Excerpts from NAMI NH presents This Is My Brave – The Show
On Wednesday, May 15, 2024, these storytellers stepped into the spotlight at the BNH Stage in Concord, New Hampshire, and shared pieces of their stories. Below are their faces, names, and excerpts from the brave stories they shared with the audience that night.
Liz Stella Ford: Depression
Depression isn’t gone in me I think it’s transformed To Suppression I can keep IT in a faraway spot And occasionally hear IT’s echo Asking me if IT could just have ONE quick minute of my time. Suppression, Maybe that’s what happens When Depression and HOPE meet? I got raw And real. When HOPE was a dot on the horizon I screamed for HELP And I reached. REACHED! I asked for HELP. Asking for HELP Is so HARD –
Holly Stevens: Transformation (time moves on)
A world that was once familiar is now a gray and rotten mess, Time marches on- fast and then slowed again, tick tock, tick tock. It takes every ounce of effort I have to fake being productive I lose energy more quickly than it is possible to generate, How do I go on, I want to be done. But sense a part of me that has not yet given up the fight, I reach out in fear, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown, fear of losing all control. A slightly glimmer of hope returns as I am met with care and concern, rather than the alarm I remember from my past, Time my nemesis, getting lost in the space between, tick tock, tick tock. Trust a key element in my new journey, the journey out of the darkness. It takes time, patience is my friend, my enemy, a necessary evil, The road is long, requiring effort to put one foot in front of the other each and every day, some days the sun refuses to shine, reflecting within rather than without.
Anna Harris: Communities and Clubhouses: My Path to Divergents Magazine
As a kid, I was diagnosed with an “Asperger’s-like” Nonverbal Learning Disorder. I went to school in North Andover, MA with the help of an IEP (Independent Education Plan) throughout grade school. My IEP helped with my academics some, but I had a hard time socializing. I was the outcast, bullied by my peers.
My family was also a great support system.
At the time I just didn’t know enough about mental illness. There was—and still is—such a stigma attached around mental illness that I might not have sought help even if I’d known I was becoming sick. Being in that hospital forced me to confront it, and to find ways to cope.
Do you know there are social clubs for people dealing with mental illness? I didn’t. But after getting out of the hospital, I was introduced to the idea.
Quba Paciorek: Leave Me Alone
(It’s QWUH!)
Doesn’t anyone know? / I feel like no one can see me / Easy come, easy go / I know that I’ll go out fighting / Mmm / Can I get you alone? / You make it look so easy / I drove my car off the road / ‘Cause it’s better than hiding / I wanna runaway / Run down to the bone / So they can’t see my face / So they’ll leave me alone
Kristen Moody: My Gremlin and Transformation
My gremlin lives within me / imagine he looks like the mucus man from the commercials Oozing lies / Leaving a gooey trail of despair / Determined to Set up camp in my head / It’s like Inside Out in there but grimmer / See Joy is often on vacation / Or more likely held hostage by depression / With anxiety rocking and hyperventilating in the corner / And the gremlin has hold of the command center / I’m not a depressed person / I’m not an anxious person / No that’s not who I am / That does not define me / No I’m a person with a gremlin living inside me / He’s convincing / He’s conniving / He’s determined / He’s lying / I teach about the gremlin to others / I say you are not you’re depression / You are not your anxiety / That’s your gremlin
Sara (Bouchard) Valli: I Had a Sister
I had a sister, she was angry and mean She stole things and hurt people. I had a sister, she asked for help. She wanted to be herself again. I had a sister, she was desperate and broken. She detoxed in my arms. I had a sister, she was addicted. She got treatment for 28 days. I had a sister, she was released too early. She overdosed. I had a sister. And, I miss her.
I had a sister, her name was Christin Renee Bouchard. But I called her Christy
Don McCullough: When Can I Go Home
I have never felt so poor / All over my body sore / Standing here shiverin’ and shakin’ / In the bathroom of this dirty godforsaken gas station / I don’t remember where I spent last night / In the mirror is a ghost with sunken eyes / I lean in close, picking my face to the bone / Fix me another two mic hit just to keep me goin’ / I’m always grateful for my next meal / Down at the shelter I’m cutting more deals / I find a bed, it’s marked with my name / Feels like I’m lying in a grave of shame / I wanna be done with it all / I wanna be over that wall / Into a dark and unlit place / Where I don’t have to look at my own face
Chorus
When can I go home, when can I go home / Sleep like the just in a bed of my own / I ain’t getting any stronger / Can you tell me how, how much longer / I gotta carry everything I own / When can I go home
Deb Pendergast: My Brave Hands
Poetry of Witness
My 64-year-old hands have touched life and death over the years. These caring hands have helped deliver a baby in the back of an ambulance and two days later, these trained hands performed CPR on a car accident victim. These hands have been burned over my career as a firefighter.
These industrious hands have sorted laundry, cooked thousands of meals, and cleaned toilets, preferably in that order! These nurturing hands have held my hours-old, newborn granddaughter and these hands hugged my dad experiencing dementia; both on opposite ends of their lives. These adventurous hands have held hiking poles to guide me to the top of New Hampshire’s tallest mountains and were used to dig for seashells along the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, as well as picked up small heart-shaped stones along a forest path. You see, if these hands are anywhere close to nature, I become grounded.
These strong hands have trembled in fear and anguish in an abusive marriage and these are the same hands that I needed to hold over my heart to remind myself that I am alive; to hold over my diaphragm to remind myself to take a few minutes to just breathe. I have even occasionally used these hands to hug myself to help prove that these hands and this heart have a tremendous capacity for love, and maybe one day, forgiveness.
These brave hands, MY BRAVE hands, wrote these words to share my story with you. These worldly hands have touched death and through these hands, I have lived my life.
Brian Harlow: Make The Call
We are wired as human animals for survival. That’s an indisputable fact. As such, our brains react to a perceived existential threat and adapt accordingly. These adaptations however don’t serve us well a lot of times going forward. “I trusted an authority figure as a child I got burnt badly.” Therefore, trust will not be good going forward.” See where I’m going? And our brains perceive our respective existential threat and store them in an area devoid of clocks, calendars or time at all. “So it’s all neat and tucked away for us?” Nope. Unaddressed or under addressed trauma leads to potential substance use disorders, mental health issues and generally unfulfilled lives.
Trauma is trauma is trauma. I don’t care if you acquired it in Iraq, working decades as a first responder, growing up in a chaotic household, or as a co-ed in an awful situation one night or a myriad of other possibilities. It’s all equally valid. There’s no trauma-lympics folks. No one is on the medal stand for the worst story.
It was not your fault.
You are NOT alone.
You not only can recover, but you WILL.
Recovery is NOT linear. Recovery from a broken finger is. You break it. Somebody casts it, and a few months later you’re good to go. But trauma – no. Sorry.
Recovery doesn’t mean you’re done with it – Okay? It simply means that what happened and all the ways you coped don’t own you any more. Will it still suck at times? Yep. But we got this! Remember – we’re not alone.
Hayley Smith: Jealous of the Birds
Verse
Stuck in this room / Been here for hours It’s so still in here / Just makes my thoughts louder / Perfection they scream / You can do better / Her voice in my head / All caps hits harder
Chorus
And I’m jealous / Of the birds that fly away / I long to go / It’s killing me to stay But I’m stuck / And it’s not just in this space Can’t run out past my mind I’m frozen, paralyzed in place
