One thing you learn quick being a journalist is to check your stereotypes at the door. Our mandate is to be objective, after all.
But I know not everyone thinks like this.
When stories of drug overdoses hit the news, for example, I hear and read judgments about the “addicts” and their families. This hits close to home for me.
A couple of years ago I got a call in the middle of the night from the hospital emergency department. My son had been admitted. He was unconscious with alcohol poisoning and suffering hypothermia. He had been at a party, drank too much and played in the water before passing out. Luckily, his wonderful friends called 911 and he was taken to the ER. He had an extremely high level of alcohol in his system and his body temperature was dangerously low. This was not good.
It was a scary time, but happily he recovered.
But if he had died — and he could have — I can imagine what others may have thought.
“No wonder,” I can imagine strangers thinking. “He was from a ‘broken’ home. His parents have tattoos. His stepdad looks rough. His mom works too much.”
What these fictional strangers would not have known was there was a village of loving family support for my son, including his step-parents and grandparents. His mom (me) works a lot, yes. But she had never missed a concert, field trip or game. His tattooed parents live a drug and alcohol free life and his stepdad is a gentle soul who took him under his wing from the start.
Something bad just happened. That is life.
It is human to look for something that we can point to that will explain why a bad thing happened to someone else. We want to protect ourselves from that tragedy.
The current truth is people from all walks of life with loving families are dying from overdoses. More than 1,420 people died of illicit-drug overdoses in B.C. in 2017.
No family is immune.
I interviewed the parents of Steffanie Lawrence, the 15-year-old Squamish girl who died of an overdose in January.
I sat in the car and cried when I left them.
There is no doubt in my mind that this girl was loved beyond love and that her family did all they could do for her.
Judge her and judge them if you dare, but understand, if it can happen to that family, it could happen to yours too.
Instead, why don’t we rally around this local family and support their quest to make changes in our provincial system so that other loving families can protect their kids — in honour of Steffanie.
