Please take the time to read Katie Donovan's story. Example is trying to arrange an opportunity for Katie to speak at an Example event this year. This mother's story is one that all parents and children need to read.
“We were that ‘normal’ family.”
So opens Katie Donovan’s first blog post on “A Mother’s Addiction Journey,” the story of her daughter Brittany Sherfield’s seven-year battle with heroin addiction.
Sherfield was an honor roll student -- “smart as a whip,” her mother writes. As a middle school student, she participated in D.A.R.E. She played basketball and softball at Henry Ford II High School in Sterling Heights and was involved in dance.
“When she was 16, she was invited to prom by a senior,” writes Donovan. “We let her stay out a little longer than her normal curfew. But she ended up calling me early, saying ‘Hey, Mom, can you come and pick me up? My ride has been drinking and I don’t feel safe.’”
But when Sherfield was 17, Donovan got a phone call: “ ‘Mrs. Donovan, your daughter has been in an accident.’”
...So a terrible battle that would last seven years began for that “normal” family. Experimentation with marijuana had given way to trying Vicodin and Xanax at parties. Snorting Xanax led, when Sherfield was 19, to snorting heroin. Eventually, she was shooting up...
