Hi my name is Ashley. I started living with this disease when I was 16 I used to drink a lot and take amphetamines. I guess I was self-medicating myself but I didn’t know what was happening to me. I started getting paranoid in class and right when I would get out of school I would go buy a six pack it would hide the way I felt. I was very popular in school: I was a cheerleader, most liked in my school and I was on homecoming court for two years. No one knew anything because I hid it so well.

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I am a 56 year old mother and very proud grandmother of three. I have struggled with anxiety nearly my whole life. When I was a child, my anxiety caused me to overeat and I was an obese little girl, tipping the scales at 200 pounds in 5th grade. My family has a history of anxiety and my mother did not have the strength or support that we have today. She was a woman of the “valium era” and didn’t drive or work outside of the home. She had little recreation. She took care of her eight children and worked tirelessly in our home.

Even with the fear I always had inside of me, I still had some inner strength and a need to be a voice for others, especially children. When I was a young mother, I was so infatuated by my beautiful children I didn’t recognize that they too, had anxiety issues. My son did not present to us, his teachers, etc. until high school, when his struggle was too hard to bear and he began acting out. After two years of college, he met a woman who was strong to his weak, outspoken to his backwardness; a take the bull-by-the-horns sort of a person. After a brief relationship, she became pregnant and there was an immediate wedding. We were told just to come on a certain date-it was all planned out without our input or advice at all.

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I was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder when I was 12, but I had had problems with depression, manic episodes since I was 3. I had a hard time growing up, my father didn’t except my situation and just thought I was a bad kid, I was abused until I was 17 by him. My mother tried to help me, but at the time, she didn’t know how. I was put in hospitals frequently. I had three stays over nine months long each, and many shorter stays as well.

I was in a state hospital for a year straight. Most of my childhood was spent in mental institutions, and as an adult, I have been twice. When I was not in them, I was home, getting into major trouble. I remember being violent towards others, mostly family that was only trying to help. I was constantly in trouble at school, got suspended 8 times in two years, and expelled for half a semester.

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I dealt with my dads drinking and angry outbursts for years before it finally took a toll on my physical and mental well being. His way of dealing with issues was to drink until he was able to sufficiently criticize, degrade, humiliate, and emotionally break me and my brothers down to the point where he had total control.  His most common form of dealing with anything was ignore the person who caused him to be angered or disappointed.  Ignoring included being excluded from family activities, most commonly dinner, being made to sit in a room with him while he disregarded your existence so you would know your worth, and many other situations where my brothers and I were invisible.  While never physically violent with us, my dad would make it to a point to prove his power whether it be breaking something of our, throwing things, slamming doors, and terrorizing us to the point where we were afraid he may cross the line and eventually hurt one of us.  As the oldest child I had no second thoughts about protecting my younger brothers from my dads wrath.  While Brandon witnessed a lot of the psychological abuse happening at home, Brian and I received the worst of it.  My dad fed off of my brothers low self-esteem and quiet demeanor, degrading him whenever he had the chance. By the time I started high school I was no longer “daddy’s little girl.” I became more self conscious and felt closer to my mom, which greatly angered my dad as he saw it as a personal attack to him.  I became heavily involved in school and extracurricular activities to avoid any and all contact with being home, pushing myself beyond the necessary point any 15 year old should be at.  When I was home, I felt sick to my stomach hearing my dads car pull in the driveway, not knowing how the night was going to go.

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I have a daughter who has misdiagnosed plenty of times. First she was diagnosed with ADHD. Then she was diagnosed with depression. Then she was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Then she was diagnosed with impulse disorder. She has been on so much medicine. I have been going through with her trying to kill herself for over 5 years. I have been going though with her wanting to kill me and my husband and her siblings. I felt a lot of guilt, I thought if I had stayed home with her instead of working that maybe she would be happy. I soon realized that no matter what I have done would not be enough. I am a Christian women that loves God. I thought maybe she was being defiant because she did not want to be raised in a Christian home. One day the Lord dealt with me about being in denial. He let me know that I was in denial. I did not want to except that my daughter has a mental illness and she needs help. The Lord let me see that when you are in denial you constantly believe a lie. You tell yourself “If I should of,” and “if I could of” all of the time. You constantly blame your self for your child’s behavior when it is not your fault.  The Lord let me see that when you accept that your child has a mental illness there is nothing to do but accept it and be there for them as much as you can. Today my daughter is in a mental hospital, and I am not worried about her. I know she is in good hands. I continue to pray for her. I still love her, even when she threatens me and my family. I accept that she has special needs that I can not give her at times. So in my closing, be encouraged, every parent out there, that  is going through this. Let God give you strength. He has given me peace. The peace that surpasses all understanding. He can give you that peace also. May the God of peace be with you this day.

We are more than our diagnosis. Our potential is only limited by allowing stigma and doubt to gain hold on us. Diagnosed at 16 I lived in denial for many years. I feared the stigma I saw towards my mother who suffers from schizoaffective bipolar experience. After 12 years and 4 suicide attempts I have learned that “I have bipolar disorder” not “I am bipolar.” I have learned that my episodes and symptoms are not character flaws or shortcomings. They simply are part of the course of a disease.  I would like all of you who experience the pain and devastation of depression that there is no guilt or shame or weakness only that your disease is flaring and you need treatment and the counsel of true friends.

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As a young child, I remember many instances when I was simply told that my mom was sick and in the hospital. I assumed she would be ok. I never knew the reasons why. I remember many days of being told by my stepfather: “Please don’t bother mama as she is tired and sleeping.” She stayed in bed, door closed, curtains closed and sound “asleep”.

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Living with a family member who has schizophrenia is like sitting atop a mountain high in the clouds; you can see normal people far below, but the prospect of joining them seems impossible.

From age 10 onwards I’d witnessed my mother withdraw from the world, put on black clothing, answer to different names, and lend greater credence to the voices in her head than those of her own family. I’d hidden in the basement with my younger brother while my father spoke to cops and paramedics upstairs, my mother shouted abuse and cried and finally begged, led off to the psychiatric clinic for the latest forced committal. Entire seasons would pass with my father holding things together and then, just as we were beginning to find a kind of normality, we’d receive encouraging words from doctors about Mom’s recovery. And so we’d trek to the hospital for visits, at first supervised by medical staff and then not, making small-talk with a woman who seemed like a stranger and scrutinizing her face for signs: was she really better? Inevitably, because we loved her and wanted to believe, she’d come home. And for a time there was a fragile happiness. She laughed, displayed the childlike enthusiasm that held both kids and adults entranced, and even hosted parties for a social circle of Bengalis who my parents had known ever since emigrating to Canada in the late 70’s. Beneath the elaborately prepared Indian dishes and careful conversation lay a declaration: she is better now. Our family is whole. That dark chapter is past.  But then she’d begin to complain about the side-effects of the medication. She’d stop speaking and start listening to voices we couldn’t hear. The heaviness we’d tried so hard to repel would return and you’d hate yourself for ever having believed otherwise. The cycle of committals, recovery and eventual relapse would continue and you wanted to spit in the face of anyone who seemed happy: it was an illusion, a sucker’s bet.

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When I think back on my mental illness, I can remember symptoms from a very early age. I grew up in a very different environment than most – a log cabin in Alaska. I realize now that my mother suffered from deep, debilitating depressions and my father had no tolerance for her suffering. My father, on the other hand, probably lived with borderline personality. Both of them suffered with PTSD for different reasons: My mother had a father who molested her when she was young. My father had multiple issues that were catalysts for PTSD but the most prevalent that I remember is that mother had to wake him with the tip of a broom handle or he would jump up in a panic and knock her across the room before he realized what was happening. He often would cry out in panic in his sleep – something I never witnessed him do in his waking hours no matter the danger.

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