The Rise of a Soul Soldier with Lindsay Taylor | Episode 505The Rise of a Soul Soldier with Lindsay Taylor | Episode 505
The Way Out | A Sobriety & Recovery Podcast
Lindsay Taylor shares how working with addiction and trauma turned painfully personal when her teenage son died from a fentanyl overdose, and how faith, writing and service helped her keep showing up for others. The conversation blends grief, spirituality and practical compassion for anyone facing addiction, suicide risk or deep loss.
2:04:32•8 Jun 2026
From Grief to Soul Soldier: Lindsay Taylor on Loss, Faith and Loving Addicts
Episode Overview
- Addiction can overpower even deep parental love, which is why compassion and support for parents as well as children is crucial.
- Early substance use such as vaping and cannabis may progress quickly to dangerous drugs like fentanyl, often within a short time.
- Knowing and using Good Samaritan protections, placing someone in the recovery position, and calling emergency services immediately can save lives during an overdose.
- Hope is more stable when rooted in a higher power or deeper values rather than in specific outcomes or circumstances changing.
- People are already whole and valuable; recovery work is about remembering that truth, not earning worth through perfection or achievement.
“We don’t fight for victory, we fight from victory.”
How do people find hope in the darkest times? This conversation with Lindsay Taylor shows exactly how raw heartbreak, faith, and service can sit side by side. Lindsay shares how she’s spent 15 years working around addiction and trauma – from child welfare and private adoption to school social work and suicide treatment.
She talks about the moment her empathy for birth parents in active addiction deepened, describing a mother weeping in the car and realising, “a mother’s love is the strongest love I’ve ever known – and this addiction is even stronger.” Her story turns painfully personal as she speaks about her eldest son, Alex, whose experimentation with vaping and cannabis spiralled within a year into Xanax, shrooms and finally fentanyl.
She recalls hospital corridors, ventilators, and the impossible decision to turn off life support after his overdose at 17, all while weaving in the strange comfort of “rainbow” signs that kept appearing right when she needed them. Out of that loss came her first book, *The Rise of a Soul Soldier*, written for those wrestling with suicidal thoughts, addiction, grief, and “life’s deepest challenges”.
Her second book, *Plot Twist*, focuses on how people feel imprisoned by circumstances, addiction, or even finances, and how, as she puts it, you can “live free even in the middle of your mess.” Lindsay talks about volunteering in a faith-based programme at a residential treatment centre, her growing pull toward prison ministry, and her Freedom Soul Soldier community, where she helps people root their hope in something deeper than outcomes.
As she sums up her approach: “We don’t fight for victory, we fight from it.” If you’re living with addiction, loving someone who is, or carrying heavy grief, this episode offers honest company, practical compassion, and a reminder that you’re already more than your worst day. What might change if you stopped seeing yourself as broken and started seeing yourself as a miracle in progress?
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