Meeting My Mother

My husband and I arrived in Los Angeles on Sunday, April 30th as Give an Hour prepared to host the first ever Global Summit on Mental Health Culture Change. We partnered with Los Angeles County to build and implement a powerful three-day series of events designed to engage, educate and inspire. Give an Hour’s public health initiative, the Campaign to Change Direction (www.changedirection.org), served as the inspiration and the opportunity for the Summit. The Summit was a tremendous success. And then it was time to meet my mother. My father was a veteran of WWII who lied about his age to join the Navy after Pearl Harbor. Like many combat veterans, he came home with post-traumatic stress – though no one knew what that was at the time. He returned to Los Angeles after the war, met and married my mother, had my three older brothers and decided to move his young family to the San Joaquin Valley in central California. Exactly what happened next is hard to know. My mother gave birth to me shortly before the move. Perhaps it was the combination of removing her from her support system in Los Angeles and a severe case of postpartum depression that lead to the psychotic break that would shatter her life and our family. So there we were – the WWII veteran, three little boys, a baby girl… and my psychotic mother. She was later diagnosed with schizophrenia – but that matters less than the impact her condition had on her and us. For the next eight years my dad...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news