Abby Bocking-Reid was just seven when her father fatally overdosed. She struggled to get help for her grief. Now 12, she is pushing for change.
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Abby Bocking-Reid remembers waking up on Mother’s Day in 2019 with plans to make breakfast for her mom. But she didn’t know how to cook because she was only seven years old, so she decided instead to draw her a card.
Her mother, though, said they had to go to the hospital.
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Her father had accidentally overdosed, another victim of B.C.’s poisoned drug supply. He would die three days later.
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Abby doesn’t remember many details from visiting the hospital or the ensuing days. But she does remember her grief, and her struggle to find a counsellor who could relate to both her age and the circumstances of her dad’s death.
Five years after the tragedy, she is finally on her path to recovery: She has a therapist she loves, who specializes in youth, through the Lumara Grief and Bereavement Care charity.
“Now that I understand what’s going on, what’s happening — how to feel my feelings when I have to feel my feelings — I’m just doing so much better mentally and physically,” Abby, 12, said.
The young girl is speaking out about the need for more medical resources, such as counselling, designed specifically for kids. She is among an alarming number of children losing loved ones to the overdose crisis, which, since this province declared a public health emergency in 2016, has claimed more than 14,000 lives.
“Think about their parents, their spouses, their kids, their cousins, their aunts, their uncles, their nieces, their nephews, their entire family,” said the Grade 7 student.
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“There’s many kids … who are going to need to find that help. They’re going to need to talk to someone, they’re going to need to find someone that understands what they’re going through.”
Abby’s parents, Kimberly Bocking and Brad Reid, weren’t together, but he was a “consistent, positive force” in his daughter’s life and was always helping other people, Bocking said. She and Abby now want to help other folks by pushing for more family focused treatment for loss and healing.
Bocking, who lost her own mother when she was 12, tried to find assistance for Abby after Reid died.
“I knew how important it was, from my own experience, to make sure that I had support in place for her. And I didn’t find that support as readily available as I feel it could be, given what’s going on in our city,” said Bocking, who lives in Vancouver.
‘Grief and loss phenomenon not being addressed’
B.C.’s medical system needs to vastly expand its counselling and grief programs to help children cope with the aftermath of fatal overdoses, and those services must be more easily accessible than the current overburdened mental-health system, said children’s watchdog Jennifer Charlesworth.
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“We’re not seeing that kind of expertise being built, despite the numbers,” said Charlesworth, B.C.’s Representative for Children and Youth.
“We have a grief and loss phenomenon that is not being addressed,” she added.
“What virtually nobody’s talking about is the kids who are left behind when their significant family members are passing away.”
Charlesworth’s office supports children and teens involved in the child welfare system. In that small subset of the youth population, she sees an average of 10 children lose a parent to a fatal overdose every month.
That number of lost parents per month would be much higher if children in the general population were also counted, she added.
“The ripple affects of that are profound. So then you start to think: ‘How does a kid cope with that kind of loss and grief?’ ”
Demand for this type of help is skyrocketing at Lumara, a B.C.-based charity that provides peer support and counselling to help children and families deal with loss and trauma.
“What’s been most noticeable to us is this huge increase specifically in people coming to say that they’ve had a drug-related death and they’re looking for support, and they can’t find it,” said Heather Mohan, Lumara’s co-founder and a registered clinical counsellor with a PhD.
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The number of families attending Lumara’s Camp Kerry grief retreat after losing a loved one from an overdose grew from five per cent of participants in 2021 to 27 per cent last year. And the organization has to turn people away: 109 families applied to attend last year, but there was only space for one third of them.
Mohan created Lumara after seeing the need for specialized therapy for children and their parents, and initially received patient referrals mainly from hospices and cancer agencies. But, in recent years, it was the poisoned drug crisis that caused the surge in demand.
Coming to terms with death has always been hard for children, but it can be even harder when the loss is due to an overdose because of the stigma, which often prevents people from talking about what happened or offering support.
While the number of fatalities caused by this crisis is widely discussed, society often treats those deaths as the end of the story.
“That ending of Brad’s life was the beginning of the story for them,” Mohan said of Abby and her mother.
“There’s been a lot of attention put on the crisis, the people who are dying, but I don’t hear the conversations about: ‘What is happening for the children and families who are left behind? What’s in place for them?’ ”
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Lumara, a small charity that operates on donations and gaming grants, has created some options, which include: Camp Kerry, the country’s first grief retreat program for families; bereavement support groups, counselling and youth programs; and teacher resources, Indigenous wellness programs and workshops to teach professionals such as nurses and police officers how to talk about death.
Her group uses the money it raises to heavily subsidize its fees, and offers a variety of pay-what-you-can and free options for low-income families.
One solution to expand services in B.C. would be for government to dedicate funding to charities like Lumara, Mohan said.
In an email to Postmedia News, the Mental Health and Addictions Ministry didn’t respond directly to a question about providing stable funding for specialized charities like Lumara. But it said it invests in other non-profits, such as one that helps homeless youth, a Downtown Eastside outreach centre in Vancouver and a third that provides connections to counselling for youth with mental-health and addictions issues.
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When asked about whether it has increased funding for child and family counselling in response to the overdose crisis, the ministry’s email noted that in 2023 the province pledged $236 million over three years for expanded mental-health and addiction services for young people. In addition, the ministry said it has created more ways to connect young people to counselling, including 93 child and youth mental-health intake clinics.
The ministry is also chairing an advisory group that’s mapping current mental-health and substance-use services for youth, to identify gaps and “opportunities for improvement.”
Bocking sees room for improvement.
Her daughter’s teacher and school counsellor didn’t have access to the resources they needed. The family then turned to a private therapist, but he didn’t specialize in grief support and had little understanding of the overdose crisis, Bocking said.
In 2020, Bocking found Lumara. Abby attended a group session full of other kids a bit older than her, many of whom had lost someone to the poisoned drug supply. That was enlightening, but she still struggled to express her feelings.
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That changed when she met Lumara’s art therapist, who was able to get her to open up about her loss during one-on-one sessions.
“She’s the best. She knows how to connect with me,” said Abby. “She knows how I’m feeling.”
Today Abby smiles warmly when remembering her father, who took her several times to see Monster Trucks and to visit his extended family in Oregon. Their last trip was three weeks before his death, for Easter weekend.
“It was definitely a really good Easter,” Abby said. “That was probably my last favourite memory with him.”
Lumara’s approach to include the whole family in counselling is beneficial, Bocking said.
“I think it’s imperative that there be groups in place, especially for the pre-teens to be able to go and talk about their experience. Because the reality is this (overdose) crisis doesn’t seem to be ending, so the need for grief support will continue.”
Charlesworth is holding meetings this year to explore the best ways to make these supports more available to youth.
One possible solution is having psychologists and other mental-health support covered by the public health system, so paying for private care isn’t prohibitive for families without benefits, she said. This approach has also been proposed by the B.C. Green party.
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‘Unresolved grief has profound lifelong impacts’
Society often wrongly thinks of overdose victims as being homeless with no family members left to mourn. That is far from the truth, Charlesworth said, noting statistics show many people die in their homes, and typically have jobs and families.
“Let’s not forget that these many people who are dying are parents and they’re leaving kids behind. And then how do we build a mental-health system or a support-counselling system around that?” she asked.
“Unresolved loss and grief has profound lifelong impacts on children.”
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This issue has a disproportionate impact on Indigenous children, already reeling from generations of trauma, Charlesworth added.
When asked about this need, Indigenous leader Mary Teegee, chairwoman of the Our Children Our Way Society, noted that her organization’s 2023 report called for more specialized services for children and youth, including treatment services focused on grief and loss.
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“The current epidemic of toxic drug poisonings has hit particularly hard among Indigenous communities and has deepened the mental-health crisis as many Indigenous communities struggle to find support and treatment for their members. This is especially critical for Indigenous youth,” said the report, Culture is Healing: An Indigenous Child and Youth Mental Wellness Framework.
When asked about funding counselling for Indigenous youth, the ministry’s email said it provides money for First Nations treatment centres and supports a range of health services through the First Nations Health Authority.
Mohan’s organization, though, also sees significant need from First Nations groups.
“Pretty much every month, we are getting a call from a remote Indigenous community, because there’s a disproportionate number of overdose and drug-related deaths in those communities,” she said.
For all children, research shows there can be dire consequences if their grief remains untreated, Mohan said.
“They’re at risk for complications with mental health, for depression, anxiety, substance misuse, self-harm, even suicide,” she said, adding that it’s imperative to speak with kids about loss.
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“Often if children don’t know what’s going on … they will blame themselves. They will think, ‘Maybe I could have done something? Maybe I could have prevented daddy from getting sick or dying?’ “
lculbert@postmedia.com
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