From the Deepest Pain to Purpose: My Journey Through Loss, Addiction, and Hope

Krisstee Pierce
May 22, 2025
3 min read

Updated: May 24, 2025

By Krisstee Pierce

Nine years ago, my life changed forever.

My granddaughter lived to be one year and one and a half days old. And in that one short, beautiful year, she gave me more joy than I could’ve imagined. Those were the best days of my life.

Then the nightmare began.

Losing her shattered everything. I didn’t know how to feel. I was angry, confused, broken, scared, and so deeply lost. I kept asking God, “Why?” Why her? Why us?

Six months after she passed, everything in my family started to fall apart. The grief caught up with us in ways we couldn’t even name. My daughter who was grieving the loss of her own daughter to a heart problem and my other daughter was also grieving the loss of her niece and trying to survive their own pain turned to addiction.

And just like that, I didn’t just lose my granddaughter… I lost both my daughters too.

Drowning Quietly in the Pain

I didn’t know how to help them. I didn’t even know how to help myself. I started putting up walls around my heart. I was too scared to love anyone else because I couldn’t survive losing someone again.

So I went numb.

I started gambling. Not because I loved it, but because it helped me not to think. All I had to do was push a button. I didn’t have to feel anything.

My husband started drinking more. Addiction crept into every corner of our home, like a silent storm. Everything just kept getting worse.

One of my daughters had two more babies. I ended up raising them for a while. The other daughter lost both of hers to addiction they were adopted out. By God’s grace, I get to see one of them because her adoptive family allows it. But it’s not the same. She doesn’t really know me like the others do. And the youngest? I only see him in pictures.

That grief of watching your children suffer from the death of her own daughter and not being able to help her and my other daughter of losing children to the system… it’s a grief no one talks about. But it’s real. And it nearly destroyed me.

I Was Just Existing

I went through life numb for four years. I worked. I came home. I laid on the couch. I binge-watched TV or I went to the casino. That was it. I wasn’t living. I was surviving.

In 2015 I had 6 deaths of loved ones . 2017. I lost my mom.But the only one I could feel was my granddaughter. I couldn’t even cry for my mom until eight years later.

Grief does that to you. It scrambles everything inside.

But then… one day…

I Woke Up and Chose Life

I woke up and thought, “I don’t want to just survive anymore. I want to live.”

That was the turning point.

I made an appointment with a therapist and I swear to you, that woman saved my life. Or better yet, she helped me save my own life. I started healing. I started laughing again. I found myself again. Not the same me as before, but a stronger, softer, wiser version.