Inspiration Pt. 4

Today, I graduated from therapy. I began there on March 11th, and I ended on April 11th. The counselors were proud of me, amazed that I was ready to leave so quickly. But I wasn't. I wanted it. I wanted to get better. I was eager to learn, eager to work, eager to listen. I fought hard every single day to get better.  The graduation ceremonies are always bitter sweet. Everyone sits around in the small group circle, and they pass around a pin that looks like a dove, and the members of the group and counselors talk about you and give you words of encouragement. The counselors were the only ones there today who had seen me when I first came into the program, everyone else had started after me. One after another, though, everyone spoke about how positive I was. One of the group members even went so far as to say I had a beautiful, colorful aura around me. The counselor told me I gave thoughtful, holistic feedback that would be missed when I was gone. Most people cry, but I didn't. I sat and smiled and listened. It seemed odd to me at the time that I didn't cry, but now I can see that I wasn't emotional because I already knew in my heart that everything they said was true, and I am grateful that I've shared some brief moments in this life with those people.

Once everyone has spoken about you, you have to choose a person from the group to pin the dove onto you. It was a hard choice for me, but in the end, I chose a woman with whom I had, only a week earlier, developed a special bond. She is a mother with a daughter who is about my age. Something really bad had happened between her current husband and her daughter leading to her daughter leaving home and only coming around when he wasn't going to be there. She talked about how strained things had been, how at even the slightest mention of her husband, her daughter became cold toward her. I decided to share something that day that I've not spoken about to many other people. I explained to her that after my mom got married and they moved to their new house here in Indianapolis, it was a really tough adjustment for me. I shared that since they moved, I have felt like I didn't have a home. Before, I had always had a home to go back to if things got bad. There was always a place for me. But now, it didn't feel that way. In those moments, we helped each other understand the other perspective of these issues.

And so I asked her to pin my dove on... because it was the closest I could get to having my mom do it.

Once the pinning is done, the person graduating speaks with the group. Usually they talk about the things they're worried about now that they're leaving the program, but honestly, I wasn't worried about anything. I felt at peace, like my life has come together and all the stressors that lead me to the stress center were gone. So instead, I gave something to them. I played "No Day but Today" as performed by Idina Menzel. The room was silent as everyone listened the world, and some of them even teared up. When the song was over, I encouraged everyone to live as though there's no day but today, to throw themselves into this treatment 150% percent, to enjoy the small things in life, to get things done because you don't know what tomorrow will bring or if you'll even have tomorrow. And then the group moved on, sharing as usual.

So the title of this series of blogs is Inspiration, but it isn't about the inspiration I've received. It is about hoping that my story will inspire others. Whether it inspires people who don't understand mental illness to learn more about it, inspires people with mental illness to seek help, or if it just gives someone who is going through a hard time hope that it will get better. Emotions are fleeting, they only remain if we hold onto them. Let go of the sadness, the judgement, the hopelessness, the anger... let it all go and leave room in your heart for love and joy and contentment.