Showing posts with label how mental health affects school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label how mental health affects school. Show all posts

Saturday, March 8, 2025

Life Lessons Series: Life Is What Happens When You Are Making Other Plans - Musician John Lennon

Life Lessons Series: Life Is What Happens When You Are Making Other Plans - Musician John Lennon

Life Lesson #7

Life is what happens when you are making other plans.

My grandmother Alvira died on December 30, 2004, my 22nd birthday, in Guyana South America, thousands of miles away but it was exactly where she wanted to be. They say there is no such thing as an untimely death but the timing of Alvira’s passing always felt planned to my broken heart. You see, I was in Ottawa, ON the day she died, making plans for my birthday, making plans to reunite with my estranged boyfriend, making plans for New Year’s Eve, making plans for my final semester at Carleton University and making plans for my bright and shiny future. Then life happened. 

I walked into my 7th floor apartment the evening of New Year’s Eve, my mother standing by the dining room table tears in her eyes, my aunt and uncle stood frozen in my living room and three of my girlfriends who had proceeded me to the apartment stood awkwardly with party supplies in hand and regret in their eyes. I looked at my mom and the next words out of her mouth shattered my world, made all thoughts in my head disappear because life or rather death had happened when I was out making plans.


“Gran Gran Alvira died yesterday in Guyana,” my mother could barely get the words out past her tears. 


My response to the devastating news is silly to me now, “Yesterday was my birthday.” 


Then I fell to the floor and screamed from my soul where she had always lived and collapsed. I was never going to see her alive again, I was never going to smell her neck as I snuggled in her strong lap, I was never going to feel her arms around me or hear her soft voice telling her baby girl how I gave the best hugs, She wasn’t going to be at my graduation or wedding or the birth of my first child and we were never going to dance to Ella Fitzgerald or sing Summertime again. Life had gotten in the way of my plans.


After flying back home for the funeral and saying goodbye to my soulmate I simply stopped living life, I stopped making plans, I stopped smiling and laughing and loving the way I did when my grandmother was alive. She was 82 years old when she died and as an adult I understood she couldn’t live forever but the child she helped raise, that she encouraged to dream big couldn’t comprehend a world where Alvira didn’t exist. I spiralled out of control, I made a lot of bad choices after she died and two years later I found myself in a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit being diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder. That was never the plan but life continued on around me, life continued to happen to me regardless of whether I had a plan or not. Sometimes choosing not to plan becomes the plan and life still happens whether you like it or not.


Fast forward 20 years, I recently went back home to Guyana following my spirit, my heart and my soul’s calling to be in the last place my grandmother was. I spent a month there including my 42nd birthday, I celebrated Alvira, I danced in the rain, I laughed until I hurt, I explored my birthplace and I remembered things forgotten long ago. I found what I thought I had lost so many years before: I found joy, happiness and the freedom to be me.  I had no real plans for this restorative and transformative adventure home, It's how I’ve learned to live my life, minute by minute, hour by hour and day by day because when you deal with a severe mental illness characterized by unexpected highs and lows you learn to enjoy life taking things as they come and feeling gratitude for every little moment of sanity I’m blessed with. 


Thank you Mr. Lennon, you taught me that living in the moment is better than making plans for an unknown and uncertain future because no matter which way the wind blows life is what happens when you are making other plans.    
By at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,

Saturday, March 1, 2025

Life Lessons Series: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway - American Author Susan Jeffers

Life Lesson Series: Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway - American Author Susan Jeffers

Life Lesson #6

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

I was in the sixth grade the first time I felt fear. The kind of fear that stops your breath and makes your heart beat faster, the kind of fear that makes your palms sweat and your head feel like it's about to explode. A fear of an uncertain future where death lurks in every corner of your fragile mind. When I was eleven years old I experienced my first anxiety attack. I found a postcard in my backpack that read, “In five days you will be dead, I’m going to kill you,” a death threat by an unknown fellow student in my elementary school. My inability to process the anxiety I felt caused me to faint and I was found by my teacher lying on the floor, pale and paralyzed with fear.

Emergency Services were called along with my mother. After the paramedics arrived and checked my vitals, I heard them tell my teacher and my mother that I had a severe anxiety attack brought on by stress. After being released by the paramedics into my nurse mother’s care I went home. That night I couldn’t sleep, I woke up from several nightmares unable to catch my breath, my mother laid beside me unable to sleep waiting for the moment that my skin would start to sweat and I would jump out of my sleep. She soothed me with prayers, held me in her arms as I asked, “Mama who wants to kill me? I haven’t done anything to anybody I swear,” tears of fear and confusion streaming down my face.

I stayed in bed for two days refusing to go back to school when my mother came into my room, sat on my bed and handed me a book with an orange and yellow jacket. I remember her words to me, “Read this book today because tomorrow you go back to school.” I looked at her in dismay but took the book and read the cover, “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers.” That afternoon with much reluctance and curiosity I read the book that I had seen amongst my mother’s things for years but never bothered to pick up. Before the postcard I had considered myself a carefree and fearless little girl but the circumstances of life and possible death changed that. Once upon a time the unknown excited me but in that moment the unknown terrified me. 

I can recall the quote in this powerful book published in 1987 that helped me find my courage again: “The only way to get rid of the fear of doing something is to go out and do it.” The next day I woke up and made the decision to go back to school with three days left on the death threat’s clock. I sat in class feeling fear every minute of that day but I got through it, then I got through the next day and the next. I felt the fear every one of those three days; I felt the fear when I found a second postcard with an apology written on it in my backpack; I felt the fear when the school discovered where the threat originated from but I went to school during the worst week of my life, I sat in class, I hung out with my friends at recess, I was brave even in the face of my fears.

The incident in elementary school was the first anxiety attack I had ever had but I was not the last. Whenever I have felt fear in my life I remember those three days where a scared eleven year old faced death head-on and I remember Susan Jeffers book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway and I find the courage to be brave, to face life's challenges despite my fears because there will always be monsters in the closet, there will always be dragons to slay but guess what? You have to Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Thank you Ms. Jeffers for teaching me how to believe and trust in myself despite the fear.  
By at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)