Fighting Insecurity

When Whitney Houston died, it was revealed that, as talented as she was, she didn’t feel like she was “enough.”

I know that feeling.

How in the world does it happen that people who are so deeply and richly talented, live in the grip of insecurity? Where in the world does that come from?

Let me be a tad personal here. I’m smart. I’ve gone to the best schools. I’ve done some good work in my life, and yet, I have been my own worst enemy. I have held myself back. I will not and have not advocated for myself. I have felt “less than” so many people, and have been afraid to move forward and up into what I have been sent to this world to do. I am shy to a fault.

Where does that come from?

It is exasperating to see people I know moving forward, and see myself sitting still. It is maddening to see people use opportunities to their benefit, while others, like me, let them pass by because of this dratted feeling of not being “enough.” And it is scary to think that I might leave this earth without pushing through this wall.

I would bet that my mother, long deceased, and who said that being depressed is selfish, would say that being insecure is selfish, too. Is it?

I am better than I was …but I’m not good enough, I mean, not strong enough, yet. I am still behind the wall of insecurity. Every day, I say, “OK, God gave me one more day…” and I move a little. But I need to move A LOT!

I am fighting for my life. The wall of insecurity is a killer, as deadly as any illness of the body. Insecurity is an illness of the spirit, and it is an illness I would like to disappear. I wish there was an easy way to get out of it. There is not. You simply have to recognize it, face it, stare it down …and push through.

I don’t normally write really personal stuff on this blog, but this is a battle that I think I need to put out on Front Street so that it can be cast into the sea and be gone forever.

A candid…and very personal … observation …

Mental Illness and Our Fear of It

Rethink Mental Illness (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

With the latest mass shooting in this nation at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. has come the usual spate of debates about gun control and the reasons these mass shootings continue to occur. Frankly, the discussion over gun control, whether or not to have it or to make people get background checks, is annoying. It is clear that in terms of policy this nation’s lawmakers are deeply divided. Gun control and background checks are seen by far too many as just another intrusion of government into the private lives and affairs of American citizens. There exists this absolutely maddening opinion that more guns, not fewer, are the answer to mass shootings.

In the debate, however, mental illness continually comes up as a root cause for the mass shootings. After Sandy Hook, there was extended discussion about it, and today, revelations about the mental health of Aaron Alexis are steadily coming to light. That Alexis was mentally ill is clear. What is also clear is that American society is sorely inept at dealing with it.

I heard a TED talk where the presenter said something that is a no-brainer: if we diagnosed and treated mental illnesses early on, we would have less severe mental illness in people overall. He used as a comparison point that in all diseases where diagnosis and treatment begins early, the seriousness of those diseases diminishes and in some cases, the given illness can disappear altogether.

Not so with mental illness. It seems that we are deathly afraid of it. Children who have mental illness are too often labeled as “bad” or behavior problems, and kind of banned to the fringes of society. These sick children grow into sick adults, who now also carry a fair amount of anger and resentment over how they have been treated due to their illness. And …they grow up believing they are deficient and bad and not worthy of a good life. That cannot be good for any psyche, much less for a psyche made tender by mental illness.

People do not want to admit that they are mentally ill because of the stigma, and in hospital waiting rooms, I am told they are often totally disrespected while they wait for treatment. A young woman shared with me that she was having a crisis and went to an emergency room. She was relegated to a chair in the waiting room, and later, to a gurney in the emergency room. She sat in that waiting room for 23 hours, without seeing a doctor all that time. While she was there, nurses, she said, hollered to her from nurses’ stations: “Are you suicidal? Are you having hallucinations? Are you hearing voices?” This young woman felt humiliated, disrespected, and angry. People began to look at her with fear in their eyes, she said. It was like I was a nothing, a nobody, she said, just because I have a mental illness.

WIth that kind of treatment, it is no wonder people do not talk about it, and do not get treated. I was prescribed Cymbalta to be taken because the drug does something to treat a condition I have called neurocardiogenic syncope. That’s a fancy way of saying I get dizzy, and the Cymbalta, taken with another drug, helps control it. When I listed my drugs on an application to participate in the Susan G. Komen 3-day walk to raise money for breast cancer research, walk officials, looking at my meds, decided I had depression and would not let me participate! I had raised thousands of dollars (which still went toward the research, thankfully) but because I was taking that drug, I was no longer considered a viable walker. My doctor wrote the walk officials to let them know that that’s why I was taking the drug, but they would not budge. And now, I’ve changed my health insurance, and the company will not cover the drug at all. So, illogically, I guess they would rather risk me getting dizzy at the wheel of a car and crashing and damn near killing myself or someone else, rather than covering that drug so that I can handle my dizziness . I will never attempt to walk in the 3-Day Walk for cancer again.

Clearly, there is a problem. Chances are that everyone has some level of mental illness, but for those who have serious mental illness, there is really nobody who can say “it’ll be all right if you admit it and get treated.” Real-life experiences do not support that kind of support or encouragement.

My prayer is that the stigma against mental illness will begin to lift and that mental illness will be respected as an illness that needs to be treated, not run from. Those who are suffering from it deserve better. And those who would be victims because a mentally ill person finally unwinds deserve better as well.

A candid observation …

Black mothers, wailing …

This weekend, I realized anew that the work of justice … never ends.

It is what I thought as I observed the parents, relatives and friends of a young black man, Kendrick Johnson, who gathered to show solidarity and a resolve to fight to bring to justice the people whom they believed murdered him.

Even as the anger and angst over the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the murder of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin simmers in this country, the shooting and killing of black youth continues to balloon with very little attention given to this growing crisis.

Early this year, 17-year old Kendrick Johnson was found dead, rolled up in a wrestling mat in Valdosta, Georgia. An early report said that he had died of asphyxiation while trying to retrieve a shoe from that mat.

Johnson’s parents, however, never bought the story and in June, had his body exhumed and a second autopsy performed. The results of that autopsy said that the youth died from “non-accidental blunt force trauma.” They are seeking justice for their son, and have asked the United States Justice Department to re-open the investigation into Kendrick’s death. So far, they say, the answer to their request has been “no.”

Johnson’s parents are looking for support and assistance as they seek justice for their son, much like the parents of Trayvon Martin have done. To that end, they have called veteran civil rights activist Ruby Sales, founder and director of Spirit House, to help raise awareness and action on their son’s behalf.

Sales sees an alarming trend of black youth being killed under suspicious circumstances, and law enforcement either being involved in the killings or turning a deaf ear to the cries of the parents of the youth for justice. She gets calls on almost a daily basis from distressed parents whose children, mostly sons, have been killed and have not been able to get assistance or answers from law enforcement or local government.

Sales and the co-director of Spirit House, Cheryl Blankenship, went to Valdosta, Georgia this week for a rally that the community held for Kendrick. I was there as well, to record what was going on. Similar rallies have been being held consistently in Georgia since the results of the second Johnson autopsy were made public. Even as they stood in the hot sun at Johnson’s rallies, other mothers, hearing of SpiritHouse Project’s work, came to Sales. Many had tears in their eyes; all had stories that were hard to stomach. “Since this all happened,” said a young mother whose son was shot by police officers in Florida and left on the side of the road for three hours, “I have developed seizures. But I can’t stop. That’s my baby. I can’t stop.”

Her son did not die in spite of being left, but has been detained in a jail for the past 17 months. He has been unable to get needed medical care, stemming from his gunshot wounds, which he and his family requested, and was not allowed to complete his schoolwork so that he could graduate with his class this spring. Before being shot, he was a good student and promising athlete. He planned to go to college. Now, said his distraught mother, he doesn’t even know when he’ll have a trial, much less get out of jail.

Many of the parents of the dead youth do not have financial resources to hire attorneys. Some have public defenders who, they say, have shown little to no interest in their sons’ cases.

Sales hopes that by getting the stories out about these suspicious deaths that not only will be the public be made aware, but will be mobilized to push for justice and also be inspired to offer resources that the parents themselves may not have.

“These are no more and no less than lynchings,” Sales says. “It’s got to stop.”

Part of Sales’ vision and plan is to train the parents on how to effectively advocate for themselves and for others. “There’s no power in one or two sets of parents complaining about injustice,” she says, “but there is an enormous amount of power in numbers of parents coming together. (Policy makers) might be able to ignore the coffin of one young person; it would be virtually impossible for them to ignore, say, 35 coffins of young people, killed under suspicious circumstances.”

As Sales and Blankenship gather stories from parents, they are planning their next steps, one of which is to get the parents of these youth to Washington, D.C. to make a statement to their lawmakers and the nation about what’s going on.

Standing in the hot sun in Valdosta at the Johnson rally, Sales remembered “Ella’s Song.” Written and composed by Bernice Johnson Reagon, founder of “Sweet Honey in the Rock,” the song says:

We who believe in freedom cannot rest;

We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.

Until the killing of Black men, Black mothers’ sons,

Is as important as the killing of White men, White mothers’ sons …

We who believe in freedom cannot rest.

“This is important work,” Sales said. “We cannot rest.”

I’ll be tagging along with Sales and Blankenship, recording and writing what we hear and learn. Any murder is tragic. However, however the growing murder of young Black people represents both a crisis for the Black community as well as for the nation. As if this is not enough of a travesty, police and coroners dismiss these brutal lynchings, shootings and beatings as suicides, accidents or acts of self-defense by police or individual vigilantes.

Black mothers crying for their children emit a wail that cannot be ignored. The wailing of Black mothers in this nation is getting louder and louder.

Perhaps we are at another turning point, or perhaps the move to get the stories of these killings out will change the heart of the nation from indifference to action. Perhaps, people of all colors in the nation will realize that none of us can rest until justice is a reality for everyone.

A candid observation …

Grief, Uninvited

Grief is such a rude visitor.

It comes uninvited and too often, unannounced, and it outstays its welcome.

Emily Dickinson‘s poem, “Death,” describes well the rudeness of death, but death’s companion, grief, is much more pesky. It teases and taunts us, making us feel like we are getting better (and perhaps we are), but then it pulls the rugs from under our feet, and we find ourselves falling down into that empty hole that death left behind.

I thought about that as I listened to a person describe how horrible it has been for her since her husband died. It has only been two years, I think, as she speaks. Grief usually stays much longer than that …but this woman wanted grief to go away, and stay away, so that she could get herself together. Grief was not obliging her request and desire, and she shared that she was sinking into a deep depression.

“My soul aches,” she said. “It’s like my soul wants to vomit something up…but there is nothing there. It’s like I wretch and wretch but nothing comes up, and the wretching won’t stop.”

Were that there were an easy way to get rid of grief. Unfortunately, it is a process that takes a good bit of time to be eliminated to a point where we can function. Even after that huge block of time, grief remains a scar on our souls; there are scars there which belie a wound that was once gaping and ugly and at times, infected with anger and fear and confusion about how death or some other tragedy could have come and wreaked such havoc in our lives.

The only thing we can do in grief is to respect it – give it room to do whatever it is doing as it lingers within us – but then breathe good, deep, cleansing breaths when it takes a reprieve. We find that we go from living moment to moment, to living hour by hour, then day to day…sometimes slipping back to the moment-to-moment or hour-to hour mode, but consistently coming out of such a haphazard way of living to something more like we remember “normal” being.

I think that when our souls ache from grief, we should let them ache. We should “go with the flow” as our souls wretch with this unspeakable pain that is obviously trying to come out…because sooner or later (probably later,) the retching will stop. The acute parts of grief will have been gotten rid of, and we will be in a position to begin the healing process. We might as well go with it, because we certainly cannot direct or control the process.

When the retching finally stops, we know that we are at least getting to the possibility of putting the tragedy or loss in a place where we can see it and not have a violent reaction.

I guess that’s called life.

A candid observation …

Shy to a Fault

All my life, I have been shy to a fault.

People don’t realize it; when I share it in workshops or in places where I speak, people literally laugh and say they don’t believe me. I am so animated when I speak or present, it’s hard for people to believe that when I am done, I crawl into a shell.

I have always done it.

While there is nothing wrong with being shy, I write this to ask any of you who are shy not to let it compromise your life and your possibilities, as I have.

I have not made friends with people as a rule. I have not fostered and cultivated professional relationships. I have not mingled with people of my profession much, getting to know them, and allowing them to know me.

For the years I was a pastor, I basically went to church, did my “church work,” and go home. Oh…I did raise my children, and did quite well at that, I am pleased to say. But I did not build relationships. I did not diversify the palette of my life.

My therapist ( yes, I see one regularly) said that I made my world too small. Isn’t that a wonderful description of what being shy does?

Where in the world does the shyness come from? Is saying I am shy another way of saying I am insecure, or not confident?

I can remember once I went somewhere to preach. I got there early, with a friend, and was led into a roomful of women I didn’t know. I looked around, and the woman was whisking my friend to another area of the building. I wanted to die! There were all these women whom I did not know. They were well-dressed and articulate …and it felt like their heads were blowing up into huge balloons right in front of me; it felt like the balloons were coming toward me! I could not run out. I told myself that …and so I made myself walk to the balloons and, in talking, was able to stick a pin in them so that the big heads shrunk down to normal. I found that I could talk with these women; I found out that I had much to say and that they listened, but I will never forget the terror of those few moments.

Since then, I have been practicing not being shy. Some people from my former church would see me in a crowd, “working the room,” and would encourage me. That meant a lot. Someone knew I knew this particular weakness of mine, and saw that I was trying to meet it … and, in effect, beat it.

But the bottom line is that I have hurt my life and my career by being so shy. I told/taught my children not to be like me, and thank God, they have listened. I have gone to the best schools, but didn’t connect with people. They, too, have gone to the best schools and have connected with people, have good friends all over the country, and are nurturing the relationships they have made even as they make new connections.

I told you I raised my children well.

I write this because this morning I wept for a few moments as I dealt with seeing myself “face to face.” Sometimes, I like what I see. This morning, I did not.

But the little weeping spell is over. I decided to write because someone else, a young person with lots of gifts and talent, is hiding under a bushel somewhere.

Please come out. The world needs you.

A candid observation …