Remembrance

This past Thursday was the one-year anniversary of my mother’s death. To mark the occasion, my partner and I spent a long weekend in June Lake, CA, where she lived for about a decade in the 80’s. She had some of her happiest times there, so it was a good place to celebrate her life.

We visited her favorite places, told stories, and remembered.

It was an emotional, beautiful, and poignant process. Like many mother/daughter relationships, ours was rich, complex, and fraught - made even more complicated by my mother’s struggles with mental illness.

While spending this weekend reflecting on all that my mother was, I can’t help but reflect on the particular pain, isolation, and grief of those who struggle with mental illness, and the grief of those who love them.

Between our fragmented healthcare system that does not view individuals as whole beings but rather as a list of symptoms, the astonishingly brutal lack of adequate mental health resources, and the continued associated stigma, this is a hard road to walk for those with mental illness and for those who love and support them.

I sense I will be sharing more of my thoughts and what I have learned about the particular challenges and tolls of mental illness, but for today, simply this:

Deep, low bow of respect and love to all on this list who are navigating mental illness, and deep, low bow of respect and love to all those on this list who love someone with a mental illness.

For those of you whose lives have not been touched by mental illness, know that just as people with diabetes or heart disease are much more than their illnesses, so too are those with depression, paranoia, schizophrenia, mania, etc. Mental illness can make it harder to see their essence, but it is always there.

For a beautiful fantasy of how we might, as a society, love and support those with mental illness, I suggest you watch the movie Lars and the Real Girl. Don’t be put off by the mention of a blow-up sex doll in the synopsis. Trust me on this one – this is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen about mental illness.

We are all more than our illnesses,
Kirstin Lindquist