they emerge more alive and grateful for life than ever before. They see life ever so differently now and recognize the power of faith and God in their life's.

Hindsight being 20/20, reveals the daily miracles that occurred over the seven years to bring this family from bondage to a place that has new meaning for them. With the gifts of compassion and understanding bestowed, their daily life is profoundly changed. A small rural community has rallied to help a family save a life and the lives that emerged from those darkest of days would bring light to others.

It speaks about a Perfect Storm, when Opiate Addiction and Cancer collided to create a concoction of formidable human resolve to beat both diseases. It speaks to the heart through raw emotions. It talks of God's grace given to many, even though some have appeared to have lost all. It looks at two incredibly strong women who have lost sons and how they took that pain and offered more love and light to others then most could fathom.

A book that started out to be critical of addicts and perfused with warnings to stay clear, morphed into a story that begs that we engage in this and other life's most difficult challenges, only through that engagement do we grow, while finding and supplying blessings more abundantly