Thanks to the PA NewsMedia Association for recognizing Keeley and the Vial and our ongoing series about raising children in the modern overdose crisis in their photo story and series categories. I know I’m lucky to work for a paper that believes in investing the time it takes to do these deep dives (and that allows me to work with investigative reporter Rich Lord), and I hold dear the trust given to us by the Ashbaughs and others who let me in to try to show a bit of their lives.

Since this published, TJ and Kate’s four little girls welcomed a baby brother named in honor of their late Uncle Ricky, whose fatal overdose shook the branches of their family tree. TJ lives knowing that could have been his fate, as well. As he raises his children in recovery, he makes no secret of the disease that killed his brother and turned his ex into a missing person, and has taught his youngest daughter to give a goodnight kiss to the vial of his brother’s ashes he keeps around his neck. Head to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette interactive here to see more photos and videos, read the story, and learn more about how T.J. and Kate are working together to acknowledge the generational cycles of addiction in their family and how to best raise their children to be aware of it.

A year after our original reporting published, Rich Lord and I traveled back to see how “OD Road” is changing, slowly, into Recovery Road. Here in Pittsburgh’s once most fatal ground for the epidemic, overdoses are dropping, and 1,050 “saves” have been made — almost all by other opioid users — using naloxone distributed by Prevention Point Pittsburgh since 2017.

I had to check that my mouth wasn’t hanging open while visiting Donna Williams. She had opened up from her “raw, get out of my neighborhood” approach to people in addiction to wanting to offer clean needles and health services on her block instead. She baked cookies for the men in the recovery house up the street, she is partnering with a man who formerly sold and used drugs to transform the minds of her neighbors.

Despite the cautious optimism, ripples of trauma are still carrying through families for generations. Here’s what people shared with us.

When we sat with Gary Fisher months before his own fatal OD, he foreshadowed the abandonment he would pass on from his own childhood to his daughter’s.

“Abandonment’s a big thing, it was a big thing for me. I was abandoned by one person that I didn’t think should ever abandon me. And I fear that for my daughter, that she’s going to wonder why dad left, why he’s not around, why he died. And she’s going to have questions and she’s never going to get answers. And that feeling that I live with on a daily basis, I don’t want anybody to go through. And I don’t want her to feel like I gave her up.”

We went back to Gary’s daughter’s house in McKeesport, Pa. as she struggles with the anxiety of the bullying and night terrors she is experiencing in the wake of her father’s death. Her story is part of the final chapter of Needle in the Family Tree, a yearlong look at how the opioid and overdose epidemic is impacting families in Western Pennsylvania. Head to the Post-Gazette here for more.

Today on Overdose Awareness Day, a story of hope is building in Pittsburgh’s OD captiol of Carrick.

Self-described “recovering addict” and former drug dealer Gus DiRenna leads a prayer with a crew of people in recovery as they start work to turn a drug den in the neighborhood into a “Serenity House” for people working on their sobriety and starting a new chapter in their life. The process feeds into DiRenna’s simple formula: people in recovery need a decent room, a job and a community of support. “It just takes not talking at somebody, but reaching your hand out and helping them up, it gets them their hope,” said DiRenna. He opened up the home for a preview open house so that the community could see the transformation the space would make:

“He was facing cracked windows, crumbling plaster, a charred kitchen, a shower wall held together with tape … all the features you’d expect in a 117-year-old, five-bedroom house that ended up on the block watch’s list of drug hotspots. “See, when I look at this, I see opportunity, job training, kids making a little bit of money,” said Mr. DiRenna, recovery director of the ARK Allegheny Recovery Krew. “There’s going to be a lot of laughter and fun going on in here.”“

Read more here about the series of Serenity Houses DiRenna and his crew are building in their attempt to turn “OD Road” into “Recovery Road.”