Suspended Sentence
Page 28
Of course, the resulting picture is not what most people would call a successful photograph. No photographer could admire this into-the-light, dark-on-one-side photo of two people walking along a beach where you can’t really see their faces very well. No flash. It doesn’t matter. Actually, you can make out that we’re both wearing sunglasses; I’m wearing some kind of a striped t-shirt, and my dad is smoking his pipe. Maybe I would prefer to see our faces more clearly, too. And yet I love the photo and cherish it, just as I cherish the moment of quiet intimacy, wonder, and reverie all of us felt that evening. We were trekking up the strand, as far as we could see, way up to the rocky shelf that jutted out into the sea, with waves breaking over it and strange barnacles growing on the sides of the boulders. We’d climb up on top of them for a while, look out to catch sight of any passing boats, then we would turn back and retrace our steps, stopping to admire the antics of seagulls flying in to catch whatever the surf brought in for dinner. During our stay, the sunset walk together was our beach ritual.
The photograph, as well as the strangeness of darkness in the foreground and light coming toward us from the distance, reminds me of a talk I would have alone with my dad in my parents’ house back in North Carolina. This was quite a few years later, after I started to open up to my parents about all the problems Mike and I were having with Dylan when he was about sixteen years old. One evening, after my mom went to bed, the two of us talked again about what to do. No one in the family was at all sure of what could be done. Still, we had to make some decision, and we discussed trying the special school, the program we were about to invest in. We knew there were no assurances, but it seemed a worthy attempt at an intervention that could have a positive impact. I remember my dad stretching his legs out from his recliner chair, as he would so often do, then fixing his gaze off into the distance. He probably already had a hint about my mom’s illness, how it would slowly erase the memory of the woman he loved and had shared his life with since he was twenty years old. He didn’t talk about that, though—not at that time.
And he was probably thinking about Mark, too, about how he hadn’t been able to help his son, but maybe he could help his grandson. I remember my dad talked about how we were all in this together, how we were all looking out into the shadows, the mystery of a future that was so uncertain, but we would do the best we could.
That’s what John thinks, too. That some problems in life are so deep, so intractable that you just can’t solve them. Still, you do the best you can. And we are, we have been, all this time. Just like that day we were walking on the beach. Somewhere between the darkness on one side of us and the glowing light shining on the other.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book would not be in its present form if it hadn’t been for many persons who contributed their time and talents to help bring it all together.
Many thanks to Brooke Warner’s entrepreneurial skills and the strong editing, coaching, and design team she has put together at She Writes Press. It’s been wonderful to have such support through a complicated process.
I’m happy that artist James Secor of Montpelier, Vermont agreed to work with me to provide the portraits and drawings that accompany the text. More of his artwork can be found at www.jamessecor.com. Thank you to Angela Palm, author of Riverine, who applied her copyediting skills to the manuscript and kept me on track with my verb tenses and many other writerly matters. Great appreciation expressed to Susannah Felts, co-founder of the Porch Writers’ Collective in Nashville, for agreeing to give a read-through with suggestions. She taught a course in creative non-fiction that helped me re-tool in the early stages of writing, and since then the Porch has provided a steady stream of informative, inspirational workshops for local writers like me.
I’m very grateful that individual members of NAMI gave their consent to sharing their family stories (with names changed) beyond our support group. Surely, there are more of us than we know.
Heartfelt thanks to the Green River Writers Group of Louisville for their welcoming spirit and astute critiques. As various chapters rolled through at our camp-like retreats, so did the useful questions, tips, and suggestions from the alert assembly. Couldn’t ask for a more generous bunch of writers and readers!
A very special thank you to my early full-draft readers, whose comments contributed so much, each in their own way, to making this a better book: Ernie O’Dell, Meg Brown, Ann Marie Montgomery, Brenda Benson, Jim Benson, Brenda Harrington, and Reika Ebert. And many thanks to poet Jean Tucker, whose stamina often went beyond my own as her sharp eye and editing pencil cut through many a vine of wayward prose.
I thank the members of my family (both alive and those no longer living) for their love, support, wisdom, lessons, and inspiration—even when I wasn’t always ready to receive their gifts. Shalom and love to all of you.
And I especially thank John—mostly for staying with me. He has been my first and principal reader/commentator all along. He’s also been principal advisor, therapist, and pit crew foreman. In all these capacities, he not only helped me to keep writing about the experiences recounted in this book, but—more importantly—to live through them.
REFERENCES
Akiskal, Hagop. “Developmental Pathways to Bipolarity: Are Juvenile Onset Depressions Pre-Bipolar?” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 34:6 (1995): 754-763.
Akiskal, Hagop. “The Evolving Bipolar Spectrum: Prototypes I, II, III, and IV.” Psychiatric Clinics of North America 22:3 (1999): 517-534.
Barks, Coleman. A Year with Rumi. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
Bissinger, Buzz. Father’s Day. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.
Brown, Brené. Rising Strong. New York: Speigel and Grau, 2015.
Carroll, Lewis. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871). New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.
Chopra, Deepak. Perfect Health. New York: Harmony/Crown Publications, 1991.
Cloud, David. “On Life Support: Public Health in the Age of Mass Incarceration.” Vera Institute of Justice, Nov. 2014. www.vera.org/publications.
Eagleman, David. Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. New York: Pantheon, 2011.
Gravity. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, 2013. (Burbank, CA: Warner Home Video, DVD.)
James, Doris J. and Lauren E. Glaze. “Mental Health Problems of Prison and Jail Inmates.” Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, Sept. 2006.
Jamison, Kay Redfield. An Unquiet Mind. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Kerman, Piper. Orange is the New Black. New York: Spiegel and Grau, 2010.
LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
MacDonald, Ann (ed.). “How addiction hijacks the brain.” Harvard Mental Health Letter 28:1 (2011): 1-3.
Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.
Sacks, Oliver. On the Move. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.
Shapiro, Rami. Recovery, the Sacred Art: The Twelve Steps as Spiritual Practice. Woodstock, VT: SkyLight Paths, 2009.
Skowyra, Kathleen R. and Joseph J. Cocozza, Ph.D. “Blueprint for Change: A Comprehensive Model for the Identification and Treatment of Youth With Mental Health Needs in Contact with the Juvenile Justice System.” The National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice, 2007.
Tupac Uncensored and Uncut: The Lost Prison Tapes. Directed by Ken Peters (2009), based on interview with Tupac Shakur in 1995. (New York: Cinedigm, 2011, DVD.)
FOR FURTHER READING
Chödrön, Pema. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times. Boulder: Shambhala, 2016 (1997). An American Buddhist trained in the Tibetan tradition teaches practices of non-judgmental awareness and compassion for self and others that many find relevant to their lives today.
Fast, Julie A. and John Preston. Take Charge of Bipolar Disorder: A 4-Step Plan for You and Your Loved Ones to Manage the Ill
ness and Create Lasting Stability. New York: Grand Central Life & Style/Hachette, 2006. Written by a knowledgeable team, this is a useful workbook to treat and train for a life with bipolar. Includes individual stories and clear explanations of bipolar behaviors along with space to write out your own observations/goals. I especially appreciate the text boxes addressed to family and friends on specific ways to help your loved one.
Fawcett, Jan, M.D., Bernard Golden, Ph.D. and Nancy Rosenfeld. New Hope for People with Bipolar Disorder. New York: Random House, 2006, 2007. This book gives a solid overview of the illness, treatments, medications, therapies, lifestyle adaptations.
Federman, Russ, Ph.D. and J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D. Facing Bipolar: The Young Adult’s Guide to Dealing with Bipolar Disorder. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger, 2010. Written by a university mental health counselor, this book offers advice for persons in their twenties learning to grapple with the challenges of an autonomous, bipolar-under-treatment life.
Forney, Ellen. Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books, 2018. A cartoonist shows the complexity of staying stable through personal experience, advice, and coping tools gleaned over fourteen years of balance adjustments. Funny drawings and bold layout will appeal to your arty, tactile, kinetic side.
Greene, Esq., J. D., and Olivia Allen. “Disrupting School-Justice Pathways for Youth with Behavioral Health Needs,” National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, 2017. This is one of the studies available from the National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice at https://www.ncmjhjj/resources. It shows how setting up a School Responder Model (SRM) can help schools, families, and courts work together to get at-risk kids into behavioral health treatment before they get arrested.
Kennedy, Patrick J. and Stephen Fried. A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey Through the Past and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction. New York: Blue Rider/Penguin Random House, 2015. This personal testimony comes from within the Kennedy family, and is followed by the author’s recommendations for evidence-based policy changes to improve outcomes for people with mental health disorders.
Lederman, Judith S. and Candida Fisk, M.D. The Ups and Downs of Raising a Bipolar Child: A Survival Guide for Parents. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003.
Long, Liza. The Price of Silence: A Mom’s Perspective on Mental Illness. New York: Hudson/Penguin, 2014. A courageous mom talks about her family’s difficulties and makes the case to show why these issues matter to everyone. Long is also the author of “I am Adam Lanza’s mother,” an article published after Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.
Lowe, Chelsea and Bruce M. Cohen, M.D., Ph.D. Living with Someone Who’s Living with Bipolar Disorder. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass/Wiley, 2010. This is another good book for family, friends, partners, or co-workers of people living with bipolar.
Miklowitz, David J., Ph.D. The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide. 3rd ed. New York: Guilford, 2019. This comprehensive classic by a respected physician in the field remains the main map of Bipolarland that later guides follow.
Miklowitz, David J., Ph.D. and Elizabeth L. George, Ph.D. The Bipolar Teen: What You Can Do to Help Your Child and Your Family. New York: Guilford, 2007.
Papolos, Demetri, M.D. and Janice Papolos. The Bipolar Child. 3rd ed. New York: Broadway, 2006. Ths guide, for parents navigating the confusing complexities of this disorder in children and adolescents, offers useful advice and resources for life at home, at school, and with doctors and health insurance providers. It also contains important guidance in preparing an IEP (Individualized Education Program) for your child at your local school, and is accompanied by a website: https://bipolarchild.com.
Pierce-Baker, Charlotte. This Fragile Life: A Mother’s Story of a Bipolar Son. Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2012. This is a riveting account of how two professional parents coped with young adult-onset bipolar, addiction, jail, trauma, and the costly search for treatment. The book includes a useful list of resources.
Pozatek, Krissy. The Parallel Process: Growing Alongside your Adolescent or Young Adult Child in Treatment. New York: Lantern Books, 2011. A therapist’s guide that shows parents how they can let go of old patterns and grow new ones, even as their kids struggle with responsibility and self-awareness in treatment.
Sheff, David. Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey through His Son’s Addiction. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2008. This book chronicles a father’s close relationship with the son of his first marriage, Nic, even as the teen falls down a rabbit hole of meth addiction and treatment cycles that impact Sheff’s new family, as well as Nic’s mom. Guilt, remorse, rebuilding, boundaries: they all come up in this story.
Sheff, Nic. Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines. New York: Atheneum, 2008. This through-the-looking-glass, parallel memoir (by the son of the author of the above book) tells how he became addicted and why he preferred self-medication to taking prescribed pharmaceuticals, and describes his struggles/ruses in treatment programs. The television screenwriter has continued to be open about his life with bipolar and his efforts to maintain recovery, in articles published online at https://www.thefix.com and elsewhere.
USEFUL RESOURCES
Active Minds
https://activeminds.org
Nonprofit organization of college students dedicated to raising awareness of mental health issues on campus and beyond.
Al-Anon [for family]
https://al-anon.org
Alcoholics Anonymous
https://www.aa.org
Bp Magazine
https://www.bphope.com
Printed and online magazine with useful articles to help someone live with, or next to, the complexities of bipolar disorder. Articles often stem from someone’s personal experience walking the walk. Takes a problem-solving, creative, colorful, upbeat approach.
Brain and Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF)
https://www.bbrfoundation.org
Provides competitive research grants to neuroscientists seeking to better understand and treat brain circuitry disorders like schizophrenia, bipolar, severe depression, autism, etc. Families and donors are educated about scientists’ work through online newsletters, webinars, and conferences.
Bring Change 2 Mind
https://bringchange2mind.org
Co-founded by Glenn Close after her sister Jessie was diagnosed with bipolar after many troubled years. Encourages open conversation about a variety of mental health issues to promote understanding and improve lives.
Child Mind Institute
https://childmind.org
National non-profit dedicated to transforming the lives of children who struggle with mental health and learning disorders. An excellent resource for families, teachers, and policymakers.
Depression Bipolar Support Alliance (DBSA)
https://www.dbsalliance.org
Major organization to promote understanding and empowerment of those living with these illnesses. Hosts support groups, trains peer mentors, and provides community for those in need.
Juvenile Bipolar Research Foundation
https://www.jbrf.org
Provides wide-ranging information enabling families and clinicians to work together to provide better outcomes for children and adolescents. Gives guidance for finding alternative education possibilities or residential treatment if needed.
Mental Health America
www.mentalhealthamerica.net
Community-based non-profit dedicated to promoting the mental health of all Americans. Known for its “B4Stage4” philosophy: create awareness and treat mental health conditions long before they reach crisis level.
Mental Health Recovery
https://mentalhealthrecovery.com
Features Mary Ellen Copeland’s template for setting up a Wellness Recovery Action Plan (WRAP), a tool that can help persons at risk and their loved ones be able to recover more quickly and safely from a mental health crisis.
Narcotics Anonymous
https://www.na.org
National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)
www.nami.org
Largest grass-roots organization set up to educate, support, and advocate for those living with mental illnesses as well as their families. Offers peer support groups. A good place to start finding other local resources available.
National Center for Mental Health and Juvenile Justice
https://www.ncmhjj
Agency founded in 2001 that aims to improve outcomes for youth with mental health, substance abuse, or trauma-related conditions who have come into contact with the juvenile justice system. Offers research, training, and strategic planning for schools and court systems, so they can work together with families to help kids in crisis get the care they need to continue in school and stay out of jail.
Oxford House
www.oxfordhouse.org
Self-run, self-supported recovery houses for adults who have addiction issues. Founded in 1975 and listed on the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, Oxford Houses offer housing, community, and accountability for adults in transition from detox/jail/prison to a life of recovery on the outside.
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA)
www.samhsa.gov
Government agency created to make this critical aspect of health care more widely accessible. Consult website to find critical hotlines, information, and the behavioral health centers supported by SAMHSA located nearest to you.
Treatment Advocacy Center
https://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org
Source of legal and policy information for families of adults who are most severely impacted by mental illness and who refuse treatment. Helps to legislate Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) and to advise local Mental Health Courts.
Vera Institute of Justice
https://www.vera.org