What happens when you feel your feelings? You don’t get stuck. You don’t get stuck in bitterness, resentment, shame, or a host of other negative places where I see people stall out or begin to push their partner away.
Today I talk to the mother of Nicholas Rizzo who died of an opioid overdose. I wanted you to hear from Katie Rizzo, Nicholas’s mother so you can have a deeper understanding of the family life of an addict.
- Katie reminds us that addiction is a family disease: The whole family suffers.
- I wanted you to hear how Katie is gentle with herself, her husband, and her two surviving sons, Max and Joey.
- Because you’ll never regret choosing love.
Love can be complicated.
Today I have a beautiful and difficult conversation I want to share with you. My conversation with Katie Rizzo deals with death, grief, and addiction. But mostly it’s a conversation about Love.
“Hug your son tight.” This was the message from my new friend, Katie Rizzo. Katie’s son, Nicholas died of an opioid overdose when he was 25.
One of the things I took away from my conversation was how, over and over Katie chose love. She had just completed her third year of medical school when her first son, Nicholas, was born. She had daycare all lined up and was prepared to head back to school. But then this Yale Graduate fell in love with being a mother. She never returned to medical school because she wanted to stay home with her children.
Is denial another form of love?
There were many signs of Nicholas’s addiction that, now that she has the perspective of hindsight, Katie can see that she missed.
You’ll hear Katie reckoning with her denial. And you’ll hear how she’s not afraid to notice moments when she made mistakes. But you’ll also hear her notice her love for her child in the heart of all those moments.
This is the conversation I hope we can have with each other. For years the addiction community has touted tough love. And, believe me, I understand the place for tough love. But what are we asking of ourselves if we ask ourselves to be so tough that we alienate our compassion?
In my very humble opinion, denying our compassion is one of the things tough love has asked of us. And it feels inhumane to me. This tension is why I am so eager to bring you this conversation with Katie Rizzo.
Love is the answer.
You’ll hear how Katie and her husband, Nick, love each other. You’ll hear about all the permission they offer to each other. You’ll hear how they are able to be there for each other and how they each manage their own grief.
Love is the answer to all the questions.
I offer you this conversation where love—and all its complications—is explored. I believe it will bring you hope. Which will bring your relationship resilience.
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Connect with Katie Rizzo
Katie Rizzo has a new book coming in October: The Trimesters of Grief. You can preorder her book here.
Katie is a fiction writer whose short stories have appeared in literary journals including Prosetrics, The Literary Magazine (January 2026), as well as in anthologies such as the HG Wells Short Story Competition (2023). She earned juried placements at the Aspen Words Conference in 2023 and 2025.
Trained in biology and psychology, Rizzo holds two master’s degrees—one from Yale University and another from the University of Colorado School of Medicine. She taught at her local public high school for over fifteen years and lives in Arizona with her husband and their two dogs.
Want more like this?
Have you heard this interview with Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer? Her son died by suicide. Rosemerry and I know each other well. She offers another way to choose love in the midst of the most difficult circumstances.
Are you dealing with grief right now? Here is an episode that offers 2 practical tools I’ve used in my own life and I’ve offered to my clients.
Want to stop arguing and start connecting with your spouse? This FREE e-course will offer you habits to improve your marriage communication so you can smile more and fight less. Sign up to improve marriage communication.
