Storms Make Trees Take Deeper Roots

She was 8. That is the first thing I thought to myself when my little sister told me she always heard voices that she couldn’t see. She couldn’t possibly be experiencing symptoms of the illness her father was diagnosed with in his mid-twenties when she is only 8. It was impossible. Not an option. Maybe it was ghosts. We moved. Nothing changed. She began counseling and the voices went away – with no medication. I knew nothing about this illness before, except not to judge those who were pained by it.

A few years passed, and her hallucinations came back when she was 12, only it was visual, which terrified her even more. WHY COULDN’T I SEE THEM? It wasn’t until then that I let myself fully understand these symptoms. A week later, we were on our way to Carmel for our first psychiatry appointment.

For a year, she was on the wrong medicine, and it wasn’t until she was in the hospital for a week that the doctors decided the medicine was not working. Although the breakdown that caused us to take her to a Mental Health Hospital down south. I could not imagine the pain that she felt that night, the horror she felt when the voices told her to hurt me with meat cutting scissors, but I could see the fear in her eyes, hear it in her voice, and feel it in my heart.

Although taking her to this facility in the south was not ideal – it taught me that I was not as prepared as I thought I was. I decided to study Mental Health and Well-Being. I have never been so passionate about something other than my loved ones in my life. I couldn’t imagine finding a career better fit for me. This mental illness has turned my family into a more outgoing, caring, empathetic family, and that would have never happened if it weren’t for these doctors and other professionals. We decided to embrace this sad, scary, misunderstood illness and advocate for mental health.

My baby sister is the smartest, strongest, most beautiful, amazing, caring, charismatic, and artistic human I have ever been blessed to meet. And even that is an understatement. She will not let this illness defeat her. She will break this stigma. She is more than a diagnosis. She is not alone.

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new"

– Socrates