Transforming Perceived Mental Illness Into A Blessing: A Personal Story For A Collective Journey

And this is around mental health reformation, transformation, revolution, and evolution. So when I was 19, I'm 45 now, I had what some people would call a psychotic episode and what other people might call a spiritual emergency. And it really depends on what culture and what paradigm you are from and brought up in. Being that I grew up on the East Coast and I was in New York and New Jersey when it happened, I got the typical response of being considered mentally ill and diagnosed with bipolar disorder. And I went through 10 years of the mental health system, which is really terrible. So I know we all have our different crosses to bear, and this is not about a competition of suffering, but in my life it was a terrible time. Of course, on the flip side of that terrible time, there was a lot of blessings involved, like the time I had to make my own studies and to learn what I wanted to learn and to do self-inquiry. So I'm super passionate about systemic change for mental health and addiction, and I'm not in it to play small. It's been a long time coming for me. I've had to do a lot of my own work and my own healing and reframing and understanding what happened to me and what it means to me. And now that time has gotten a lot closer to really be a leader type. You know, I think we're all co-leaders, so I'm using that word loosely. If that's what the universe wants from me, I'll certainly take the mantle because changing the mental health system is of the utmost importance. Number one, it's a symbolic macrocosmic expression because there's so many facets involved with mental healthcare from politics to health insurance to institutions and families and the judicial system. And it's really a beautiful microcosm. So it's an important topic and It has to do with oppression and labeling and myopia and many other things. So I'm on a mission personally, I call it to transform perceived— important— perceived mental illness into a blessing. So I no longer talk about bipolar disorder or bipolar disease. I talk about the bipolar experience. And it's important to say that because I— it would be disingenuous for me to bypass or ignore my actual experience, which does involve the altered states of mind and the emotional ups and downs that have been part of the bipolar experience. But to call it a mental illness or disease has been one of the greatest, in this context, travesties of the modern era, to call things mental illnesses because they're not mental and they're not really illnesses. So because of all that, um, I've recently met 2 wonderful women from the Toronto area in Canada, Hillary and Romila, and they both happen to be mothers, but they also have their own experiences in different ways, whether personally or by, you know, friendship and family with mental health and addiction. Um, and we have launched this project called A Call to the Mothers. And to be clear, that is not just women or the, the female gender. It's about the idea of unconditional love and nourishment and even Mother Earth. So it's a call to the mother in all of us. It's a call to the mother, the great mother, the Mother Earth, or the great mother of the cosmos. And Hillary has a process she designed called A Taste of Wonderland, based on Alice in Wonderland. And some of you might be familiar. Alice in Wonderland is Kind of involved in mental health, so to say. You know, they got the Mad Hatter and there's this inversion in this Wonderland. So she's created this beautiful process that has 4 stages. First, we, we go through an exploratory process. So we did one prototype conversation, which was amazing, with a small group, just 5 of us. The 4 stages are simple. Name the cracks in the system. What are the issues we see, the cracks and all the The second step is to grieve. There's a lot of wounding and grieving and reconciliation that is part of this entire process. So what do we feel like we've lost? What do people feel hurt and pained about? The third part of the process is understanding and recognizing and acknowledging and seeing all the different possibilities that are out there now, different modalities and ways to transform this perceived mental illness and addiction. Whether it's equine therapy or HeartMath coherence or virtual reality or holistic healing or traditional Chinese medicine, there is a whole buffet panoply spectrum of different things that can work together to help people find out who they are and find out what has happened to them and why in these states that are called mental illness and to work with that. And through my own experience, I can, and also meeting other people, I can pretty much guarantee there's no one-size-shoe-fits-all, which is one of the issues obviously with the Western medical system, the idea that we can just take some drugs or do some cognitive behavioral therapy. It's a very personal experience, so therefore it calls for very personal responses. So the 3rd step again in this Call to the Mother's process is going through and seeing all these different possibilities. And the 4th step is called the Mad Hatter in the Strange Brew. So we have people pick one of the cracks in the system, one of the grieving points, and one of these possible innovations/solutions and put them in and say, well, what would that be like if we had, for example, a healing center that worked with creating art therapy for people who feel like they've lost their ability to be creative? And it was an amazing, amazing time. It was clear to me we're going to create one of the most comprehensive and amazing databases, number one, of research and development and all of the different solutions. And it was clear to me we can do this process over 6 hours or over a day or over a weekend, over months, that we can make this an immersive experiential thing using XR and VR and domes and dancing and all the different things. So for me, it's— A watershed moment in my personal history of getting to a point where I can actually have a more widespread global impact with all of the experiences I've had. And I've had some pain and wounding around feeling a little bit impotent, you know, that I wasn't making a difference, that I have all of this to give and I couldn't find a way to give it. I'm almost an expert in psychosis. It sounds strange, you know. I called myself a natural PhD, you know, because of all this wisdom and experience I've had firsthand basis. I also went back to school when I was 30 for something called psychosocial rehabilitation. So I spent 2 years in academics and an internship also doing something called the Happiness Agenda. So I've really seen all sides. I've seen how the people who help people are suffering with poor conditions. I've seen how the people being supported have these poor conditions. So the Call to the Mothers is just getting started. If people are interested in partaking in one of these 2 and a half, 3-hour first processes to help us actually refine the process and have this experience. People are getting it, people want it. And hey, here's the bottom line. In the world of decentralization and sovereignty and being, you know, able to respond— I like this idea of responsibility is actually the response ability, or the ability to respond. We're all learning that it's the end of the days of relying on mommy and daddy institution, mommy and daddy government, and mommy and daddy of this, and outsourcing our hopes and dreams and outsourcing the care we need. It's time for all of us as coming into our own maturity and really being models for the younger people that we can, from the grassroots up, create The new mental health and addiction system, and it's going to look a heck of a lot different than what the world has seen so far. And it's going to be freely accessible. I can tell you that now. There will be no money or, or conditions that get in the way of people getting what they need. And my personal dream is to create what I call the Liberation Foundations, which is really a networked group of holistic regenerative, next-level community healing and creative, co-creative spaces. So rather than helping people get well and then sending them back into a world that's actually quite unhealthy with all the systems breakdown, I want to see people get well and then work together. So incubate, you know, their ideas together. There's so much creativity for people that are neurodiverse or that have these perceived mental illnesses. And I'm just super excited about seeing what happens when we all take the responsibility to change, to be the change we want to see in the world, as the famous saying goes. So that is one of my super passions. And Aria, thank you for inviting me to share today. Thank you.