A Call for Awakening


Today I'm sharing (with permission of the author) a Facebook post.  You can see the accompanying video on our Gossamer Threads Facebook page.

The author is a former student of mine.  Kids graduate, and they leave the places where I have daily contact with them, but they don't leave my heart.  And some of them stay in touch.  As I scrolled through my news feed, I could see immediately that she was upset.  And then I watched 5 minutes of wonderful bravery, as she was vulnerable enough to let people see her like this and help other people to understand more about what it is like to live with a mental illness.  On one of her worst days, she was still educating people about mental illness.  This is how we bring it out of the shadows.  This is how we destroy stigma.  
Here are her words:


Thank you for your love and support!
I am okay!!! And thank you all so much for the heartfelt outpouring.
For everyone looking to my folks for info they really don’t know anymore than you do as I’ve been by myself all day so please be patient and I will try to address everything I can here.
So for those who can’t watch my video (I know it’s not always ideal time for a video)
YES I AM OKAY
NO I DONT NEED HELP
Thank you again for the outpouring of support! I’ve been urged to maybe take the video down by myself and others because I hate worrying people, especially those who can’t watch what’s going on but in the few hours that video has been up I’ve had more people just like me come out and thank me for having the courage to post that and talk about it. All those same people that feel ashamed of there illness and the effects it has on them... so many people hiding what’s truly going on because they just don’t want to be a burden and there is nothing that anyone can really do...
But that’s where they are wrong, people can do one thing— understand. And that is the overwhelming conclusion I’ve been hearing! People want to understand even when we are too ashamed to let them.
I state in the video the whole point of posting was awareness.
I hadn’t been able to have my medication for four days because my psychiatrist wasn’t receiving the request for my refill from Walgreens. Second time this has happened unfortunately but I did everything I could to handle it and ended up getting meds just prior to the video.
The video describes the hardships of mental illness in modern society in very few words. The point of allowing people to see me in that state was to make people a little more aware and understanding when there loved ones are suffering from it, and that it’s not always a suck it up situation or a cry me a river build me a bridge and get over it situation.
I’ve heard it all before, really... and one thing I had to learn was to not blame myself for being that way because it’s not my fault. It’s a chemical imbalance inside my brain and to put it in metaphorical terms if you have something really acidic, in order to make it neutral you have to add something basic and they cancel each other out to be neutral. That’s just how mental health medicine effects these imbalances...
So when the brain gets “too acidic” and there is no base to apply— well you catch my drift.
I was really scared to make that video because I know how people treat others like it’s some kind of ploy to gain sympathy but this was not a call for sympathy, it was a call for awakening.
Nobody likes feeling like they are a burden on society and especially not there loved ones but when that imbalance occurs in my experience 100% of the time that is how we feel, because it isn’t possible to describe exactly how you are feeling and expect someone to understand because most of the time we don’t understand why it’s happening ourselves.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Goals, Resolutions, and Mission: An Evolution

I read somewhere recently about how many of us struggle with goals because of how we approach them.  I know that for me, goals were heavily influenced “should” statements.  They were things that to a large extent were externally driven, things that I thought I needed to do and be because of the way I interacted with my culture. It’s not that I wasn’t taught how to set goals.  Mormons are big on goals overall, and I spent over 6 years from the age of 12-18 specifically setting and working on goals in a church program for young women called “Personal Progress.”  But goals weren’t enough for me to make the kind of progress I really needed. Take for example these goals that I found recently. Based on a few items included on the list, I assume these were set sometime between 1998 and 2000.  I’m also including some information about how I did with those goals. 5 year goals Begin concert career—Didn’t happen.   Full-time job with benefits—Nope Or enou...
Read more

True Listening

A friend asked some wonderful questions yesterday on Facebook. This morning, I took the time to answer.  Because this topic is so important to the mission of Gossamer Threads, I decided to share it here as well.   Lori wrote: " If you are so inclined to contemplate, I'd love to know your thoughts. Three-part question: 1. What does it mean to truly listen to another human being? 2. Have the majority of us ever properly learned how? When it comes to deeply-held belief differences, (politics, religion, football, music, etc) in conflict (in conflict is the key here) I am pretty sure the answer to #2 is no. I am being realistic (not pessimistic?). However. 3. Are there ways to listen, understand, empathize, and respect other deeply held beliefs when they are in direct conflict with yours? If so, what are those ways? Definition of key terms in this context: Listening: different than hearing. Listening is an active process where the listener makes a conscious decisi...
Read more

Spiritual Practice

This post was shared originally on the Exploring Sainthood blog (which no longer exists).  In this time of uncertainty and fear, spiritual practices can sustain us.  If you're not a religious person and the word "spiritual" doesn't feel right to you, think of this as deep and grounding self-care.  Use what works for you and leave the rest. I'm hoping to write a part 2 for this soon, sharing more ideas and the kinds of spiritual practice I'm engaging in right now. ______________ As I’ve mentioned before, one the blessings of attending a Unitarian Universalist church this last year has been the opportunity to get a broader perspective. The most interesting part is that I’m learning that my previously narrow views of what it meant to be Mormon and do things the Mormon way might not have been completely accurate. One of the responsibilities of membership at Unity Church-Unitarian is this: Cultivate a spiritual practice.  Attend to your spiritual/person...
Read more