As a 10-year-old growing up in Capitol Heights, Maryland, a suburb of Washington DC, William Kellibrew had learned how to do certain things, but begging for his life was not one of them. He already knew how lethal the gun pointed at his face was; his mother Jacqueline and 12-year-old-brother, Anthony, were lying lifeless beside him, with scarlet red blood forming pools of sorrow around them.

With his heart thumping hard in his chest, he found his voice again. But this time he wasn’t talking to his mother’s killer, a man who up until that moment was known to Kellibrew as her abusive ex-boyfriend. “God, please don’t let him kill me,” he pleaded, his face turned upwards.

Later that day, in complete shock and unable to speak, he would draw figures of his mom and brother lying on the floor in red crayon because all he could think of was the blood, so much blood, to show the police what he had witnessed. In that picture, the killer was still standing. This was before he took his own life.

The events of July 2, 1984, were traumatic enough to propel young Kellibrew to a life of depression, drug abuse, crime, and other vices. And for a period of his life, he recalls that he was in so much pain that he almost jumped off a bridge on his way to school the day he became a teenager. But at a gathering of health workers who specialize in trauma care at the St Francis Xavier Church in Baltimore city one warm spring afternoon in 2019, you could almost hear a pin drop as Kellibrew spoke about his journey to recovery. “Healing is possible, that’s really the big message here,” his voice bounced across the room. “We can survive, and we can do it!”

Through therapy and a network of support, Kellibrew’s life was transformed. As an international advocate and motivational speaker, he now takes his message of hope and courage around the world on issues relating to trauma and recovery, substance use, trauma-informed care, multiple victimizations, juvenile justice, corrections, and public policy issues. His advocacy message has taken him to the United Kingdom, China, Ireland, Japan, Guam and across the United States where he works closely with nation’s leaders, professionals and others who continue to put children and youth first.

His other surviving brother, who is serving 97 years in a federal penitentiary after being convicted of 18 felony counts, was not so lucky.

“After my mother and brother were murdered, my oldest brother went straight to the streets,” Kellibrew said, as we chat by the corner of Baltimore’s historic East Oliver street. The Church we had just left is the first African-American Catholic Church in the United States. “He became a baby of the 90s era. That is when the crack epidemic was horrifying in Washington DC and around the country.”

Kellibrew had grown up seeing his mother use heroin in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Alcohol and drugs were introduced to him and his siblings at a very young age. “We had that around us, this was sort of like a normal thing for us – the alcohol, the drugs, things like that,” he recalls.

But in all of this, he is a survivor and now inspires other people to share their stories thereby breaking the scourge of pain and silence. Kellibrew takes no credit for this and calls people like his grandmother who raised him after his mother’s death and his Assistant Principal who fueled the wheels that led him to get therapy, the “bridges” that saved him. “I’m very lucky and very blessed not to have gone down that pathway for all of my life”.

Photo Credit: Obama White House Archives

At a gathering of over 100 faith-based outreach leaders, community leaders, frontline health workers, ministers, police chaplains and pastors last Saturday at the St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Baltimore, officials of the city’s health department facilitated a training session on opioid addiction, trauma informed approach and resiliency.

“We recognized that faith tends to be a very strong influence in the lives of not just Baltimore city residents but people,” said Rev. Kimberly Lagree, Program coordinator, Office of Youth and Trauma Services at the training session tagged ‘Pathway Toward Healing Our City’. “It’s a mental health and it’s a public health approach that we need to reduce violence in our city as well as address the opioid epidemic.”

With 692 opioid related deaths in Baltimore recorded in 2017, the Baltimore City Health Department is tackling the opioid epidemic with a three-pronged strategy that involves reducing the stigma of addiction, promoting substance use disorder treatment, and educating the public to recognize and respond to an overdose with the opioid overdose reversal medication naloxone. This figure, which is more than double the number of people who died of homicide, puts Baltimore at the highest overdose fatality rate of any city in the United States.

Meanwhile, overall number of opioid-related deaths in Maryland surged 9.7 percent through the third quarter of 2018 killing 1,648 people from January to September. According to data released by the Maryland Department of Health, 1,502 people were killed during the same period in 2017.

“We are in a state of emergency not only in this city, but in the state of Maryland as well as throughout the country,” said William Kellibrew, Director of Office of Youth & Trauma Services. According to him, an increasing number of young people in Baltimore are becoming unintended victims of the opioid epidemic. Through the Family Resilience Project, the Baltimore City Health Department is focusing on providing services and alternative therapies to help them cope and get access to treatment.

“We have many people who are experiencing non-fatality overdoses who are returning back to their homes; but there are kids in those homes, young people in those homes who are very much impacted,” he said.

The rising numbers in the city’s opioid related cases have spurred the creation of resource platforms such as the Don’t Die Campaign which is a hub that provides resources, training videos and references for the opioid crisis. The city also has a Staying Alive program which trains individuals on administering naloxone and dealing with overdose. When administered to an individual experiencing an overdose, this antidote medication can take them from near death to walking and talking in a matter of minutes. Lizeth Hester, senior advisor to the Director of Trauma Services during her presentation on opioids mentioned that the Baltimore City Health Department has trained 51, 617 individuals on naloxone administration, conducted 6,238 training events and distributed 45,981 kits. These efforts have resulted in the reversal of 3,478 overdoses throughout Baltimore city.

Working on the frontlines of the opioid crisis, however, presents a fresh set of challenges for the faith-based leaders and health workers who are often confronted with their own trauma as they try to provide succor to others. The training provided a judgement-free zone for them to share their concerns and help each other through their individual journeys.

As a pastor and a public health worker, Lagree said one of the best ways of helping victims of any kind of trauma such as opioid addiction is to connect with them on a personal level. 

“The first thing is understanding healing is possible,” she said. “We’ve all had struggles. One of the challenges that I’ve noticed even in my own past is really accepting the fact that my conversations are also sermons in the lives of people, that my actions can preach a better service than my lips can. We must do our due diligence and commit ourselves to really getting to know the people that we serve and sharing our own stories.”