The Compeer Mile - A Walk To End Loneliness is Compeer’s largest annual fundraiser. The walk raises funds to support critical work that is bettering the lives of those facing mental health challenges in our community. Every year, Compeer helps form bonds between hundreds of volunteer mentors and individuals who are seeking to improve their mental wellness.

I have a very personal story about mental illness and have been working for over 20 years to break down the stigma. Sunday I walk with my daughter to honor my mother who stuggles with mental illness.  

Here is my story: 

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places ~ Ernest Hemingway

I am a reconciliation of spirits. My father was a surgeon and my mother a painter and musician who played 12 instruments. My parents divorced when I was 10, which was a good thing. The separation helped relieve the constant tension between rational intellect and creative expression. At one point, you might think intellect would win, but in the end raw expression had more endurance. I say this as my mother has a dragon to slay called mental illness. 

When my mother was younger, she didn't always take her prescribed medication. As a result, she attempted suicide three times that I know of. I was very angry about her attempts. In fact, I can remember that at one point I even wished she would succeed, not because I was a cruel child, but because it was so hard to know whether, at any given time, she was stable or present or safe or alive. The anxiety of "not knowing" and constantly having to worry were very painful. Fearful as I was about my mother's health, it turns out that my father, who had long been as stable as a rock and I might add as emotionally impenetrable, was killed in a car accident when he was just 44 years old. I was 24 at the time.

There's a saying in Wyoming: "When the wind stops, the cows fall down." I had no idea how much the force of my father's presence was like the wind, or how much I was buoyed by my resistance to him. His death came as a complete shock. I had always thought my mother was the fragile one. I had no idea life would teach me otherwise.

Here is what her dragon has taught me: 

One's core has nothing to do with money or things. Three times I know of during my childhood, my mother became homeless and lost everything she owned, including her paintings, photographs instruments and books. And three times she rebuilt her life. Because she provided such a strong beacon of being herself, regardless of her possessions, I have never worried about money or things for my fundamental survival. 

Reality lies within, not without. As an eight-year-old child visiting my mother in the hospital, I would meet many patients who were a bit "out there." Too young for shame, I could easily jump into fascinating conversations with people who were immersed in characters of their own creation. I remember the day, while sipping chocolate milk and getting ready to play another round of ping-pong with a woman patient, I said to myself, "All these people truly see the world differently. Let me put my mind down so I can go play in their world." What a gift! It was years before I realized what many adults have yet to learn that reality is a perception.

Art can have its own unique resilience and endurance. My mother is now in her sixties, and she is thriving. She has a wonderful husband who ensures she takes her medicine and gets consistent care. They live a very modest, very meaningful life. When I see her now, I see a mirror. I see how much we look alike and I see how much my work draws upon creative expression as well as intellect. 

Let's continue to work on our own self-care, honor that everyone we interact with is slaying a personal dragon, and that a person's life is in our hands and it simply takes them knowing that they matter and are not alone.

Sincrely,

Jennifer Sertl