Even If Your Heart Would Listen

In January 2014, Elise Schiller’s youngest child, thirty-three-year-old Giana Natali, died of a heroin overdose while a resident in a treatment program in Boulder County, Colorado. Even if Your Heart Would Listen is about Giana’s life, which was full of accomplishments, and her mental illness, addiction, and death. Using excerpts from the journals, planners, and letters Giana left behind, as well as evidence from her medical records, Schiller dissects her daughter’s treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) at the five residential and several outpatient programs in eastern Pennsylvania where she tried to recover, taking a close look at the lack of continuity and solid medical foundations in the American substance-use treatment system even as she explores the deeply personal experience of her own loss. Poignant and timely, Even if Your Heart Would Listen is a meditation on a family’s grief, an intimate portrayal of a mother-daughter bond that endures, and an examination of how our nation is failing in its struggle with the opioid epidemic.

Elise Schiller has been writing fiction, memoir, and nonfiction and actively participating in writing groups since adolescence. She has published several short stories and a number of articles and essays. In August of 2019, SparkPress published her memoir, Even If Your Heart Would Listen: Losing My Daughter to Heroin. She is now working on the second book of her Broken Bell series. Schiller also blogs about the opioid epidemic, books, and family history on her website. After a thirty-year career in education and family services in Philadelphia, Schiller retired in 2015 to write full time. She is an active volunteer and served on the Philadelphia Mayor’s Task Force to Combat the Opioid Epidemic. She currently serves on the advisory board of the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health and disAbility Services and is an active member of the Friends of Safehouse. When not writing, reading, or volunteering, Schiller enjoys visiting museums and historical sites, often with one of her seven grandchildren or various nieces and nephews in tow.