Finding his superpower: Lawyer shares what it was like losing his parents to drugs

Katherine Kokal, Palm Beach Post
·1 min read
Mr. Stephens, a divorce attorney in Palm Beach County, tells how he learned to help people - and to love doing it - at The Post's "Growing Up" show.
Mr. Stephens, a divorce attorney in Palm Beach County, tells how he learned to help people - and to love doing it - at The Post's "Growing Up" show.

Eddie Stephens’ job puts him right in the middle of other peoples’ business.

As a Palm Beach County divorce lawyer, he gets involved in the messy parts of peoples’ lives that they’d rather keep to themselves. But ending a marriage doesn’t have to mean ending a family.

>>Listen to all of five Palm Beach County storytellers here.

After both Stephens’ parents passed away from drug overdoses and he spent his adolescence looking for angels where he could find them, Stephens got into the tangled world of family court work to be a shining light for others.

Only once did that require kind of impersonating a police officer to scare a kid straight.

Luckily, it worked out for him and the kid, and he rekindled the family relationships that addiction stole from him when he was a child.

He took the stage March 9 at the Lake Park Black Box theater to share his story of becoming a force for good and learning how to help people when they need it most.

Here is Eddie Stephen's story:

The Palm Beach Post will host another Storytelling night at 7 p.m. on Sept. 14 at Lake Park’s Black Box Theatre. The show’s theme will be Food & Family. Do you want to tell your story? Apply to be a storyteller here.

Katherine Kokal is a journalist covering northern Palm Beach County at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at kkokal@pbpost.com Help support our work, subscribe today!

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Storytellers: Divorce lawyer on losing parents to addiction