In my first post in this series I wrote about the courage to face the truth and in the last post I wrote about the amazing intuitiveness I have with my daughter Jessi, and about the courage to learn how to trust her, and to be able to trust her to God. This post is about the courage to trust others and ask for and accept help. It really does take a community of compassionate, caring, supportive people.
It was a night in mid-November of 2013. Jessi was living in Las Cruces, New Mexico for the year as a volunteer through Border Servant Corp. She lived in community with five other volunteers and spent her days teaching low-income children how to garden. I had had hip replacement a few weeks before and was now sleeping in her bed since our bed was too low to the ground, and it was very difficult to get out of it as I healed and was doing physical therapy.
I don’t remember how it started, but one night as I was lying in bed, trying to fall asleep, my intuitiveness kicked in and I sensed that Jessi might be struggling. We started texting. As we did, I could tell she was in a very dark place. It was after midnight, and she was exhausted from fighting off the anxiety and deep darkness that enveloped her. I asked her to promise me that if things got worse that she would text me before taking any actions. She agreed, and I fell into an extremely restless sleep. Very early in the morning my phone beeped, and I saw it was Jessi. I could sense the desperation in her texts, and all she could relay was that she couldn’t quit thinking about killing herself. This is termed “intrusive thoughts,” when an idea so permeates your being that you cannot think of anything else.
I asked if she would pick up the phone if I called, and she said yes. I called, Jessi picked up, I asked her if any of her roommates were home, and she said Kara was next door in her own bedroom. I asked Jessi to call for Kara, she came, and I told Jessi to give the phone to her. I then told Kara Jessi was having what we call “intrusive thoughts” about ending her life, and I asked if she could stay with Jessi until her brother got there. She said she could. I then told her not to leave Jessi alone. Even if she goes to the bathroom, go with her.
I then called my son, Brian, who was working in Las Cruces and lived just a few blocks away. I asked if he could quickly get dressed, go and get Jessi, and stay with her for the day, working from home. He did just that, sat with her, made her breakfast and worked as she lay on the couch beside him.
I immediately booked a ticket out of Washington DC to El Paso. I remember thinking that my surgeon had told me I should wait several weeks before flying, and I was pretty sure that amount of time had not passed, but, to me, it didn’t matter. I was laser focused on getting Jessi to a safe place at home. I packed, called a friend to take me to the airport, and I was in El Paso by dinnertime. Jessi and Brian were at the airport to pick me up, we drove to Las Cruces (about 45 miles away), went to Jessi’s home to pack a bag for her and thank her roommates for supporting her, and then we headed to Brian’s house for the night.
The next morning Brian took us back to El Paso and Jessi and I began the journey home to Arlington, Virginia. We called Jessi’s therapist, who talked with Jessi on the phone. We also contacted her psychiatrist, who discussed Jessi’s situation with her therapist. They then informed us that Jessi should either be admitted to a behavioral hospital, or she could stay at home so long as she was not left alone. We discussed this with Jessi, she said she would prefer to stay at home (there have been times when Jessi insisted on being hospitalized because she felt her depression was too deep for us to deal with), and I changed my schedule so I could stay with her the bulk of the time, with Mary filling in after she was done teaching school for the day so that I could make visitations and attend evening meetings.
One of the things I am most grateful for is that Jessi is committed to doing whatever it takes to be as healthy as possible. And that begins with her willingness to accept help, and let the village be a part of her healing. In the example just described Jessi relied on her roommates, her brother, her father, her therapist, her psychiatrist, and on a church willing to let her dad work from home while she healed, as well as supporting me in taking her to see her therapist, sometimes several times a week in the beginning.
When Jessi was first diagnosed with depression and suicidal ideations, a friend of mine, who has a child who suffers in a similar way, said to me, “Brian, this will never end.”
I didn’t really believe him. At first I saw this as just one of those challenges where, if you keep your nose to the grindstone, it can be overcome. How naïve I was, and how little I knew about mental illness, which is the topic of the next and final post: the education it takes to be a help rather than a hindrance to those who suffer in ways we don’t, at first, understand.
I am so grateful for two things. The first is that Jessi has been relentless in her striving to be as healthy as she can. She has had a regular therapist since she was in 5th grade, and she never skips a session, being so eager to learn anything that can help her grow and fight the demons of anxiety and depression. Secondly, I am so thankful for all the resources that have been available to us, and the loving and insightful people who have worked not only with Jessi, but with us as a family. She had an amazing therapist for ten years in Phoenix and now, for the past ten years, an amazing therapist in Virginia, with whom she has sessions at least once a week. After searching we found a psychiatrist in Virginia who has been extremely insightful in her use of medications but also helpful, in recent years, in terms of working with Jessi’s therapist to diagnose bipolar and ADHD, and adjust her medications appropriately.
Jessi is surrounded by loving and caring friends, always there for her when she needs to text or talk. Two of the other volunteers in Las Cruces, including Kara, are two of her best friends to this day, and they regularly meet as a threesome on Google Meets, and, before the pandemic, traveled to be together two or three times a year, including in Canada, where Ellen lives.
So many of our friends and family have been supportive of Jessi and us as parents, wondering how she is doing, and asking how they can be supportive. It really does take a village, a caring and compassionate community, to walk with us in our most difficult times, and Jessi, Mary and I have experienced that in so many ways. And the village has been global, with many of Jessi’s doctors and therapists being from different countries, ethnicities and religious traditions.
In Part I of this series, I quoted Jessi, who had written in her blog, “So, this is bipolar, eh? I guess it’s time to become a spokesperson for it.” In the next post I will focus on all the ways and people who have helped us learn about anxiety and depression and how we have tried--with Jessi leading the way--to be advocates for others who suffer in similar ways.
