Fragile but Beautiful Life

Contemplative.

Not very long ago I broke a decade+ long cycle of chronic depression. 

On my "best" days, my high and low moods changed faster than the front-runner for the 2012 GOP nomination. 

Most days though, I walked around in a daze wondering what life was for.    

Stuff I like. 

          It took a couple of years of regular therapy before I accepted the fact that my behavior was not normal. As in unhealthy. 

Though life is not easy, there are ways to make it less difficult. 

   

Fake bike. Real happy. 

Seek them out. Ask for help. 

Mental health can be fragile, and common problems easy to ignore: addiction, PTSD, anxiety and more. The consequences of wasted time and life are far too expensive.

They can't be resolved by the passage of time or a winning football game or more love from Mom. 

Still, they can be healed. 

24th Annual Children’s Mental Health Research and Policy Conference

Russian researcher Irina Vainer 

If a conference has health, research or policy in its title, I'm usually drooling with excitement at the thought. I love learning about what other people are learning about, and innovating and creating.




I'm happily doing a couple of stories this week for WMNF on USF's 24th Annual Children’s Mental Health Research and Policy Conference. I produced one story so far on Monday's newscast, and the next should air on Friday, barring any more natural disasters. 

Educator & HCZ's CEO Geoffrey Canada

I'm not an academic by any means, but I'm so curious about the process of how research grows from one person's neat idea to something real and useful, and if the idea/person is really lucky and perseveres, how it (eventually) weaves itself into the structure of our daily lives.

Not all research, of course, hits the real world. But being around all those concepts and creative thinkers/inventors is still such a thrill.

USF Pres. Judy Genshaft introduces Keynote Speaker Geoffrey Canada. Also pictured, L-R: Dr. Mario Hernandez and his two mentees Kristen Robinson & Carolissa Salcedo, Canada, Sandra Spencer, MaryEllen Elia, Luann Panacek 

Girls, Girls, Girls Were Made to Love

When I was two or three I told my mom that my babysitter tickled me. She asked me where and didn't like the areas I pointed out. 


Years later my mother told me how she had tried to press charges against the teen, who happened to be an Army officer's son. But either that family or ours was moved from Ft. Knox to another Army base to avoid further trouble. 

I don't have any recollection of those events, but I do remember living on base in Würzburg, Germany when I was 7.  Another babysitter, another officer's son, touched me and talked to me in ways I recognized from movies. 

My mom didn't know about this one, and I still haven't told her. I have often put the feelings of other people before my own, and I just have not been able to break the news to her. How do you tell a parent that the care they gave you was not good enough? 


That babysitter (and a few other people and incidences since then) held a lot of power over me. It wasn't until I started therapy a little over a year ago that I began learning to trust my friends and family, my husband, and myself. 


I've sought therapy throughout my twenties but wasn't really ready to face my fears, and I always quit after a few sessions. Therapists also have power and I hadn't been ready to trust them either (some with good reason; some were nuttier than I was). 


When I found myself flailing throughout my first year of marriage, my first long-term relationship, I knew it was time to woman up. I called the Crisis Center of Tampa Bay, and they referred me to Apple Trauma Services, one of the nonprofits under their organizational umbrella. 


Because of my low income status and lack of insurance, they offered me a sliding scale weekly fee that I could afford. I wouldn't have been able to get the help I desperately needed without that. 

The counselor I began seeing was still earning her MA, in fact I think she may have been doing her internship at the Crisis Center. But I was comfortable with her right away, and beyond ready to be fixed. I was ready to let go of my anger and fear and Boehner-like crying every time I observed some terrible injustice in the world. Crying, after all, saves no one. 

Once a week we visualized and role played and exercised my self esteem. But mostly she just listened to a sad girl who had often felt overlooked as a child and had trouble reconciling the fact that she was now a grown woman who had complete control of her life and self. 

After 13 months of therapy, today I go in for my last session. (Though I'm a Woody Allen fan, I have no interest in making therapy a part of my life for decades on end.) I am celebrating the obstacles I've overcome. 

I feel extremely lucky that my therapist decided to follow her heart and pursue her MA and found me in her office one day. She's helped me unlock the scared child I'd been holding onto so that I could become the person I wanted to be. 

And I'll close by adding that to be an effective do-gooder, it's imperative that you help yourself first. It took me a long time to learn this lesson. I'm happy to have had access to the mental health tools needed to help me help myself. 

23rd Annual Children’s Mental Health Research & Policy Conference

I've always wondered how research leaves universities and is enacted in the real world. This week I got a little insight into that process when I interviewed Dr. Mario Hernandez for the WMNF Evening News.

Dr. Hernandez is chair of the Department of Child and Family Studies at USF and one of the organizers of next week's 23rd Annual Children’s Mental Health Research and Policy Conference in downtown Tampa. Among the things he spoke to me about was the importance of community resources for children, as opposed to sending the "bad" ones off to residential facilities to live out their youths outside of their communities and away from their families. Here's one guy who thinks all kids should be seen and heard.