Huffpost published my latest essay about my son
And then the Daily Mail scraped my social media accounts to run weird photos with a story they wrote as if they'd interviewed me.
Before I talk about this essay, which I was excited to have published yesterday by HuffPost, I want to share a story.
A few years ago, I pulled over to observe a traffic stop. Three local police cars with their lights on were surrounding a car driven by a Black man, and I just thought I’d get out and film. The police officers were fine with me watching them (we have a great local police chief and a lot of good people on our force; one local cop got stabbed in the neck at a Dunkin Donuts a few years back and only shot the stabber in the leg, so they really seem to avoid lethal force, and they made an outraged statement after George Floyd’s murder), but a priest came out of a local house and started berating me for making trouble. He told me he was a pastor for the police officers and could personally vouch for them.
I said given all the police shootings of innocent Black people that had recently taken place across the country, I was just going to stand watch, no offense. He did take offense, though, and grew furious, insisting we didn’t need any of that Black Lives Matter trouble around here. Eventually a Black woman came running up the street to drive the Black man’s car away after it turned out his license was expired, and she thanked me for watching, said the guy had appreciated that I was there. I posted about it later on Facebook.
What happened next took me by surprise: a Worcester-based website directed by a terrible troll (whom I won’t name here because I don’t want anyone giving his website any traffic) did a hit piece on me. He scraped my social media accounts for photos and learned everything he could about me from my public record. He called my wife names (one of which is really funny, but again, if I repeat it, I fear you’ll find the story, and I don’t want this guy getting any traffic). He said my son had died of an overdose (something that wasn’t in my post about the traffic stop, obviously, but which he discovered by going through all my past posts) because I was a liberal, and he got his followers to come after me. Dozens of them wrote to tell me I deserved for my son to die. They posted this in comments on random posts and started adding vicious replies to every old post I had about my son.
I was stunned by the amount of hate being leveled at me. I have since seen this same whackjob do a similar troll-post about several local friends, personally attacking people’s children, pushing good people to resign from local boards to avoid the heat of this maniac targeting them. He is a horrible man who thankfully served some time in jail last year (for assaulting a woman, unsurprisingly), but he is back on his terrible website again, so once again, no one is safe.
I didn’t engage with anyone posting vitriole, and eventually the attacks stopped. Way to make a writer feel afraid, though! Which I understand is exactly their point; they know they scare us into silence, and they want it that way.
I share this story now to let you all know that I was prepared for the worst when Huffpost published on their website yesterday an essay I wrote about my son’s sexuality. I therefore wasn’t devastated when several commenters took time out of their busy days to write that my son died because of my behavior, my gayness, my liberal beliefs, or the lack of a father in Kyle’s life (a lack that he did not suffer, of course, but which readers assumed because I didn’t talk about Kyle’s father in my essay). I was ready for the several people who said that I deserved for my son to die because I’d raised him wrong … or gotten a divorce when he was between the ages of 7 and 14 … or that I had made both of my children gay… or that being a Massachusetts hippie made this outcome inevitable. Trolls gonna be trolling.
Fortunately, the vast majority of the commenters were compassionate and kind, and I mostly had my faith in humanity restored by people writing such comments as “Thank you for this gift. This will help other parents. You are brave to share so vulnerably.” I am brave, and reader support like that helps me be braver, so thanks to all of you who posted kind comments on the story or on my Facebook post about it.
Then another surprising thing happened. A friend wrote to tell me my essay was being featured as a top story on today’s Daily Mail. From England. What? I checked it out, and sure enough, the Daily Mail had created a story about my essay in which they quote me as though they interviewed me and share photos they scraped from my social media site. They shared one photo of me smiling like a fool while holding up the first copy I ever held of my book, an image that is wholly inappropriate to share with this sad story about my loss. Many commenters remarked that I looked awfully happy promoting my book while talking about my dead son. Ugh!

So then I felt compelled to reply to the many correct commenters to let them know I agreed, that was a terrible photo to run with this story, that I hadn’t authorized the Daily Mail to run that photo, that the original essay didn’t feature that photo, and that they could see the original essay here. I remember even at the time that I posted this photo I felt conflicted, like I didn’t want to look so happy about my book that people might think I was no longer sad my son was dead. But I had been publicly and continuously grieving online since my son died in 2016; five years had passed, and my (few!) social media followers knew about my long journey to having the book published in 2021, so I decided it was ok. (But only OK then, not now!)
The weirdest part of al this is that the Daily Mail randomly assigned me a username for my comments: TartanHealerAura—a perfect name for feeding the trolls. Ugh, again.
What is the lesson here? It takes courage to tell our stories and to know they may be misinterpreted or repeated incorrectly or shared with images we didn’t authorize. Sharing our vulnerable stories opens us up to attacks, and we need a thick skin to withstand those attacks, even if they are from complete strangers who don’t know a thing about us. But I believe sharing our full, authentic selves is the only way we will ever be able to heal, both ourselves and the world, so I can’t regret sharing this essay. And I’m praying Kyle doesn’t mind it, either.
Finally, one more surprise today. While searching for all the places the Huffpost essay got shared (on AOL and Yahoo, among other places — who knew that happened?), I found an essay I never knew was published. My submissions log said the online recovery magazine Renew was interested but then disappeared and stopped answering me—yet here the story is. It’s a good one; I like it better, actually, than the one that just got published, as it speaks more immediately to the lesson I most wanted to impart after my son’s death. But I wish I’d known it had been published! Anyway, I hope you read it. Here’s one of the pictures that ran with it, one I authorized and love:
And thank you all for being kind in the comments of whatever you read.
Your candidness and willingness to speak up, speak out and tell your truth has been consistently inspirational. Having also been trolled by the people you mention in Mass., I know how horrible it can feel. I hope you can take comfort from the many who have your back and are with you on your journey through all its difficult unfoldings, recognizing the importance of compassion and holding you in the light.
My son took his life in 2021. His ‘illness’ was depression, though I do wonder now if it was bi-polar 2. Like you I write to stand in fellowship with other parents who are going through complex grief after the tragic loss of their child. Guilt abounds, if we let it. I am so sorry your amazing work in this field has been misunderstood and misused. Theirs is the shame to carry.