Content warning: This post discusses mental illness and substance use. Please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP, or 911 if you need immediate support.
Nearly a year after Anne Marie Zanfagna lost her daughter, Jacqueline “Jackie”, to substance use disorder in 2014, she picked up a brush and painted Jackie’s portrait.
“It helped me grieve her in a healthy way,” said Anne Marie, who remembers Jackie as a joy. She and her husband, Jim, encouraged their daughter to try activities like instruments, singing, cheerleading and Girl Scouts growing up to get involved and make friends.
Caption: Baby Jackie with her parents Anne Marie and Jim Zanfagna.
“She was a bit of an introvert until she got comfortable with things,” said Jim, sharing that Jackie often shied away from the activities or briefly gave them a try before telling her parents she didn’t like them.
Anne Marie and Jim tried to get Jackie help when she began struggling with her mental health at 13. Doctors said she was just being a teenager, but they knew there was more to it than that.
Later, Jackie became friends with others facing challenges of their own and began using drugs.
“I think she was looking for healthy connection and found unhealthy connection,” said Jim. “Who knows when it happened, but you hear people who are on opioids say, ‘Well, after I took them, I felt normal.’ But sometimes they continue, and it spirals out of control.”
Photos of Jackie Zanfagna before she passed away in 2014.
In 2014, when Jackie was 26 years old, she passed away from an accidental heroin overdose after she was sober for 11 months. Anne Marie and Jim put the cause of death in her obituary to begin the conversation.
They received calls from others who had been affected by substance use and needed someone to talk to and spoke openly about it during their addiction and grief support meetings. When Anne Marie brought her portrait of Jackie to a meeting one day, another parent asked if she could paint the daughter they’d lost, too.
Word of Anne Marie’s work spread, and eventually she and Jim started Angels of Addictions. The 501(c)(3) charity invites people to submit a photo of a loved one they’ve lost to substance use disorder for her to paint – free of cost.
To date, she has completed over 400 portraits.
After receiving a request for a portrait, Anne Marie often emails or speaks with loved ones to hear their story. Her technical assistant and friend, Wendy, uses an editing app to posterize the subject’s photo, transforming their features into a pop art style. Then Anne Marie projects the image onto a canvas and begins painting.
Anne Marie Zanfagna has completed over 400 portraits of people lost to substance use disorder through Angels of Addictions.
“I choose all the paint colors, and I like happy colors,” said Anne Marie, who often learns she used the subject’s favorite color when she sends their loved ones the completed portrait. “I want them to stand out, be joyful.”
In 2024, Anne Marie submitted her portrait of Jackie to Genoa Healthcare’s annual Art Celebration. The event honors the people it serves, their talents and the healing power of art by inviting pharmacy consumers across the U.S. to submit original pieces of art. Select pieces and stories are featured on Genoa’s social media, website, wall calendar and more.
The portrait of Jackie Anne Marie submitted to Genoa’s Art Celebration is featured in the organization’s 2025 wall calendar, which was distributed to consumers and clinic partners at Genoa’s more than 750 pharmacies across the U.S.
Genoa specializes in caring for people who live with behavioral health and other complex conditions, including substance use disorder. Most of its pharmacies are located directly within the clinic where its consumers receive their care. This unique setting enables team members to meet consumers where they are, so it’s easier for them to get – and stay on – their medication.
This convenience — coupled with other offerings, like Genoa CARE Packaging™ pre-filled pill organizers, medication adherence calls and free medication mailing — drives improved health outcomes for consumers.
Angels of Addictions’ latest project, People in Progress, invites people in recovery to submit three photos of themselves for Anne Marie to paint as a triptych: one in active use, another during early recovery and the last during long-term recovery.
“I think she needed to spend some time with people who were alive,” said Wendy, sharing a piece from the project that displays a man’s journey into recovery. He recently received a master’s in ASL communication and now interprets for people in recovery who are deaf and hard of hearing. In the last portrait he’s wearing his graduation hat.
As part of People in Progress, Angels of Addictions’ latest project, Anne Marie paints a triptych that illustrates a person’s journey into recovery.
“I have a strong need to paint and am inspired by those who are grieving, and more recently, those in recovery,” Anne Marie shared in her submission for Genoa’s Art Celebration.
Her portrait of Jackie is showcased in the organization’s 2025 calendar for National Recovery Month in September.
“I’m grateful I get to work with Anne Marie and Jim to do something practical in caring and reducing stigma for those who suffer,” said Wendy. “They’re taking Jackie with them in the only way they can right now.”
