OPENING OF MY BOOK ON MENTAL ILLNESS:

SWIMMING LESSONS:  A mother’s tale of navigating the mental illness tide.

First, a few words:

You gotta swim
Swim in the dark
There's no shame in drifting
Feel the tide shifting and wait for the spark
Yeah you've gotta swim
Don't let yourself sink
Just find the horizon
I promise you it's not as far as you think
(“Swim” by Jack Mannequin)

As a kid I took swimming lessons and passed, but then in my mid-teens there was this near-drowning incident at a beach with unexpected surf and undertow.  I panicked, began to go under.  A stranger dragged me out, then disappeared.

When I decided to write this book, the image of fighting a tide came to my mind and thus the title.  To navigate the world when your child is mentally ill is to swim for your life. 

It also helps to be positive.     

            Before you read my story, know that I tell it not to get sympathy.   I want parents, family members, friends, teachers, neighbors, politicians, and treating professionals to know what it has been like “in the trenches” over the last two decades dealing with mental illness, so that we can all make demands for specific changes, while acknowledging improvements that are happening but that are too slow in coming.  More importantly, I want parents to hold onto hope.  There are good reasons for hope in 2015.  The changes that are happening in the developments in technology in medicine and behavioral health bode well for the future, but there is no fast fix coming.   Parents of mentally ill children need to know that no matter what sorrows and pain are coming your way in life, you can stay afloat and keep swimming even in the deepest water if you never let go of hope.  I’m a bit like Nellie in South Pacific:  a cockeyed optimist, “stuck like a dope with this thing called hope.” 

Hope is good medicine.  And it’s free. 

I’m not sure what exists beyond this life, but I do know that heaven and hell both exist on earth.  I have learned that hell is not the opposite of heaven; the great thing about hell is that it allows you to recognize heaven when you see it.  I know because I have been to both places in my life, and know I will return to each as my journey continues. Life goes forward and joy and pain are the tidal pools in which we, suddenly, may find ourselves.  

            Cockeyed or not, I’m not delusional.  I’ve had my abyss moments. The short version of my story is that I am the mother of four grown children. Two of them developed mental illness at an early age, and that meant over twenty years of doctors, counselors, frustrated teachers, psych and educational testing, expert consultations with  specialists far and near, and trips to the county courthouse. There were shocks, screams, tears, and more tears. Money flushed.  Nights without sleep. Headlong crashes into stone walls of inescapable, deadly reality.

Still, my children are beautiful; my love for them without limit.  While this is my story, it is their story too, and they have encouraged me to tell it.  Their desire to share about themselves in order to encourage understanding is amazing to me. My hope for their future remains strong.

I keep swimming.