"It's My Head, Not my Heart"

( A Note: I wrote this 2 days ago; and wasn't sure I wanted to post it. I wrestled with doing so. I don't know why. Then I thought of maybe it wasn't written "the way" I wanted it to flow. Then today, I thought of my commitment to myself and to you. This is not a blog for "writing." This blog is about me being me...which means some days the writing may not write well and so I hope that it is precisely this authenticity and my love for persons living with mental illness and their daily stories of courage that ring true as more important than my writing skills. So today I decided that what was more important is Katerina's courage and her story not my writing. So I posted it.)

From my first post I decided that I wouldn't "force" a subject but delight myself in anticipation of what the day offers up. That way, my writing served or furthered no agenda. Actually, it is so liberating to not have a subject. It as if I am receiving a gift from self to self through the spontaneity of my writing. I suspect that this blog will take on a life of its own with a theme finally emerging.

Today is a day of struggling with sad thoughts and I called a friend who also lives with the condition of anxiety. I don’t know what in our conversation triggered my thoughts of Katerina but something did. It could be too that it wasn’t even the conversation but it was my heart that knew to whom to turn when my spirit was low. It was then I recalled Katerina’s words, “My heart is fine, it is my head.”

My contact with Katerina was by way of a peer mentoring. I was a peer to her. She was diagnosed with bi-polar and was living at a shelter and struggling with taking her medication and keeping her appointments with her therapist and case manager. As a peer, my job was one in which we were equals and co-journeyers on the path of wellness. My role was to share my story of mental illness, my road to wellness, to be her as mentor, assist her with linkages to community resources, instill hope and encourage to play an active role in making decisions about her health and the path to wellness.  

Initially, Katerina was having trust issues with me and given her past life experiences of abuse and betrayal I fully understood that was to be expected. I had been in her shoes and like her changed therapists a number times over the years before finding one that fitted with my personality and respected my autonomy to make decisions that I thought best for me. As a peer, I understood from my lived experience that Katerina needed to build a relationship with me before trust could govern our interactions. I told her that I knew that trust-building was a process and that I was willing to stay the course. Sharing with her that I had the experience of living with a mental illness was of great benefit and she let her guard down almost immediately.

Katerina and I would go on to build a deep relationship over time when she realized that my approach was one of radical acceptance, affirmation and respect for her to make choices even when those choices weren't ones I would have made. My only concern was that her choices wouldn't be harmful to her or others. She would later share experiences that she hadn't shared yet in therapy. When I ask her why she hadn't yet, she explained to me, "You are like me, you understand, you are not analyzing me, you are not here to fix me." I shared with Katerina my experiences with therapy and how beneficial it had been and that I too had to find a therapist that respected my active participation and role in my wellness and not expect me to be a "lame" recipient of services.

A year into being her peer, for personal reasons I had to take a break from my volunteering. As it is, it is often during times of saying good-bye that we learn how meaningful a relationship has become. I told Katerina immediately after telling my supervisor that I would be leaving giving her 2 months of notice. I was so concerned that another sever relationship would only reinforced her issues with trust. But it didn't, we had established such a rapport on life in general and not just on living with a mental illness that she understood that my leaving was strictly unrelated to my work as a peer and with her especially.

Throughout life we all will have thousands of words spoken between ourselves and others and of those spoken words there will be some said that will immediately be seared into our hearts and minds never to be forgotten again. It was on my last day with Katerina, we sat in my car talking having just returned from giving her ride to do her grocery shopping. I said to her, "I am going to miss you and I want you to know that it has been so humbling and an honor to have spent the last year with you. I am certain that if you stay on the path you are on now that you will return to a wellness that lets you live out the dreams and aspirations you have for yourself and shared with me. I know one day, you too will be the peer that you want to be. I am living proof Katerina that it not only may happen but it really does happen." Katerina looked at me and said, "I know though we are peers we still had some boundaries, but this once may I give you a hug?" I didn't answer, I just leaned in to her already open arms and wrapped my arms around her too. When we pulled apart, she continued, "You know, I don't know if people think WE are stupid and don't understand when they are being phonies. I hate phonies. Thank you for always being real with me and honest. You know Lilly, there isn't anything wrong with our hearts, it's our heads that don't always work the way we want them to. But our hearts are perfectly fine." 

Katerina, didn't expand on that. I understood and was not only immensely grateful that she had seen and appreciated how authentic a person I was with her; I was overjoyed beyond words that she had said "WE." She and I belonged to a community of persons that understood each other in a way that can only be done so through personal lived experience and though my peer mentoring was one that implicitly brought with it an embedded leadership, for Katerina we were two persons making a journey toward wellness. She understood that I was no different than a guide who had climb a mountain and now volunteer my time to accompany those who wanted to make the climb up to wellness.