An Open Letter to John and Tom

Dear Guys,

I'm so disappointed. I really love your movies. You both seem like such regular fellows - talented and good looking, with nice families. But then you do these interviews and talk about things that you know nothing about. When you say these things - that psychiatry doesn't help anyone and that psychotropic drugs are responsible for school shootings - from what experience are you speaking?

You see I have experience with these things. I remember holding my beautiful new baby daughter and carefully planning my walk to the next room, where the gun was, and what I would do next. I was out of my mind, of course, struggling with a hormone imbalance of biblical proportions. Tom, how can you say this was not real? I'm here to tell you that vitamins would not have helped. I've watched my son struggle without Depakote and I've watched him on it, and let me tell you that he NEEDS that drug like he needs oxygen. So John, you want to blame school shootings on this kind of drug?

I think it's easy to say what other people should do hypothetically. I've heard you say that these are your opinions and that you are entitled to them. Maybe so. But when people of your position speak, other people listen. It's the responsibility of fame. So when some ill informed mother denies her 16 year old the antidepressant that his doctor recommends because she read your interview in W magazine, and that 16 year old takes his life, will you give her comfort?

It must be nice to be healthy. It must be nice to feel right. But you don't have a clue. And knowing that you are comfortable making judgments about things that you know nothing about, makes me very uncomfortable about you. I think I'll skip your next movie, boys.
Sincerely, Trish

Read about Travolta's opinions, as thousands of others have, here.

Father's Day

This is a hard to say. My sons father is a good man. Parenting has never been easy for him - but that doesn't make him a bad parent. He tries. He has always done the right thing - paid his child support, paid his share for the braces. He does not forget birthdays. He never missed important band concerts, or little league games, or graduations. But...

I think it is extraordinarily difficult for a man to admit that there may be something wrong with his child. Perhaps it is cultural. Perhaps a man thinks of his child as an extension of himself and any perceived flaw in the child is somehow transmuted into a greater flaw in the man. If the flaw is a birthmark, or bad teeth, or short stature, well, that's bad enough. But mental illness? How does that reflect on the father? In a culture that views brain disorder as a flaw of character or a lack of will or discipline, how unthinkable is that?

My sons father has chosen the option of denial. It is easier for him to see his son as lazy or irresponsible or even incompetent than it is for him to admit that he has a mental illness. It is preferable to think that he may "snap out of it" or "finally grow up" rather than admit that he will always live with a debilitating disease. Although I can understand this way of thinking, I also see the devastating effect that this has had on my son and their relationship. Neither will ever meet the others expectations. It is a tragedy twofold.

I hope that my sons father will eventually move on to acceptance. As an ex-wife and a mother there is little I can do to intervene. They sometimes find some peace together when they go camping, escaping the everyday traumas - as if a mutual love of the natural world can bind some of their wounds. My son loves his father and expects little of him. He loves his son and expects the unattainable. I bleed for them both.

Read Families on the Brink: The Impact of Ignoring Children with Serious Mental Illness here.

F 2 F

I have just returned from one of the most profound experiences of my life. I spent three incredible days at the Tierra Learning Center outside of Leavenworth, WA, attending a teacher training for the NAMI Family to Family program. I can't believe that it has been nearly two years since I attended F 2 F with my husband, still reeling from my son's suicide attempt. That twelve weeks was life altering, as we met other family members living with mental illness and began the healing process - learning about these devastating brain disorders, medications, social services, etc. but even more - learning to communicate and deal with the aftermath of crisis.

I spent the weekend with people who have been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt. Their stories of pain and unbearable struggle were stories of survivors and that is the point. Family to Family is taught by the people who do indeed know what it's like to love and live with a relative who is profoundly ill. Through shared experience we can connect with people and help them come to terms with their lives as caregivers and help them have a deeper understanding of the debilitating effects that these diseases have on their loved ones. If taking F 2 F is an act of healing, then teaching it is an act of love.

I am deeply humbled by the experience. I am also excited that soon I will share this process of transformation with families in my own classes. I am filled with gratitude for Ron and Bruce, Judie and Nancy for sharing their knowledge and their time. I also want to thank every single one of the amazing women that shared the class with me - for their empathy and courage.

Learn more about Family to Family here.

See the beautiful Tierra Learning Center here.

Graduation

I attended my daughter's graduation today from our local community college. Although she seems a little jaded that this isn't a real (as in 4 year) degree, it was hard not to see what a tremendous accomplishment that this was for many of the students. At the very least, even for my overachiever, this is one of those passages in life that marks an expected change. The next step, if you will.

There are many people who don't find life a simple progression from point A to point B. While most of their contemporaries seem to be on cruise control down a smooth thoroughfare, for these individuals life seems like a series of missteps, wrong turns and disappointments. My father was quite the artist, and in one of his sketches he portrays himself walking sadly down a rocky road, personal rain cloud over his head, black cat crossing his path. I'm sure it seemed to him that every choice was the wrong one - that he was cursed, or jinxed or just unlucky. I suppose it's easy for me to say that he was simply depressed, some chemicals out of whack in his brain, probably a genetic condition. I'm sure that this was so, but it didn't make it any easier on him. In the end, you could say, he gave up.

I've watched my son struggle with these same demons. Never feeling good enough. Or never catching a break. I've watched his mood swings and his pain and I've lived in fear that maybe he would never be happy or even safe. We both laugh a little nervously, and make light of it, but we both always assume it's going to be the hard way. Hard on the people that love him. Much harder on him. Knowing that it's genetic - a brain disorder - a condition beyond his control - may help it to make some sense, but it doesn't change the feelings. Driving for long stretches without a cruise control is exhausting. Sometimes easy would be nice. But from this, there is no simple progression, no obvious next step. So we hope.

See ideas for coping with depression here.

The "S" Word

We had a successful suicide in our little town this week. He was 16 - a sophomore in high school. I've always been puzzled by the language - that a "failed" suicide attempt means that you get to stay alive. If this young man felt like a failure in his life, if he felt that he couldn't be successful at anything - he managed to succeed at this. And now he's gone.

My father successfully committed suicide when he was 25. In my adult examination of this, I have come to understand that it takes a powerful stimulus to override our basic survival instincts. That someone in this type of deep despair is not really trying to end their connections to their loved ones or even really to end their life - they are trying to end their pain. It is understandable that a person could be in such personal agony that any out seems reasonable - if pain, emotional or physical, was such a treat then every pharmaceutical company on earth would be bankrupt. We usually avoid pain at all costs; no one willing submits to drowning in it. I guess that explains why suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in the US.

There are ALWAYS options. A patient with cancer will take drugs to ease their suffering. There are drugs to ease emotional suffering. A person with bone or muscle pain will use physical therapy, massage, and exercise to manage their problem. There are cognitive therapies, meditation, counseling and support groups to manage emotional pain. It's not always easy to see that daylight is around the corner during the darkest night of the soul. Holding someones hand until morning is always an option.

See suicide from a survivor's perspective here.

Read more about teen suicide here.

Moving Forward

Moving forward toward recovery is always our primary goal. Today we are not in crisis. Often that means a sort of vacuum. "Not in crisis" is a nowhere place, often a sort of shelf over the abyss. To get from "not in crisis" to recovery, we have to move, and movement is - well - scary. Maybe we should stay right here. Not in crisis.

I think that the trick to moving out of crisis is to make a wheel. Okay, appreciate the metaphor, movement=wheel. Now you are the hub of the wheel. Just you - Not in Crisis. To make a nice round wheel we need to have some spokes. First spoke for most of us - a mental health care professional. This can be your therapist or psychiatrist or even your MD, but you need one that you trust and you need one who can provide you with spoke #2 -medication. I mean the right medication or combo platter to help you maintain some balance in the ol' brain chemistry.

Great start! But two spokes do not a wheel make. Let's add another - family. No one on this earth can support you more than those that love you. They may need education to understand what's going on with you, but they can be your safety zone. Three spokes is still kind of flimsy so how about friends? Then think about a personal counselor, a support group, or an online community. Starting to get the picture? The more spokes you have in that wheel the stronger it's going to feel. And movement is just bound to happen.

Find more about NAMI support groups here.

Mother's Day

I probably think of myself as a mother first and foremost. It's so terribly cliche. I know that as an empowered, independent woman I have many roles, but this is the one that defines me. I was a daughter before I was a mother, I am a wife, I have been a student, and a business owner and a citizen. All the details of pregnancy, labor and delivery aside - from the moment that another person emerged from my body, I knew that nothing else would ever matter more than that. I love my children fiercely and completely. I feel their pain and their joy as if it were my own. I would do anything to protect them including, but not limited to, standing in front of on oncoming train. This is the joy and the terror that is motherhood.

When a child becomes ill, it fills a mother's heart with horror. Somehow she has failed to protect her child. She watches the child's distress with her own special agony - laced with guilt and fear. She does everything in her power to make her child well - no doctor too distant, no treatment too extreme - she would put her own blood in the child if it was necessary - her kidney, her heart. She will not rest until her child is safe and sound. But if her child suffers from mental illness, she cannot make it better. She finds herself helpless. She wonders if somehow she caused this. She failed to protect her child.

To all the mothers who may read this, take heart. You did not CAUSE this. You cannot CURE this. You have no CONTROL over this. But you will COPE. Because in the end, all we can really do for them is love them. We do that naturally and automatically. That is the joy and the terror that is motherhood.

Find a guidebook for parents with children with brain disorders here.