Life is Your Story

(Mont Tremblant, Quebec - Winter 2009) It's 2AM. My mind is in a spin. Thoughts are racing so fast that I can't catch them. It's 3AM. I've left the house the way you leave when you don't know where you or going or why - just that you had to get up and go.  I am driving down a country road. It's a crisp, chilly evening that smells like winter. My mood is jagged and sharp. I taste blood in my mouth from an apparent injury I do not remember. The red juice is dripping from the corner of my lips. I find a napkin in the cup holder and I place it over the wound. It's as if I have been kidnapped and gagged and in a way I have. I  pull into an empty lot by a long abandoned sawmill. I turn the engine off and I step outside. I immediately feel the deep freeze run through my bones.  Clouds of smoke exit my mouth the moment my breath makes contact with the air.   I walk toward a bridge and stand upon it looking down at the rushing river. Rivers are mighty. They own what...

This post was written in dedication to one of the brave and hopeful moms who attended support groups that I facilitated and who did all she could to fight the fight with her son who struggled/battled with mental illness. Unfortunately the illness won. Mental illness is often a secret - a whisper in the air - a mystery - a demon that haunts its victims and destroys their minds. At some point - someone will love someone who suffers from mental illness on one level or another - reach out even if they cannot-  help transform the secret into a shout and the mystery into a discovery. You may just save a life. There is a woman who goes to the same park every day and she brings a kite with her. She draws on the wings with magic markers. She wears a tattered camel-skin coat and her legs are covered in leotards. Her hands are freckled and dance to the rhythm of a tremor. She pauses before flying the kite to write in her journal and sip coffee from her thermos. She eats a croissant out of...

I mean really. Her passing is tragic. She has an 18yr old daughter who will never recover from this loss and will never truly have the answer as to why her mother took her life (if it was not accidental). She was a fabulous singer and performer. She was a beautiful woman and probably a beautiful person who suffered from addiction as so many brilliant artists do. And then there are all of us regular folk. We have our vices, we have our secrets and tragically we all know of someone - close or distant - who has lost their struggle with addiction and in turn their lives. But let's just call it a day. Leave it be. Let her family mourn in private. Stop the constant reports, stories, photos and ridiculous interviews with people who claim to be her friends yet want nothing more than their moments of fame. You know what is really sad about her death and so many others who were in the spotlight? It's the fact that their deaths over shadow their lives in the end. It's their lives we s...