A Tale of Two Griefs

Within four months, two hugely influential women in my life passed away. Both women taught me life lessons that I will always carry with me. Both women taught me how to manage difficult situations. Both women taught me how to look past misconceptions and see the woman herself. Both women taught me how to stand up for what and who I believed in. However, I can only talk to you about one of those women.

Audrey was my supervisor, my friend, and one of the women in my life that was an example of strength, ferocity, and passion. She laughed with me, cried with me, pushed me, and inspired me to make changes in not only my world, but the world of mental health, suicide, and law enforcement as a whole. I can reach out to our mutual friends when I am missing her more than usual. I can reach out to her husband to check in and see how he is doing. I can share with the world how much she inspired me to “give ‘em hell little one”.

I can not tell you about the other influential woman that I lost. I can’t tell you how she challenged me weekly over the four years that I worked with her. I can’t tell you how her progress and growth inspired me to continue working with consumers that others deemed too difficult. I can’t tell you about how her resilience and strength inspired me to never give up on an individual. I can’t share with you how her humor and unorthodox affection changed the way that I viewed what a relationship between clinician and consumer can be.

Both of these women shaped me into not only the woman that I am but also the clinician that I am. I am able to see past barriers and challenges and instead of shying away from them; rather, I stare directly at them and push through. I routinely remember her statement of being an “iron fist in a velvet glove” when I am pushing another consumer to acknowledge some of their unhealthy thinking or behaviors. I still cry when I want to share good news with either of them. It is difficult when it is her regular appointment time or when I want to run upstairs to share something with Audrey. 

With one of these women, I am supported and encouraged to grieve and share my stories about our life together. With the other woman, I am not. Our life is over. The tears, the laughter, the growth, and the relationship are expected to just end. Be done. Move on.

            The grief I feel over the loss of both of these women is equally as powerful yet in some ways the grief that I experience from one these women is at times way more difficult. I can’t share our stories. I can’t share who she was to me. I can’t tell the world how much she meant to me. In fact, my grief over losing her can be seen as a hindrance and as a weakness. This is the reality of clinician grief. We are encouraged to create and nurture relationships that create change yet when those relationships are ended by death, we are expected to just move on.

            I am not dismissing either of those influential women. Each of them taught me so much about who I am, personally and professionally. I refuse to forget what each of them taught me. I will continue to draw from our relationship and the strength that each of them taught me. I remember you. I see you.

Why Are You Here?

“Who did you lose to suicide? Oh, nobody. Well are you an attempt survivor? No? Hmm. Well why are you here?”

                This was asked to me by one of my fellow suicide prevention advocates when I first began to get involved. I honestly didn’t know how to respond. My first instinct was to apologize.  I am not sure why I felt the need to apologize. Then I got a little frustrated because I felt as if my passion and desire to help and educate others to prevent suicide was being questioned. Luckily,  I can still answer no to those questions. THAT is why I am here.

                I have not always been passionate about suicide prevention. It was not until my dear friend Rick opened up to me and shared that he was an attempt survivor that I became passionate about  suicide prevention. Until that point, I was like most other people in the mental health field; I knew that suicide was something that happened yet I still had blinders on to the impact that suicide has on our society as a whole. Rick’s story inspired me and changed the way that I viewed suicide forever. I immediately learned that ANYONE can experience suicidal thoughts and that ANYONE can attempt. This was a massive eye opener for me and I wanted to do more.  THAT is why I am here.

                That conversation changed the course of my life. I have since become a Mental Health First Aid Instructor, am on the board of the Eastern Missouri Chapter of the AFSP, created #SEMOSecrets, a campaign on my college campus to get students talking about their own mental health secrets,  and have attended and volunteered at numerous Out of the Darkness Walks. I have very open and honest conversations with my children, friends, and family about mental health and suicide. Yet, I still don’t feel as if I “fit” into the suicide prevention community. THAT is why I am here.

I have struggled a lot over the last few months with how and where I fit into the community if I have not lost someone to suicide and if I am not an attempt survivor.  I do not know the pain that losing someone to suicide brings nor do I know what  it feels like to live in so much emotional pain that I see death as a welcomed alternative. But, I could. I am not immune and my friends and family are not immune. Although I have not felt pain associated with suicide, I have felt emotional pain. I have learned how to use my pain to connect with others. I have been able to use this, coupled with the education I have learned about suicide prevention, to help others share about their thoughts of suicide. The truth is that I NEVER want to feel the pain of a suicide loss and that drives me. THAT is why I am here.

I may not have experienced the pain of losing someone to suicide but I have experienced the pain of having a friend tell me that they were thinking of ending their life. I have experienced the pain of hearing a friend tell me about their son/daughter/spouse die by suicide and what they wished they would have known. I may not have experienced the pain of their situations, but I do experience the pain of those conversations and that pain is what drives me to educate, advocate, and yell a little louder. THAT is why I am here.

My hope is that everyone is educated in suicide prevention. My hope is that teachers, mailmen, grocery store clerks, neighbors, friends, carpenters, bankers, EVERYONE is educated in suicide prevention. Our goal is to prevent suicide. How better to prevent suicide than to talk about it, become passionate about it, educate others about it before someone dies by suicide? THAT is why I am here.

Is Today the Day?

Is today the day that I am able to eat a meal and enjoy it or will I have extreme feelings of guilt and thoughts of failure for eating what others consider a reasonable amount of food?

Is today the day that I can look at my body with pride for what all it has experienced and overcome or see it as a myriad of little parts that need to be fixed?

Is today the day that I will be able to adequately verbalize my experience with an eating disorder or will I be met with confused looks and misunderstanding?

Is today the day that I will be able to be vulnerable in sharing my thoughts that are ever present in regards to my eating disorder and be met with compassion and an attempt at understanding or will I  be dismissed and told to love my body?

Is today the day that I will be able to go through the day with little to no thought about food, body image, or my eating disorder or will those thoughts and feelings come crashing back with a vengeance?

Is today the day that I will be able to receive a compliment and believe the compliment or will I assume that the person is being patronizing?

 

This is what my recovery from an eating disorder looks and feels like to me. There are days, weeks, and hell even months that go by when I think that I have recovered. Then, when I least expect it, the thoughts, feelings, and even sometimes the behaviors come back with a vengeance. I have had to reframe what recovery means to me. Recovery used to mean to me that I would be 100% healed, cured, fixed, etc. However, that is, quite frankly, bull shit. My recovery is not that neat and pretty. My recovery is inconsistent, messy, frustrating, confusing, ever changing, and powerful. I choose to look at my recovery as powerful because I  have learned that although I don’t know what each day will bring, I also know that I am strong enough to overcome it. My recovery is powerful because I can use my recovery to empathize with others who are recovering as well. My recovery is powerful because at one time, I did not see or experience the strength that my recovery has shown me that I possess. So, even though my recovery is messy and frustrating, it’s mine. Is today the day I will struggle or is today the day I will triumph? The truth is today may be the day that I experience both.

Balance: Lessons Learned from 2016

 

Y’all, I have been struggling. I have been struggling at trying to maintain some balance in my life lately. Between work, school, relationships with my children, my husband, my family, and friends,  teaching, and the other day to day stressors, I have felt as if I were just treading water and not getting anywhere. No. Scratch that. I feel like I have been water boarded….and I’m the one dumping on the water.

I thought I was maintaining balance well; I am doing well in school, my work has been good, my relationships with friends and family are great. However, I have had a sense of….doom? Pressure? Feeling overwhelmed? Anxiety? I consistently have felt as if I’m missing something or falling behind in some area, whether or not this was a fact. I have experienced these feelings for a couple months now and they finally resulted in my getting pneumonia and being physically and mentally exhausted.

Having pneumonia forced me to rest. Oddly enough, I was stressed because I was forced to rest.  All I could think about was how far behind I was going to be at work and in school. (Although the forced rest resulted in a renewed love of cheesy Lifetime movies. ) As a counselor and a Master’s student, we learn a lot about burnout. I am not a fan of the term “burnout”. To me, burnout  conjures visuals of burnt wood. That isn’t me. I’m not burnt, crispy, and weakened by the pressures of my job. Yes, at times my job is emotionally draining because I get to listen to people on some of their worst days. However, that is also one of the parts of my job that humbles me and inspires me.

After the mandatory rest and the Thanksgiving holiday, it clicked as to why I was feeling so….heavy. I was out of balance. I love the work I get to do on a daily basis with my clients. I love going to class and being surrounded by people who are bound and determined to make a difference. I love teaching Mental Health First Aid and helping someone realize that they can help save a life. I love advocating for mental health and suicide prevention. I love spending days not doing a damn thing but curling up on the couch watching movies with my husband, kiddos, and pups. How could I love each part of what my life consists of and still feel overwhelmed? I realized that even though I loved each ball I was juggling, I could drop everything I was juggling if I held onto one ball too long.

On Christmas break, I went down home to Louisiana. Not only did I go home, but I did something that I have never done before-I left work at work. I left work at work for an ENTIRE week. Weird, the world didn’t stop spinning. I talked with my Mama on the backporch with a cup of coffee. I visited with my Mom. I watched my kiddos interact with my parents. I laughed and talked with my siblings. I slowed down, experienced, and enjoyed each day home.

I would have liked to end this blog by stating that I found the magic key to balance but I didn’t. The antibiotic, PowerAde, and Lifetime movie trifecta didn’t result in any profound algorithms to suddenly create perfect balance in my life. However, the realization that I need (and probably so do you) need more balance in my life is pretty damn big. I also learned that SLOWING DOWN can have a major impact on keeping a more balanced life. So, going into 2017, I can’t promise that I won’t juggle too much or get overwhelmed at times. However, I can strive to slow down, focus on the small things, and know that it’s perfectly ok to not have the perfect answer to creating perfect balance in my life.  

 

Want to Help People? Put on your Football Pads, Y'all!

Helping people hurts at times. It hurts because the same thing that makes us great at helping others-empathy-also makes us more vulnerable at being hurt. I believe in people. I believe in the good in everyone and sometimes that results in my being hurt. This is where we can learn a thing or two from Drew Brees*.

Drew Brees? Really Heather? Yes really. Not only Drew Brees but football players in general. You see, Drew wears football pads to protect him from being hurt when/if he gets sacked (zip it Saints haters).  Not only does he wear football pads, but he also wears a helmet. Each part of his protective equipment has a particular purpose and protects certain parts of his body. We need to wear our own type of football pads to aid ourselves in not being hurt.  

My friend (and bad ass) Ursula wrote a blog this week about being a MF Monster. In it, she stated that one should “find your clan”. Yes. Who protects Drew from getting sacked and hurt? His offensive line. Our clan can serve as our offensive line. Our clan can protect us from when life tries to knock the hell out of us.  

Another bad ass friend of mine, Josh, recently wrote a blog that spoke to me as well. He writes about the importance of ignoring the naysayers that try to “zap you dry and steal your sunshine”. This is another part of our protective pads. Ignore the critics that want to see you fail. Focus on yourself and your fans. I can assure you that you have fans.

 We need to be aware that we need football pads instead of full-on body armor. We sometimes need that protection to keep us from being hurt but we don’t need to be completely hard.  After being rejected or hurt, it would be easy to give up and stop attempting to help anyone ever again. But, I won’t. You won’t. Wearing our football pads helps to protect us while also giving us the protection to continue reaching out and helping others.  It gives us the protection to get knocked down, get up, and play another quarter.

 

*I used Drew Brees because I am a HUGE Saints fan. Anytime I can combine my love of the Saints and  mental health advocacy, I will.

 

How to Properly Wear a Cape

Some days, I feel as if I am balancing my life pretty well: saving lives, changing the world, achieving goals by day, earning a graduate degree by evening, and making Pinterest worthy meals and decorations*  for my husband and kiddos at night. I have even been called Super Woman**.  This was definitely not the case this week.  A client relapsed after a year of sobriety and was struggling.  I learned that my new school schedule would be at the exact same time as my sons’ practices so not only was I going to miss the practices, but I would also have to rely on others to help transport them to and from the practices. Not to mention the vast amount of work that this semester of grad school would entail.  I felt like yanking my cape off and tossing it in the corner.

I began to wonder how many other people felt similar. Those capes that we once wore proudly begin to become tattered, worn, and dirty. The same piece of fabric that once lifted us up and made us feel invincible and proud now weighs a ton and is threatening to drag us down.

Then, I asked for help. I contacted my support system, my framily, my cohort, and husband.  I cried, vented, and asked for suggestions. They listened, validated my feelings, and offered to help. Slowly, I felt as if the weight of my cape was decreasing and it didn’t seem nearly as heavy as it was before I spoke with them. It felt as if each member of my support system was helping to hold the cape up, mend it, and help me clean it off.

You see, we all wear different capes because we all do amazing things every day. We are all everyday superheroes, if you will. However, we all need a support system to help hold our capes up from time to time. The people in the support system then become everyday superheroes. The point is that none of us can be Super Woman or Superman all the time nor can we do it alone.

*-Ok, not total Pinterest worthy meals and decorations. That may be a slight exaggeration.

**-Although I appreciate the compliment, I’m not even close to Super Woman. She saves the world in tights and a skin tight body suit. You win lady. I’ll just keep my cape.

Sharing Stigma: Pitbulls and People with Co-Occurring Disorders

Gator, a Boxer/Pit mix and Zeus, a Pit, are anxious awaiting a treat for sitting still long enough to take a photo.

 

I never realized how much my role of a pit bull owner and my role of a co-occurring substance abuse specialist would intertwine.

“Aren’t you scared they are going to turn on you?”

“They are so violent!”

“They are just bad. You can’t fix them.”

“Aren’t you scared for your family?”

“Lost causes.”

Those are all statements that I have heard in regards to when people learn I’m a Pitbull Mama and work with people with co-occurring disorders. The fear and ignorance surrounding both pitbulls and people with co-occurring disorders is astounding. However, I do see how pitbulls and people with co-occurring disorders are alike.

Both are perceived as dangerous and violent but typically have big hearts and treat you with the same amount of respect that you treat them with.

Both are misunderstood and often times are given up on because of this reason alone.

Both are extremely resilient and can live happy, healthy lives after experiencing heartbreaking conditions.

Both possess incredible amounts of strength. Pits have massive amounts of physical strength while people with a co-occurring disorder have immense strength for daily working towards recovery.

Both have been victims of the media painting less than accurate portraits of them.

Both need advocates to help dispel some of the inaccurate stereotypes and discrimination against them.

Both don’t need to be fixed. They need to be loved, appreciated, supported, and respected.

 

So, yea. Pitbulls and people with a co-occurring disorder ARE alike….and I’m lucky enough to be able to be in their lives daily.

 

Zeus is also a suicide prevention advocate. Here he is at the Cape Girardeau Out of the Darkness Walk with my husband and son.

 

But I Continue

My co-worker and I were recently discussing our work. We often see more pain then we do progress. We witness addiction and co-occurring tearing families apart, making people feel as if they are less than others, stripping away hope, and convincing people that recovery is hopeless. Sometimes I go home, cry, and wonder if I really want to, or am able to do this work.

But I continue.

 I continue because I have the unique opportunity to see the good in people that most of society has written off. I continue because I constantly am able to help people see the strength in themselves.  I continue because although difficult at times, it is also incredibly rewarding and inspiring to see how people can overcome seemingly endless despair to find happiness and maybe even peace.

 

I recently shared my experience with an eating disorder to someone. The decision to have the conversation was triggering and the quality of the conversation was extremely triggering. After the conversation, I learned that she took the conversation a completely different way than as an attempt to open up and connect and I was very hurt and mad.  Instead of viewing the conversation as a gift and something to learn from , this person viewed it as a personal attack.

But I continue.

I continue to share my experience in hope that people be more aware when making jokes about eating disorders or mental health. I continue to be proud of how I can use my lived experience as a way to empathize with other people who struggle.   I continue to use this experience as a way to further understand the difficulty, and ultimate strength, that it takes for someone to share their mental health struggles openly.

 

There are days that I feel like I’m a failure.  Every single day I have to consistently maintain the level of balance that I have found to be beneficial to me-not too much focusing on food but not too little, not too much exercise but not too little, not too lax about the kind of food I eat, but not too strict either.  It’s exhausting and frustrating.  A client of mine once said some that resonated with me. She stated, “I’m tired of being in recovery.  I want to be recovered”.  I feel ya sister.

But I Continue

I continue to combat these irrational thoughts tirelessly because I know that every day that I combat them, it gets a tiny bit easier. I continue to work to maintain my balance and celebrate those days because I know that those days are little successes.  I continue because although I sometimes get tired of being in recovery, one day I will be recovered.

I continue.

Welcome to our first blog

Welcome to our first blog!   We will be using this blog as a way to share thoughts and feelings from our own lived experiences in hopes to help others who have struggled, or may be struggling,  be heard and to help educate others about mental health.

Our general theme will be to show how learning to listen to each other and hear someone’s  story can help save a life; however our post will also focus on providing education, humor, insight and most importantly, hope. Whether we recognize it or not, we all have the need and desire to be listened to. We believe that the power of being heard can be extremely validating and thus very therapeutic. 

Together we will talk about different things related to lived experience, mental health awareness, suicide prevention, eating disorders, and substance abuse with the overall belief that if given the right opportunity at the right time people can  recover . . . but they have to be listened to first.

A little about the authors

My name is Heather and I am extremely passionate about reducing the stereotypes that surround mental health.  I am able to connect with the individuals  that I work with because even though I may not have the same problems, I have experienced the pain and have struggled myself for years with an eating disorder. I fully believe that my eating disorder has helped me become not only a better clinician, but a better, more understanding and empathic person. I have been told by others that one of my greatest gifts I have is my ability to not judge anyone for anything and always see the positive qualities   in others.  I do that by listening and consistently looking for the good in each individual, even when they can’t see it themselves.

My name is Rick I am a suicide attempt survivor, who still struggles at times with depression at times.  One of my  biggest regrets is that I  hid my suicide  attempt and my  mental health for so many years because I  was afraid it would ruin my  career in mental health.  I have discovered that not only did talking about my mental health not ruin my career, it made me feel free and I have had the chance to meet so many wonderful people.    I have the great privilege of getting to work with people that most of society has written off and I get to hear their story and help them when they are struggling and getting let them know they have support.   I am lucky to have co-workers such as Heather, who shares the passion for helping people and meeting them where they are at and just being there with them.  

We thank you for going on this journey with us.

Heather - heatherwilliams.imhs@gmail.com 

Rick - rickstrait777@gmail.com