American Giving Awards

This show was on air Saturday night.  Glenn Close received a special recognition award. Her organization is called Bring change 2 mind.  Her organization tries to change the stigma surrounding mental illness.  Glenn’s sister is bipolar and her nephew is schizoaffective.  Her nephew was diagnosed first.  Her family before this happened had never brought up the word or had knowledge of mental illness.  She received her award and talked as did her sister.  It was not discussed in my family either.  She also appeared on the Today show.  I have felt the stigma regarding my illness.  I do not like it when people will stop talking to me because I have a mental illness.

We do need more people like Glenn Close to fight the stigma.  If I did not hate it when I am mentally ill, I would say this illness has changed me for the better.  When I won my appeal and was released from prison.  I wanted to stop drinking and did not drink with my friends and found out we had nothing in common but our drinking.  I could not do it on my own and within two weeks I was drinking again.  This illness gave me a second chance at changing my life. They gave out award to quite a few charity organizations.  One thing I was impressed with was when they talked about hope.  You just put one foot in front of the other and keeping going forward that is what they said.It reminded me of when I had to go to an AA meeting when I was at the state hospital.  The meeting was a mile away and I had to walk and this night there was a bad snow storm.  When I finally made it back to the state hospital I was frozen my mustache was ice.  Although I did it when I crawled into bed, I had proved I would do anything to get out of that place.  You might wonder why I hate the state hospital so much.  It is because of all the freedom there you can wear street clothes; you can meet girls on the grounds and talk to them.  You can go to the cafeteria and buy a hamburger or any meal you would like.  You carried money and with passes could go out to eat or a store.  What kind of lock up is that if I did not hate it?  I would have been there for ten year or longer if I liked the place.
Hope is never giving up just keep pushing forward something has to change or break.  You have to hold on to that dream and not let anything stop you from reaching it.  It took me a long time in college, although I knew one day I would graduate.  Then something that was not planned was getting my Master’s.  It happened a lot faster in getting that.  That is good because it was time to go to work.  We need more shows that show people succeeding when they have a mental illness. I know there is a lot of success out there.  Recovery and success can happen.  American giving awards was a good show to watch.  To see all the organizations that try at help bring change to so many lives.