What I Should Have Said: A Poetry Memoir About Losing A Child to Addiction by Lanette Sweeney

“These beautifully crafted poems, written by a mother mourning the death of her son, absolutely slayed me. Starting with the first line of the first poem, I read this collection straight through with my heart in my throat.  Reader, prepare yourself: once you start reading What I Should Have Said, you won’t be able to stop. After reading these poignant poems, which are full of joy as well as sorrow, I feel that I, too, knew Kyle, and I miss him very much.”

–Lesléa Newman, author of I Carry My Mother and I Wish My Father

I was deeply moved by Lanette Sweeney’s manuscript, What I Should Have Said, a raw chronicle of a bereaved mother’s journey through losing her child to the disease of addiction. Sweeney’s story is punctuated by her son Kyle Fisher-Hertz’s poetic descriptions of his own life struggles.

Every grieving parent will relate to the emotions that are poured out from Sweeney’s broken heart onto every page. I’ve been struggling with the death of our second son, Christopher, and reading Sweeney’s words, straight from her heart, really helped me move forward in my grief. Her brutal honesty allowed me to process Christopher’s death from alcohol addiction. I’m encouraged by her “List of Hopes” at the end of the book and have begun writing my own list.

I thank the author for shedding light on the darkness and stigma attached to the disease of addiction and for reminding us that our children were and are so much more than their addictions.

–Kathy Corrigan, Board President, Bereaved Parents of the USA

If it were fiction, if it did not lacerate the heart to know the truth behind it, Lanette Sweeney’s poetry memoir about losing a child to drugs would only be tragically beautiful. As it is, it is devastating, featuring poetry by her lost son Kyle [Fisher-Hertz] along with her own. Speaking the unspeakable for her own peace, and for the understanding of the rest of us, is Sweeney’s mission. The only thing better than reading these tender, elegiac, broken words would be for her to never have needed to write them.

–Jacquelyn Mitchard, author, The Deep End of  the Ocean and 18 other novels.