Carrie Fiorillo was speaking at the first Bright Future: Mental Health Recovery Conference because, she told the Star, she wants people to know “there’s a possibility of getting out” and even a happy ending.
Carrie Fiorillo overcame a decade of addiction and became a duty counsel with Legal Aid Ontario. Her advocacy for others in similar straits is aided by the fact she’s able to get through to them so easily because of her own experiences. (ANDREW LAHODYNSKYJ / TORONTO STAR)
At 8:45 Friday morning, Carrie Fiorillo was sitting on the third floor of a downtown highrise speaking to a group of people about how to get and give help.
It’s something she struggled with for 10 years, until at age 31, when she got to “a place that was very, very, very dark,” Fiorillo sought the support she’d needed but didn’t know how to accept.
Less than an hour later, she was racing to the College Park courthouse where she works as duty counsel for people who at times are coping with issues that resemble her past.
Since emerging from a decade of addiction five years ago she has managed to move on to Dalhousie University’s Schulich School of Law and has met the man she’s now married to. They have a young daughter and a dog named Jean-Jacques Rousseau.