One Mother’s Story: Elise Schiller
Even If Your Heart Would Listen: Losing My Daughter to Heroin Friday, March 12 at 2 pm
Via Zoom Please register in advance here online or by calling 267-444-4507 (M-F, 9-6). We will email you a link to join Zoom the day before the program and a reminder the day of the program.
After her 33-year-old daughter died of an overdose – in a treatment center thousands of miles from their Germantown home, Elise Schiller read all of her daughter’s journals from the time she was a little girl to the treatment journals she wrote in rehab after rehab. Then she tried to track down her daughter’s medical records only to find they were vague, sometimes incorrect, and showed how little anyone had done to help Gianna. She also wanted people to know her daughter as a person, not just as someone who was addicted.
The retired educator began to write the story of her family’s loss but also a condemnation of the treatment system. Even If Your Heart Would Listen: Losing My Daughter to Heroin was listed by Parade magazine as one of the 10 most-inspiring books written by women in 2019.
Elise has served on the Mayor’s Task Force on the Opiod Epidemic and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and Intellectual disability Services and advocates for Safehouse Philadelphia.
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