The Garden

As you work to define your own sense of destination for your journey, it might help to spend some time in this garden:  a place where we've collected the voices of people on journeys similar to yours who have found their way to hope, support, compassion, patience, beauty, persistence, and expanded knowledge of their own strength.
We hope that you will return to these gardens whenever your own courage is flagging or when your destination seems hopelessly far away.  Each of the people in these gardens undoubtedly struggled with similar moments of doubt and fear...but by staying open and persistently reaching toward health, they not only survived, but did so with grace.

No Matter How Bad While in high school, Woell received the distinguished honor of being the only guitarist in the nation selected to play with the Grammy All-American High School Jazz Ensemble. Then in 1995 while sitting in church one Sunday he experienced his first psychotic break. When asked what has been the key to his recovery he listed: finding the right medication, acknowledging your illness, learning to be compassionate because everybody has a problem, looking for positive things in life, learning to be patient, not losing hope because recovery does not happen overnight.  He added: “.The most important thing is to surround yourself with family and friends who will support you no matter how bad things become.” Woell started playing his guitar again.  (Excerpt from Reintegration Today, Autumn 2001.)

We Can Survive “People with mental illnesses are like the rest of us. They are important creatures in God's world. Most people do not realize how much pain they are in or how much they need our compassion. It seems we must fight to give it to them. What I would say to other parents out there who are facing the same agony every day is this: I've been there, and I did survive. All my children proved to be my finest teachers. These are the strengths they taught me to develop: I learned a measure of patience, tolerance, and persistence and how to be flexible and hopeful. I could not have learned these things to this extent any other way. You can too. I reached out for help to those around me who had the same problems. With nonstop prayers, sharing strength with others, and encouragement from support people in our lives, we can survive.” - Patricia Forbes (NAMI Advocate, Fall 2002)

The Garden of Acceptance “There is a special place in my country called the garden of acceptance. It's very difficult to find and no one is able to give directions on how to get there. In fact, each villager reaches the garden by a different route. The only common feature in the journey is the letting go of control. As long as one seeks to hold on to control of the illness they cannot enter into the garden of acceptance. Only when you lay this particular burden down do you find the elusive peace which this garden provides.”  -  Anonymous Mother   (The Burden of Sympathy by David Karp)

A Dimension of Love “It opens up a dimension of love. … And I thought I loved him but when I saw him at the [name of hospital], with those EKG leads, the tears just burst forth and it was a different love. It was just overwhelming. You feel the affection, but it goes into a depth that you may never have known you are capable of.  That's what I found. … You have the love that you felt [before] but it just expands to fill a space that you never even knew existed. … It's [a love] closer to truth.  I wouldn't want to have this visited on people, but I believe that I've had some special moments that other people don't have...  There is probably a better word than beauty… I knew that truth was a factor in it [but there is also] a certain honesty.  It was a very unguarded emotion…. To truly feel my own capacity to love, which I had not felt before, is liberating.” - Anonymous Mother

It Really Never Was Up to Me! “My two sons were diagnosed several years ago. I have become quite an advocate - learning to deal with the medical system the hard way - tugging, pushing, pulling, screaming, crying and begging. It has since dawned on me that my sons were always the masters of their own treatment …. that no matter how hard I prayed or how insistent I was, ultimately the decision for mental health was in their court. Gratefully now my sons are on their own roads to recovery. One is a recovery specialist and is employed by a mental health agency, the other is doing it slowly but will surely accomplish his goals of strong mental wellness. My faith has never been stronger and now I realize it really never was up to me! ” - (Janet, Illinois, 2006)

An Unshakable Sense of Mission “With a combination of drugs, psychotherapy and support from a now educated family, the illness seemingly vanished. My husband became again the husband in whom I had believed, and this husband came home to stay. We began our wonderful new life together that continues to this day and that will continue, we are certain, to the end of our days… With the recovery of my own health came an unshakable sense of mission to help other family members - in particular, other partners - so that they and their loved one need not suffer as deeply, as long, or as alone as we did… I created a support group through which partners and spouses learn that recovery is a process and an unending journey that partners and families travel together. They learn to prepare for the work involved, to equip themselves with all that they will need in order to get where they want to go, and they learn that no one needs to make that difficult, often harrowing journey, alone. To read the full account of my and my husband's personal story of hope click here for the PDF file. ” - (Anonymous wife, Ontario, 2006)(Adobe Acrobat Reader required -- download a free copy here).