"Does any parent accept a child's death before the fact?" This heartbreaking question is one of many that Elise Schiller asks in her raw and powerfully candid memoir of her daughter Giana's life before and after becoming addicted to opioids.
Even if Your Heart Would Listen opens on January 21, 1980, the day of Giana's birth. One page and almost exactly 34 years later, Schiller learns of Giana's fatal heroin overdose, despite being a patient in a Colorado treatment center. Drawing upon Giana's journals and medical records, and at times pivoting the narrative to address questions to her daughter, Schiller provides readers with a full portrait of Giana: an accomplished swimmer, a dedicated veterinary technician and someone who sought help from five residential and outpatient centers, all of which ultimately failed her and her family.
Schiller's grief and pain is potent on the page, as is her anger and frustration with an inadequate, one-size-fits-all, expensive system of care grounded in self-help and "the legacy of Alcoholics Anonymous" rather than the proven efficacy of medication-assisted treatment. The substance abuse treatment industry still sees addiction as "a moral failing that causes one to have character defects--a huge contradiction that leaves patients and their families confused about what is wrong, causing them to ask: Is it a disease or just a matter of will? How can recovering from a disease be a matter of will, cured by acknowledging one's powerlessness over it?"
Timely and moving, Even if Your Heart Will Listen will resonate with anyone struggling to understand and cope with losing a loved one, especially an adult child, to addiction. --Melissa Firman, writer at melissafirman.com