CONSUMER AFFAIRS BULLETIN
Volume 3, No. 2 Summer 1998

The Meaning... Addressing Women's Mental Health

I would like to share with you what life has been like for myself and my children and grandchildren as a consumer/survivor/patient. How race, sex, and disability have hurt us and what would have helped. I believe that racism, stigma, mentalism, poverty, victimization, homelessness, and institutionalization have contributed to a continued intergenerational cycle of needs and dependency in my family, in myself, my children and their children. I am a woman who has survived every form of violence known to man, sexual incest, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, emotional incest, ritual abuse, neglect and system abuse.

I’ve also survived what many of us call retraumatization. This happens when you try to get help and the doctors hurt you again. I’ve been misdiagnosed, beaten, battered, raped repeatedly, tortured, tied up and held hostage and experienced attempted murder. The worst damage to me has been not to be believed, to be labeled and called a liar and to be made invisible.

HOW ... did it happen and when did it begin? My story is trauma and my search for help. I was subject to incest at a very early age - possibly under two and it lasted until I was nine. It was by my paternal parent who created a scandal in the small place where we lived. The story goes that he took me as a baby in arm and knocked on doors of unsuspecting women telling them that I was sick and in need of food and diapering. He then terrorized them, robbing, beating, raping them. Imagine growing up known, as the newspapers dubbed me, as the "baby bandit." For years, people hated and pointed at me. When I was nine, I was hospitalized in a home for "crippled children", because I could not walk. I was exhibiting severe symptoms - vomiting, eating problems, depression, etc.

I became pregnant at fifteen and went on to get married and eventually to have six children. I experienced postpartum depression at nineteen - could not walk again, and when I got better I started to behave in self-destructive ways using substances and joining my family in hiding my problems, denying my pain and living in shame. The secret became the sore. At age twenty-two, I was physically and sexually attacked, tortured, tied spread eagle and held hostage for 18 hours repeatedly raped. I was able to escape and forced to run naked through the streets to seek help and protection. This is a moment of terror that lives with me even now- that fights for first place in my system for most horror of my life. My children were present in the house when this horror took place. Again the newspaper named me, named my attacker, a member of my family, and described us in a way that people referred to me no longer as the "baby bandit," but as the woman who had sex with her relatives and then complained when the party got rough. But even worse was that the storm of mental and emotional illness peaked, and I lived in the hurricane. For a woman who had multiple traumas throughout childhood, who had lived in secret shame and terror, I experienced long-term psychological problems. The trauma itself began to form and deform my personality, and the system began to shape me for a career as a mentally ill person.

Over the next eight to ten years, I struggled as a single mother. The husband left because he said I was too crazy to live with. Diagnosis changed from doctor to doctor from treatment professional to treatment professional. My family insisted that I not seek mental health treatment, that I not talk about my issues, that I seek help for physical pain from nervous stomach to drug and alcohol abuse.

In the meantime, my children began to follow the same paths–drinking, drugging, chaos, jail. I worked when I could, got welfare when I couldn’t, and prayed my secrets would not be revealed. We were very poor and lived in isolation and fear. I lived in abject terror that my children would know what was going on - that I would be forced to go to a hospital, that my children would be taken away. This legacy of terror, shame and chaos could have been avoided had there been systems in place to deal with the violence and reactions to violence and trauma that I was experiencing. This was called illness. Its clear to me now that my children knew and were terrified of me and my behaviors, but I did not know them, and they did not really know me. So I say to the mothers, don’t repeat my mistakes - speak out - find your voice - get the help you need - demand it! It’s for you and your children as long as you live. May you never experience the hell I have lived through watching your children and grandchildren visit the same hell you did.

Well, help finally arrived - not in the mental health system, not in the social service system, but in welfare rights. An organization that mobilized poor people - right in their neighborhoods, to speak out and fight back against all of the oppressors, poverty, racism, and stigma - encouraged me to believe that I could be an agent of change.

I went into training - New Careers for the Poor - went on through high school and college and for seventeen years, I lived two lives. I became a busy professional by day and maintained my other persona through drinking and drugging away my pain by night. I truly, truly learned to act well - a lesson my mother had always attempted to teach me. I acted so well I would actually be shocked when I had bad periods or I was sick or terrorized. I put it all behind me and thought I had gotten away.

Wait - there’s more! At age 46, I was at my peak of acting well. I had a good job - even an important one - a man who loved me and, a profession I understood better than most because I had been where most of the persons I serviced were. I had a beautiful home and friends (not many). I was active in organizations, and my mother was breathing sighs of relief that I no longer talked about the violence and terror.

On my way out one night at about 8 o’clock on November 11, it was snowing and 19 degrees, a man approached me with a gun. He forced me into an alley, removed all of my clothing and assaulted me in ways I never knew existed. When he left me, my life was changed forever. He turned out to be a serial rapist attacking more than fourteen women in our community between November and Christmas. He was finally caught and tried. He received a light sentence because some of us, including myself, were too terrorized to participate in his trial. He went to jail and I went to hell. I lost everything, and remember, I didn’t know how or where to seek help. It was my life-long legacy. One day I just walked out of my house, and I never went back. I was gone for ten years from 1979 to 1989. During the first years, I wandered homeless - living in the street - my most nonfunctional self afraid to live or know the hurricane of my mind.

Here comes the good part - I was adopted by the women of a local crisis center. They began to nurture me, support me, secure treatment for me that was appropriate and provide me with safety. They mothered me back to health and returned me to acting well. For the first time in my life, I was in a mental hospital. I was supported in seeking help from a female who specialized in disassociative disorders and post-traumatic stress. We worked together for five years, and then I left to return to my family to try to pick up the pieces.

My children were grown. They too experienced prison, institutionalization, drugs, alcohol and poverty. And my grandchildren were stepping into their shoes - eight of them were in foster care, and it wasn’t a good thing. I went to work in a government funded project designed to provide services and employment to people who identified as having psychiatric issues. I attended my first Alternatives conference and began to find my way. If nothing else, I survived. I learned I was not alone. I learned that I could participate and make a contribution. I discovered self-help support groups and consumers who were working for their own and other’s liberation. I have regained my sense of control, connection and meaning.

The consumer movement is the place where as a person, a human being, I have found the least discrimination in my life. I am confronting my demons of recognizing the irretrievable loss of my children and the effects of sexual and emotional abuse and neglect. I realized that by speaking to you about what my experience and life has been that I am being validated and honored as I never imagined possible. It is an incredible feeling. I leave you with the wish that other women, can know what that feeling of validation is - if not now then sometime in their lives.

Consumer Affairs Bulletin
Volume 3, No. 2, Summer 1998