Having published her first book The Rose Bird a few weeks ago, local author Helen Davies sat down with SPIN to discuss the stories it contains about drug-related deaths and losing a child to something she never considered could be a part of her life.

The book was published in time for International Overdose Awareness Day on Aug. 31 intentionally, to help bolster the conversation around drug-related deaths in Canada..

Opiod toxicity and other drug-related deaths are a growing problem in Canada, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on people’s mental health and limited access to supports for those struggling. From 2019 to 2023, the amount of apparent opioid toxicity deaths in Canada nearly doubled. 

Davies’ daughter Katie was affected by this and passed away in April 2021 at just 23 years old from fentanyl-related poisoning. After her death, pandemic restrictions impacted her family’s  ability to travel to Ontario, where Katie was living unhoused, and Davies said she never felt more alone.

She chose to write The Rose Bird, now a bestseller, hoping it would provide support to those who relate, and incite change in the way drug addiction and mental illness is viewed and handled.

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“These individuals are someone’s child or someone’s sibling or someone’s friend,” Davies told SPIN. “They are human beings, and they’re not just a statistic.” 

Writing The Rose Bird

Following Katie’s passing, the tumult of a wildfire in the Whitecroft area threatened her family’s livelihood further.

“By June, we were on evacuation alert up here, and I can just remember saying to Mike [Davies’ husband], I couldn’t bear to lose anything else,” Davies said.

She wasn’t considering writing a book in the aftermath of her loss, but wanted to ensure she remembered the moment she heard the news.

“There were things I wanted to write down,” she said. “I wanted to capture how we were told and how I felt in that moment.”

She began writing the book in January 2022.

“I felt a call,” she said. “I felt a need to share Katie’s story.”

Writing the book was in no way cathartic, however.

“It was sitting down, spending my time at weekends when I could have been doing other things, dwelling in sad and devastating memories and then agonizing over which to include,” she said.

Her book is a tough read, as she chose not to exclude anything that would take away from the story and how it might resonate with those navigating the same path.

“The only piece that makes me feel better about things is the possibility that it can create more dialogue, more understanding, more empathy, more support,” she said.

The Rose Bird’s purpose

When her family was struggling with Katie’s mental illness and addiction, they kept a lot hidden, in part due to the stigma associated with drug use.

“It is so easy to be on the outside looking in and having a strong opinion on something,” she said, knowing there are likely people who will criticize her family’s decisions she highlights throughout the book.

To express their situation out loud was difficult, and still now, their family’s story hasn’t been shared in the community.

“We didn’t want [Katie] to be carrying that burden of shame or guilt,” she said. “There’s awful stigma around it, and we didn’t want that hanging over her. She didn’t need that.”

Davies felt anxiety around publishing The Rose Bird, which includes revealing personal pieces of her family’s life, before her husband even read it. 

“I was excited about the book getting published, and then I had this awful, overwhelming anxiety,” she said.

Given the level of severity opioid and stimulant-related overdoses and deaths has reached and the date of International Overdose Awareness Day, she decided the timing was writing to publish and speak on it.

Even in a small community like Sun Peaks, there are likely people that have also been affected by substance-related deaths and addiction.

Though she can’t change the outcome of her own situation, others may be able to learn something from her story.

“When you can step back and you hear other people’s perspectives, you can benefit from that,” she said.

Evolving the perspective

One of the programs Katie was involved in provided support to families and loved ones via a roundtable discussion.

Aside from this, Davies said her family hadn’t considered accessing supports for themselves while Katie was struggling, though realized they needed it much later.

“It was very naive, but it was like, no, we don’t need the help, just focus on Katie. If Katie’s better, we’re better,” she said. 

Now, she can see the ripple effect from addiction and concurrent disorders and how it’s never just one person affected. Each person in these situations requires support, and the drain on resources therefore becomes larger.

Beyond looking back at her own experience with a different perspective, she’s also evolved her mindset, saying she never considered it happening to her family until it did.

If you’d have told us 20 years ago, that we’d be facing mental illness, homelessness, addiction in our family, I’d have said, you’ve got to be joking,” she said. “ It’s embarrassing to admit, but I thought at the time, that doesn’t happen to people like us.”

It can be easier to turn a blind eye to the problem living in Sun Peaks, she said.

“We are fairly immune, or we think we’re fairly immune to some of those things that are happening in bigger cities,” she said. “But it’s still there, and it’s just whether you choose to acknowledge it or whether it’s part of your world.”

Advocacy and awareness 

While becoming involved with organizations that help to inform and advocate, Davies began to realize there wasn’t enough education and knowledge on families dealing with substance use and addiction in general. Through meeting other parents with similar experiences, she discovered how few voices there are opening up this dialogue.

This was one of the catalysts for her to write The Rose Bird and continue her advocacy.

Last year, she was a panelist as a family engagement partner at an International Assertive Community Treatment conference in Vancouver.

“It had a lot of practitioners in the audience, as well as David Eby and Jennifer Whiteside, who is the minister for mental health and addictions,” she said.

In her role as family engagement partner for the Assertive Community Treatment Advanced Practice team, she provides input as someone who’s supported an individual that struggled with addiction.

Just this June, the leader of the team and a reviewer of her book, Daniel Vigo, was appointed B.C.’s Chief Scientific Advisor for Psychiatry, Toxic Drugs and Concurrent Disorders, based on last year’s conference.

“To me, that’s feedback to say, keep doing what you’re doing,” she said. “The message is getting home and things are changing.”

In a couple weeks, she’ll be at the conference again, in Ontario this time, and with a newly published book to read from.

As there was last year, she hopes there will be policy makers in the audience. 

Many organizations in the field are now inviting family members to inform program development, Davies said, adding they’re using this to look at different aspects of care and support.

“We need to start thinking about how we prevent these situations from getting to a tipping point, whether it’s early intervention or holistic intervention, but we need to start to rethink how we respectfully support these individuals to get to a better place,” she said.

Her point of view is that money and resources should be invested in appropriate models of care and support, saying when Katie had more integrated support it was more beneficial than the “rinse and repeat cycle” of emergency room care.

“I think raising that awareness around who it can impact, how many people it can impact and also the devastating effects it can have, is important to have that dialogue more top of mind.”