How I Became NAMI Member

NOTE: This is a short article I wrote earlier this year for the NAMI newsletter but I don't think it was published.

NAMI members are like everyone else. We have our good days and our bad days. I don’t think we have more bad days than others, but I do think that our bad days may be more intense on average than most.

By Deborah Rose, Director of Educational Development

Coping with “bad days” has become an art form for me. Used to, coping for me was to get in the car and drive for hours aimlessly. The quiet of the drive relaxed me and I would fantasize about driving to exotic places and meeting interesting people and getting just any kind of job that would let me rent a room with a kitchenette.

And that worked for while. Then the day came that I came home from a quick trip to the store to find three police cars at my house. My son had blown a hole in the floor of the closet and called the police. He was twelve. The guns had been locked up and the ammunition had been hidden. My days of driving were ended and it was time for me to find a more practical solution.

I don’t know how this happened, but I did not find NAMI. NAMI found me. Shortly after the “hole ‘n the flo’” as we refer to that time in our house, I received a call from a woman and I had no idea who she was. She couldn’t tell me how she got my number. She only knew I had a child with a mental illness. I politely informed her I had a child with bipolar disorder, he was not mentally ill. (“Was I really that uneducated?”) She invited me to a group and my husband and I went. This was my introduction to “Visions for Tomorrow” in 1999.

I remember being fascinated that there were other parents who had stories that were identical to the ones we had. The information was about things I had never heard of and I remember thinking how simple this all seemed. Something the doctors had left me feeling that once was overwhelming and scary, now seemed to make sense and there was hope and treatment and my son would not grow up to be homeless and he could have a wonderful life.

Before these classes, I had been hopeless and desperate. After the first class I was hopeful, empowered and felt that the future could be promising again for my son and for our family.

A little education goes a long way to take away the darkness and Vision for Tomorrow classes have given me not a candle but a huge spotlight to show me the way.

NAMI provides a wealth of information and support and is many things to different people. My first experience with NAMI was about education. Knowledge is power. That is the motto for my own business. Through Visions for Tomorrow and education courses designed for all kinds of people, NAMI continues to empower individuals so that they can help themselves and help their loved ones.

NAMI education programs are free to families and individuals and there is a reason for that. How do you put a price tag on something so valuable? Bad days – yes I still have them. But I also have the knowledge on how to deal with them. It started when I learned about mental illness and how to help my loved ones. And I also learned how to help myself and it only took 12 little workshops. Visions for Tomorrow is aptly named as I have an idea of what the future can hold for me and my family.