#IAMSTIGMAFREE

I've written about my struggles with depression before. I've also written (and testified at our state capitol) about how private insurers discriminate against mental illness and the need for mental health parity. I've chosen to be open with my struggles, particularly with young people, because I think it's important for them to see that with therapy and medication (and it can take years and a lot of trial and error to find the right combination of medication, because medicating the brain is art as much as it is science) it is possible to lead a productive, fulfilling, purposeful life experiencing a full range of emotions including happiness and joy.

I'm also open with it because adults, who have their own preconceived notions, need to understand that people with mental illness diagnoses are productive, tax paying members of society, who contribute to their communities. For too long, the stigma surrounding mental illness has created a sense of shame for far too many people. I can't tell you how many people have thanked me for being open after I've given a talk, and then whispered to me, tears in their eyes, about their own experiences. Or the number of adult women who have picked up my YA novel PURGE, as if they were going to buy it for teen, and then quietly confessed that they, too, are or were suffering from an eating disorder.

Medication will be a part of my life, forever. I've had well-meaning, but incredibly ignorant people tell me it's "a crutch", that it's "a pharmaceutical conspiracy to keep me enslaved," that I should use exercise, a walk in the woods, music, meditation...... Yeah. Done all of those. In fact, I still exercise, walk in the woods, listen to music, and pray/meditate. But my life as a functional productive human being who has written 14 novels in the last ten years, as well as more political columns than I have time to count right now, raised two kids, dealt with the loss of both my beloved parents, and tried to give back to my community, could not have happened without being on the right cocktail of medication.

For that, I am blessed that I can afford to keep seeing the same psychiatrist out of network for the last 15 years. I made that choice, because she understood me when I got out of the hospital, where they'd put me on lithium, and I said, "I feel like they opened up a door inside me and took away all my creativity." She understood when I told her how when I was in the hospital for the second time in 12/01, I'd watched a documentary about a photo shoot People Magazine did of women who'd been pregnant on 9/11/01 and lost their spouses and since had their babies.  She understood that it was the kind of thing that would normally have me bawling and going through half a box of tissues, but I watched it completely dry eyed with the thought, "Wow, that's sad." She knew such lack of affect and emotion wasn't the real me, and she was willing to try something different to help me come back to myself instead of just telling me to "be a good girl and take my meds."

Together, we found the right combination, which has worked for over a decade. Sometimes we have to tinker, depending on external circumstances, but generally it's been a working formula. I've also been blessed with some great therapists over the years who have helped me work through the day to day struggles. None of this could have happened without insurance and being able to afford it.

How many people are like me, but can't afford it the treatment?  How many of them end up in prison instead of being able to be productive members of society living in the community, because resources and treatment aren't available, or they can't afford their meds copays?

Think about that when you look at the State Budget. Think about that the next time a politician says they're going to scrap ACA as the first thing they do when they get into office. As a self employed person, I used to have to worry every year that my insurance would be rescinded at renewal. ACA protects me from that. I've asked several of the big mouth politicians who say they want to scrap ACA how they will protect people like me (SELF-EMPLOYED ENTREPRENEURS WHO PAY TAXES, I MIGHT ADD)  if they do that and the response I get is *crickets*.  They don't have an answer. They just want to destroy without having a better plan. That isn't acceptable. It's reprehensible.

#IAMSTIGMAFREE And I am angry at people who play politics with the things that allow me to remain that way, and who want to cut the programs that could help others achieve the success that I have.

On September 11th...

Ten years ago today, I was in Silver Hill Hospital in New Canaan, CT, after taking an overdose of Valium and almost ending my life. I was supposed to have been released the previous Friday, until the psychiatrists realized I'd was doing what I always did - donning The Mask of Coping. They called me on it and so I was still in the hospital, due to be released that afternoon.

Just before that nine that morning, I went into the phone booth and called my friend Barbara, who gave massages, because after 10 days in that place, I really need a healing touch. There was a glass door on the booth, and as I was speaking to her, I glanced out and saw the TV in the common room.

"Oh my G-d! The World Trade Center is burning!" I said to her. She didn't have a TV, so she couldn't see what was happening. I hung up with her and walked into the common room where a few other people were gathered around the TV. They told me a small plane had flown into the WTC.

I don't know if it's because of my father's background in intelligence, but my first thought, the first thing I said was, "It's terrorists."

People started arguing with me. They said it was a small plane. The guy must have had a heart attack. Or lost his bearings. I argued back. "It's a clear blue sky. No clouds. How could he lose his bearings?"

We were still arguing as we watched - horrified, shocked, disbelieving - the second plane hit the South Tower. And then there everyone knew. It wasn't accident. There was no heart attack. No one lost their bearings. It was a deliberate. It was intentional.


Then we heard plane hit the Pentagon. It wasn't just a terrorist attack, it was a terrorist attack on a grand scale.

One of the women in the hospital with me was there from MA. She wanted, more than anything at that moment, to be with her family, to hold her children close. As she cried, I tried to comfort her, telling her we had to be strong, because if we panicked, if we fell apart, they'd achieved their objective.

Kind of ironic coming from someone who was in a mental hospital for, well, falling apart.

The Powers That Be at Silver Hill were trying to figure out how to deal with something this enormous and help us deal with it. Although they were experts in the field of mental health, this wasn't something that hadn't been taught in med school.

They called us into a meeting where they discussed limiting our access to the TV, because it was distressing some patients, which only upset and stressed out the news junkies amongst us even more. People cope with stress differently. Some want to turn off, wanting some form of escapism. Others need to know more, wanting details, seeking knowledge. Neither one is "right," to each their own. But I'm definitely the latter.

In the end, they decided to take us to the gym so we could work off some stress. In the van on the way down there, we heard on the radio that the South Tower collapsed.
And that's when my Mask of Coping finally slipped, fell, cracked and broke. Because all I could think of was the people still in that tower. I started crying hysterically and repeating over and over, "All those people, all those people." The same woman who I'd comforted earlier took me in her arms and held me. She repeated back to me the same words I'd said to her earlier.

In the gym, I went straight for the heavy bag, pretending it was the faceless enemies who'd flown the planes, punching it over and over until I was sweaty and breathless.
I'd just started on the treadmill when I heard the North Tower fell.

Later, one of the male nurses, or "techs" as they called them, walked those of us who wanted to pray over to the non-denominational chapel. He turned to me and said, with no small amount of anger in his voice, "You tried to kill yourself - but would you change places with anyone in those buildings?"

It's a question that gutted me then and has haunted me ever since.

What drove me to take those pills was the thought on that different awful day in 2001, August 28th, was that my life was a long, dark tunnel with no light of hope at the end, and that most of all, my kids would be better off without me.

I know better now. I'm grateful to G-d, to my family, to my friends and my therapists for the fact that I was given a second chance, one that those in the buildings and on the planes didn't have. I'm blessed that I've lived to see my children grow up to be the wonderful, bright, kind, empathetic, loving, thinking human beings that they are. When I listened to the young people at the 9/11 memorial event this morning talking about the things they missed about their parents it made me weep, but it also made me realize how very ill I was to think my kids would be better off.

It took four hours this morning to read the names of the all the victims. As I heard each name and saw each picture, I thought of the complex web of lives behind them that have spent the last 10 years trying to rebuild their lives from loss, or as one relative put it, living without "the missing puzzle piece in our family."

Edited to add: I'm reminded of lines from Psalm 126 that gave me so much comfort while I was in the hospital: “Those who sow in tears shall reap with songs of joy.” Ten years later, that has certainly been the case for me.


I'll end this with the words of a mother who lost her son at the WTC:

"To the world he was just one person, but to me he was the world."