About the writer

I am deeply motivated to help families affected by addiction — not only to support the addict through one of the hardest journeys of their life, but also to support the families who carry the trauma that addiction creates.
 

My own daughter has experienced a lot of trauma in her life. I won’t share details, because that is her story to tell. What I can say is that she became addicted to opioids and fentanyl, and it broke me. I ended up relapsing after 17 years of being clean. I felt like a shell of myself.
 

The turning point for me came during a trip to Vancouver. My daughter had ended up living on the streets there. Three and a half years ago, she contacted me two days before Christmas Eve. I’ll be honest — at that time, I was out using. The next morning, I drove to Vancouver to pick her up. I was three hours away when I lost contact with her again. She was obviously using. It took five days before I heard from her, and in the meantime, I searched the streets for her every day.
 

During one of those days, I saw a little girl — she couldn’t have been more than six or seven — sitting beside her mother in a lawn chair. Her mother was standing with her head touching the sidewalk, unconscious but still breathing. I spent at least 10–15 minutes trying to wake her up. Eventually, I realized I couldn’t, so I took the little girl a few blocks away to McDonald’s to get her something to eat. This moment changed my life.

I remember the first meal Kalie — that was her name — tried to eat, she threw up immediately. It broke my heart. When I told her we had to go back to her mother, she looked up at me and asked, “Can I live with you?” I still cry when I think about that. That was the moment I knew I had to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

When I finally convinced Kalie to go back to her mother, we found her in the middle of the road, sitting with her head between her legs and her face on the pavement. Cars were driving around her, and not one person stopped. I got her off the road and onto the grass. The most heartbreaking part was that I had been with Kalie for almost three hours — and her mother never even realized she was gone.
 

I went back to my car and broke down. I couldn’t stop crying, thinking about Kalie and my own daughter. I stayed on the streets until Christmas morning before driving back to my cousin’s place. By then, I had barely slept for days.
 

that’s just one story, and there are hundreds out there like it. Walk the streets for five days, and you’ll see far worse. Kalie story stays with me the most, because even if I can’t save every addict, I can at least try my best to help the families — and that’s where healing can begin.