Kathy Wagner is the mother of three grown children, including her son Tristan who died from fentanyl poisoning in August 2017. Since that time, Wagner has actively advocated for improved access to quality addiction recovery services and was a peer support group facilitator for Healing Hearts Canada. Her interviews have appeared on CBC’s The National, in the Vancouver Sun and many local newspapers and radio shows. Wagner lives in Port Coquitlam, BC.
“Through intimately detailed descriptions of both the outer and inward journeys of grief and addiction, Kathy Wagner keeps her readers right with her. Those who have struggled with addiction, or the addictions of loved ones will appreciate Kathy's searing honesty and will not feel so alone in their struggles. Despite the dark topics of grief and addiction, in the end, Wagner offers a message of hope and even joy.” —Cathy Sosnowsky, author of Snapshots: A Story of Love, Loss, and Life “Written with novelistic skill, Kathy Wagner’s vivid and moving memoir depicts how trauma, unrecognized, can blight a family across generations and culminate in tragedy, even in the face of fierce and abiding parental love. And, miraculously, how out of tragedy can arise the redemptive blessing of healing and compassion.” —Gabor Maté M.D., CM, author of The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture “Here With You adeptly harnesses the excruciating futility of being suspended between the person you love and the danger you know is coming. When a child overdoses, blame often lands at the feet of the mother. Kathy Wagner vividly portrays what it feels like to be ‘standing in the middle of everything that was broken’ and somehow find the strength, accountability, and agency to keep moving alongside that fear. As Wagner’s beautiful and troubled son Tristan works toward recovery, so too does his mother. This is, indeed, a celebration of life and of the intricate blessings of the recovery community. Here, you will discover a woman facing devastation, committed to defining her life based on ‘love, hope, peace, and also grief, but never again on fear and dysfunction,’ arriving at a place of hard-won wholeness.” —Tara McGuire, author of Holden After and Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose “In Here With You, Kathy Wagner immerses the reader in the ups and downs of loving someone struggling with a substance use disorder. It is a story of love and pain, hope and fear, and resistance and acceptance. And it is the tale of a mother redefining herself and her relationship with her children. Most of all, Kathy tells us the truth of this story. Not just the factual truth, but the emotional truth.” —Mary Beth O'Connor, author of From Junkie to Judge: One Woman's Triumph Over Trauma and Addiction