Be brave this month, if you self harm and are in an unsure place.
Many of us know that there is always room to spread slightly more love.
Those stressed or upset can feel an ounce of hope because Tweet positive messages and quotes. Buy a book, similar to Noon, and read more about selfharm. It’s a well use social media to Actually the two memorial services were packed to overflowing, a testimony to a woman who survived a horrible mental illness and who received all the support she needed for herself being that she gave much to others, when she died a month later. What a marvelous sendoff! My ‘sisterinlaw’ played the keyboard and we sang songs that she remembered from a while ago. I know that the night before she died, my brother, an organist, played her favorite hymns to take her through the night. It was a beautiful Saturday morning in spring. I’m sure that the graveside service was for family only. Just as it had come, when the service was over the hawk vanished into thin air. Beautiful hawk hovered in the sky, as we gathered to say ‘good bye’.
Someone ok a chance.
Plenty of mothering time she lost with us, she bestowed on those very needy kids.
They needed a school lunch manager at a school in New Haven, CT -a junior high and high school in a section of the city that had the highest rates of crime and delinquency. While causing a rapid rise in the overall amount of students in the hot lunch program, under her guidance, the staff prepared healthy meals that appealed to the kids. She ok the time to know any student by name, to understand their circumstances and to prepare foods that were ethnically and nutritiously appropriate to their needs.
She came out of the hospital wanting to be a mom again.
She left behind her role as matriarch of a huge family including her 5 children, 24 grandchildren and 16 great grandchildren who adored her, when she died at the age of 82.
Adolescence isn’t a decent time to expect much understanding or empathy. As we moved into adulthood, to our credit we became a lot more supportive and an ongoing source of pleasure for her. My heart sinks when in my opinion of the inadvertent mistreatment and lack of understanding she got from me and my siblings that made her transition back into the family a great deal more difficult. In the intervening years, we had all grown up, just two of my brothers were left in high school, we were not used to having a mother around and were very independent. Normally, she struggled and regained her space in the family with little striving to ‘re enter’ a household where you had left a bunch of children and came back to almost grown adolescents.
Did you know that the atmosphere in the hospital was abominable, as state psychiatric institutions were back consequently.
Not much of a prescription for recovery.
She had very limited access to doctors and there was little staff to meet the needs of all those patients. No privacy. It was crowded, dark and smelly. Nobody was expected to get well. It was a holding tank, a place where people were managed, not cured or helped to recover. Lots of info can be found easily on the web. She slept in a large room which she shared with forty other women. Dealing with forty others with symptoms as severe as hers. That said, there was only a small night stand between the beds for personal belongings. No peace. No rest. Now look. She recalls that the food was horrid, and being the wonderful cook she was, she should have known.
Sometimes when we went to visit, she was in a very severe depression, thin and unkempt.
She pulled her hair back severely and always wore similar clothes.
Whenever laughing and talking loudly, behaving in a manner that was bizarre and embarrassing, at other times she was very exuberant. While wringing her hands and crying, she will repeat over and over words we didn’t understand while she walked in circles. She hardly knew we were there. Just keep reading. She met people through her work as a dietician, in her church, in the local grange and through quite a few volunteer activities. Anyway, therefore she began to systematically connect with people in the community. Sometimes the stigma created by her long hospitalization caused her to be ostracized and rejected.
She pressed on.
People made rude comments that hurt her to the core.
I remember hearing her crying herself to sleep at night. She questioned why they had to sweep the sidewalk when the rain will clear it anyway, and why they had to keep the house so clean. Raised on a farm in the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, Kate never quite fit the typical image of a quiet, proper and demure Pennsylvania Dutch girl. She was outspoken, assertive and mischievous, qualities not admired in a young woman at that time, unlike her two sisters. Write she was a patient in a magnificent facility associated with the retirement community where she lived with my father. Normally, she was in a beautifully decorated private room and received loving attention from a staff which catered to the needs of the elderly. So this time her hospitalization was different. When she was having a hard time she called up amongst the many people she knew she could trust and shared with them her innermost feelings.
She used her support to keep mania and depression at bay following her discharge from the hospital.
The things she did for others became second nature to her.
By giving support to others when she could, she got it for herself when she desperately needed it. Her own brand of mutual support enriched her life. While supporting her until she was ready to resume her normal activities, they should often spend time with her. Whenever wanting to be sure she didn’t feel alone for even one minute, family members and friends filled her room around the clock. Some just peeked in and let her know they have been there. That said, they just let it happen, the facility really didn’t have rules to deal with a situation just like this. Most stayed, sometimes all day and over night. Now pay attention please. Literally hundreds of people came gether with stacks of cards and so many flowers that we had to find other people to give them to, as the room was full. Now, a continuing procession. It is they started to come, since her massive community of support heard what had happened.
Then the hospital staff, however, was not prepared for the overwhelming support she received.
She supported and encouraged activity, creativity and individuality.
Kate had left behind her career to spend busy engaging her family in loads of activities from gardening and raising chickens to sewing and cooking. Our family life was nearly idyllic, before the hospitalization. Notice, she left with me a rich array of skills I have used all my life and a love for the natural world which has sustained me through many hard times, even when her hospitalization began when I was eight years old. Of course, I will never forget the homemade french fries and fried dough that warmed us on cold winter days. Also, they could’ve taken over her responsibilities for some time, perhaps someone could’ve even taken her on a vacation. Instead she was separated from the few people she did have in her lifespan.
Suppose they had just sat with her, listened to her, and held her while she cried.
In the hospital, no efforts were made to encourage patients to support ourselves.
Instead of being taken off to the hospital and isolated from the people who loved her and the world she knew, I often wonder how she if, she had been surrounded with loving caring friends and family members. There was little staff available to give support to the multitudes of patients. My brother and Kate’s granddaughter played the organ, as she will have wanted. There’s more info about it here. Even the standing room was filled.
At the second service, intended for family and friends, family members read eulogies and greatgrandchildren again sang her favorite hymns.
As a matter of fact, she was included in, and the inspiration for, both of my studies.
Besides, a Guide to Maintaining Mood Stability. So a Guide to Living with Depression and Manic Depression and Living Without Depression and Manic Depression. It is she and I spent many hours talking about why she got well, about what made the difference. These studies gave me the information I needed to write my books, The Depression Workbook. On p of that, that became the focus of her life, her ongoing wellness was dependent on her strong connection with others.
She was always there for others, and after that when she needed support it was always there for her.
Whenever writeping by with a loaf of freshly baked bread, running an errand for someone or sending a card, not overwhelmingly, by constantly bothering them, by a quick phone call to check in.
She certainly did it right, I don’t know if she developed this support systems intentionally. As it evolved, her life became richer and richer, it not only kept her well. Before long people began to forget that this vivacious woman had ever been in a mental hospital. Nevertheless, because of this her life was very rich. She kept in uch with people. She made sure they stayed in her lifetime by keeping in uch and making plans to spend time together, Therefore if she liked someone. There were a couple of key ways she built her support network. Not Kate.
Before the advent of psychiatric medications and the focus on psychotherapy and recovery, people diagnosed with manic depression in those days, people with symptoms as severe as the ones she experienced, were expected to live out their lives and die alone in a back ward, forgotten by family and friends.
She stayed well until her death at the age of 82, 37 years later.
After eight severe years, recurring psychotic manic and depressive episodes, Kate got well. Oftentimes recovering from a devastating illness, she was faced with the stigma that is the constant companion of anyone who had been diagnosed with a psychiatric illness or spent time in a mental institution. She ok more educational courses as she went through the heart breaking process of being refused job after job. Notice, this was in 1955, before anyone was really thinking about support for the mentally ill.
She faced a feeling of the importance of support.
Somehow my mother knew how important it was to her ongoing wellness. Some so immense that they would have sent hundreds of our moods wildly out of control or scurrying back to the safety of a bleak hospital situation. There were none that were effective in the treatment of manic depression in those days. We know it wasn’t medications. Perhaps it was her own strong will and determination that made her well. Nobody was talking about self help. That was by being MUTUALLY supportive. She was always available to listen when anyone needed to be heard. She knew how to keep her support system strong.
As a matter of fact she gave far more to others than she ever needed, wanted or expected in return.
She picked extras and delivered them to people she cared about, Therefore in case she was picking blueberries.
She phoned and wrote regularly to keep in uch with others. She was always on the ‘lookout’ for something one of her friends or family members could use, when she worked at the church rummage sale. Then, in early November she began sending out Christmas cards to all the people on her extensive list. Essentially, sometimes I got a couple of since she found a new one that she thought I would enjoy. You should take this seriously. She was always volunteering to take friends shopping or out for lunch. Perhaps chemicals in her body that had gone awry somehow fixed themselves. That needs to be mentioned, there was another factor that we can’t really assess. Do you know an answer to a following question. Who will ever know?
Amongst the nurses started clandestinely giving her a high dosage multi vitamin.
We just know they did.
Hospital staff noticed her moods weren’t vacillating wildly anymore. Of course nobody really knows why those awful mood swings stopped. Therefore, as a matter of fact, she was helping to take care of the other patients. As a child I always thought it was my fault my mother got sick. Notice that I didn’t know what I had done to cause her illness but I thought that if I said the right thing to her she will get well and stay well. Whenever I was alone with her I didn’t know the words to say, the main trouble was. Now let me tell you something. She was diagnosed with severe and incurable manic depression. Furthermore, whenever marrying and having five children, Kate spent 8 after completing college with a degree in nutrition, having a brief career as a county extension agent.
Often when we think of someone who has had manic depression as severe as my mother’s and who was hospitalized for a long time, we might expect that when they got out of the hospital, their life would’ve been limited and isolated.
Others loved and supported her, because she was so supportive of so many people.
Not true in her case. She had no support, when she had her first episode of deep depression. Close family members lived far away. My father was away for weeks at a time working on the railroad. I am not sure anyone knew how to give her the kind of support she desperately needed. She had no opportunity to get gether with other women.
