Josh and Brandon never knew each other. But on a Friday in early April, the boys\u2019 mothers visited their portraits side by side. Annie Hernandez and Lisa Lasch met through an overdose loss group at the Christi Center<\/a>, an organization that provides grief support to Central Texans.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s a different loss than \u2018my child died to cancer,\u2019\u201d Hernandez said in her lilting Irish accent. \u201cPeople are more afraid to talk to us than they would be of another mother that maybe lost her child to a different disease.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s some kind of comfort in knowing you’re not the only one,\u201d Lasch added.<\/p>\n That\u2019s part of why Hernandez and Lasch submitted their sons\u2019 stories to the Into Light project<\/a>, a traveling exhibition that puts faces to the disease of addiction and the opioid crisis. Since losing Josh and Brandon to overdoses, the mothers have been working to raise awareness about what opioid addiction looks like, and to show that addiction can happen to anyone \u2014 sons, daughters, parents, friends.<\/p>\n \u2018That child had my heart\u2019<\/p>\n Into Light is preparing to visit its 21st state, each time partnering with a local museum or university to show portraits of overdose victims from the area. Austin\u2019s exhibit is hosted by the UT School of Social Work.<\/p>\n Next to each portrait is a narrative about the person\u2019s personality and life. Hernandez and Lasch submitted a detailed application that a writer used to paint a picture of their sons with words.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very intense,\u201d Lasch said. \u201cI had to step away from it for a couple weeks. I’m like, \u2018I’m not sure I can do this.\u2019 But \u2026 I did get through it.\u201d<\/p>\n The narrative next to Brandon\u2019s portrait describes a sensitive and charismatic young man, an animal lover who could always be counted on to correct his friends\u2019 spelling and grammar. He believed in \u201cthe circle of life,\u201d the idea that a person\u2019s death could somehow bring something good and useful to someone else.<\/p>\n Lasch found a way to honor that belief: She donated Brandon’s body to the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State so his body could be studied for scientific research.<\/p>\n Much like Lasch describes Brandon, Hernandez remembers her son, Josh, as a bright and charismatic person who \u201cnever met a stranger.\u201d He loved sports and cheered especially hard for the New England Patriots. He was dedicated to his family.<\/p>\n \u201cThat child had my heart the minute he was born,” Hernandez said. “I have four children, but this one knows exactly how to get whatever he wants.”<\/p>\n Lorianne Willett<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n KUT News<\/p>\n Annie Hernandez looks at two of the stories included in the Into Light exhibit. Her son, Josh, died of an overdose in 2019. <\/p>\n While Josh continued to show up for family events and appeared well, he was struggling with an addiction behind the scenes. It started out with opioids prescribed by a pain management specialist after he was in a car accident. From there, things snowballed. He started taking more than he was prescribed, buying extra pills on the street. And when that got too expensive, he ventured into heroin. <\/p>\n Like Brandon, he underwent treatment for his addiction, but died of an overdose in 2019. Hernandez believes a pill laced with fentanyl was responsible.<\/p>\n Today, Hernandez is an outspoken advocate for addiction treatment, harm reduction and education. But at first, she struggled to know how to talk about losing Josh. There was just so much stigma about addiction.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople might have an idea in their mind what a drug addict is, right? And I was no different,\u201d she said. \u201cA million, million reasons I would think my son would die, would never be of drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n A mother\u2019s mission<\/p>\n Reducing stigma and spreading awareness about addiction was a key goal of the founder of the Into Light project, artist Theresa Clower.<\/p>\n Clower’s own son, Devin, died of an overdose in 2018. Her daughter suggested she try drawing a portrait of him as a way to process her grief. For three days, Clower put pencil to paper, studying each tiny detail of his face.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re all made up of light and dark. No one should be defined by their darkest moments.”<\/p>\n Theresa Clower, founder of the ‘Into Light’ project<\/p>\n \u201cI was working from a reference of Devin just about five hours before he died, so I was visiting with him,\u201d Clower said. \u201cIt was unbelievably intense and beautiful.”<\/p>\n Clower took some time to gather herself before taking the last step of signing the portrait. It felt final \u2014 a goodbye.<\/p>\n Afterward, Clower was surprised by a desire to draw portraits of everyone she met, from her grandchildren to people on the street. She had the idea to give her passion a purpose: What if she could use portraits to connect with other people who had lost a loved one to drug overdose?<\/p>\n The first exhibit was held in Maryland \u2014 Devin\u2019s home state \u2014 in 2019. In the early days, Clower drew many portraits herself, but she began hiring other artists to complete the drawings as the project grew. Artists bring their own style, but each portrait is rendered as a simple, black-and-white graphite drawing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re all made up of light and dark,\u201d Clower said. \u201cNo one should be defined by their darkest moments. We focus on the whole person very intentionally, because we all are made up of lots of different parts. My own son, Devin \u2014 he had a tremendous personality, and he was addicted to drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n The next frontier to fight addiction<\/p>\n The 34 individuals memorialized at the Texas Into Light exhibit represent a small fraction of addiction-related deaths in recent years. As fentanyl proliferated, drug-poisoning deaths skyrocketed by 68%<\/a> statewide between 2019 and 2024.<\/p>\n But signs of improvement have begun to emerge. In spring 2025, local officials announced drug-related deaths in Travis County decreased by 22%<\/a> between 2023 and 2024, roughly mirroring national trends<\/a>.<\/p>\n Kasey Claborn, the director of UT\u2019s Addiction Research Institute, credits this to widespread distribution of the overdose-reversing treatment naloxone, from local law enforcement to bar owners to regular folks.<\/p>\n \u201cThree years ago, the public had no idea how dangerous the drug supply is,\u201d Claborn said. \u201cHowever, we have trained everyday citizens across Central Texas to actually be first responders.\u201d<\/p>\n She credits strong coordination by local agencies with some of this effort, but says awareness campaigns like Into Light have also played an important role.<\/p>\n \u201cResearch has shown that stigma proliferates in spaces where we don’t have connections, where we don’t have direct understanding of human experience,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n![\"Annie](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776278108_751_.jpeg\"\/)
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