Hope, and the writings of Peggy Symons

My Personal Thoughts And Writings

I am including on this page a number of articles of my personal writings. There shall be more to come soon. Currently, I have added here, Hope Is A Worthy Walk, The Dying Bird, The Holiday Bridge, The Book Mark, Voices and Avolition and more.

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The Fog

I am sometimes
surprised at how often I see the toll and turmoil of mental illnesses in
people’s eyes and know they have come to rest as silent grief in the places of
the human heart that no one else sees or knows.

Several years ago I
had a vision of the unseen suffering caused by mental
illnesses.

I saw a deep shroud
like the fog that rolls over San Francisco Bay every afternoon around four
o’clock.

In the vision, the
fog was peeled back about half way.

I knew it was a
place of deep suffering and that lives of thousands of people with mental
illnesses were hidden under this canopy. What was so striking about the vision
was the utter silence of the people who were losing their lives under the weight
of serious mental illnesses.

Although I couldn’t
see their faces I knew who they were; they are our children, our mothers and
fathers, our spouses and our brothers and sisters. They are neighbors and
co-workers. They are people waiting on tables and people who fill the front
pages of the newspapers. They come from all walks of life, all of them
staggering under the weight of invisible suffering.

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The Gift of a Captive Mind

In Memory of My Friend, Sister Dorothy Dawes 1934-2015

I met Sister Dottie around 1974, when I was a student at a community college in Orlando.

She was a Catholic nun assigned to the school as a campus minister. She had a wide ecumenical faith. She never turned away from anyone or discounted them because they had other beliefs or none at all.

Sister Dottie found me as I was spiraling into a severe mental illness. She took me under her wings (yes, angel wings) and eventually invited me to live with her along with other college students at the Newman Center for Campus Ministry where she also taught a scripture class.

Sister Dottie stayed with me through the darkest years of my life when all I could see was despair. She told me over and over “choose life”. And then she said something that changed the course of my life. She said “you are gifted”. Sister Dottie believed in me when I couldn’t see any gifts buried in the depth of my suffering.

Through her unconditional love, I could see the Lord had never forsaken me even when I had no faith at all. He loved me so much He sent one of his finest servants to help me.

This was my friend. She held onto to me when I was losing my grip on the lifelines that tethered me to the last remnants of hope.

I wrote to Sister Dottie for years after she returned to New Orleans. She always wrote back. One day a package from New Orleans arrived at my front door. I was so surprised to find that Sister Dottie saved every card and letter I sent over the years.

In faith, she knew someday they would be a journal of a very difficult journey from the darkness of mental illness into the light of hope.

Sister Dottie understood the gospel of peace and she lived it. Her unfailing pursuit of justice for the “least of the brethren” had a profound impact on me. In time, her mission became the center of my life's work.

There is no way to measure the gift Sister Dottie was in my life. The best I can do is to take her precious Light and pass it on.

Peggy J. Symons

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The First International Bank of Love

The First International Bank of Love is the most secure bank on earth; no one can break into it because the doors are always open. Jesus opened all the accounts; they are free because he paid for them with his life. He built a bank that will never fail or default.

Daily banking earns unlimited interest. Overdrafts are always welcome; so are deposits. No withdrawals are ever denied and the bank doesn’t return anything for insufficient value.

Tellers are waiting to tell everyone who comes into the bank about currency that never runs out. In fact, runs on the bank only multiples the gifts inside the vaults.

There are no long wait lines or hidden charges; it is easy to transfer love from one account holder to another without penalties or cost.

The wealth of the nations is stored in this bank; the treasury is a wellspring that never runs dry.

The First International Bank of Love is waiting for anyone willing to withdraw its hope for the future and redemption of the past.

Bankers hours do not limit transactions, so come to the Bank of Love; it is never closed no matter what time you come to the door.

Peggy J. Symons © Copyright

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Capturing Sigmund Freud

On March 27, 2006, I saw the well-known face of Sigmund Freud, the so- called “Father of Psychiatry” on the cover of Newsweek magazine.

The words “Freud Is Not Dead” were marked across the middle of his picture. In that distressing moment, I wondered if this outdated image of psychiatry would ever die.

Sigmund Freud was frequently on my mind. In the decades that followed Freud people with serious mental illnesses were sometimes tossed off the famous psychoanalytic talking cure couch as “not wanting to get better.”

Ignorance of the biological nature of mental illnesses was the accusing muscle-man.

Before I saw Freud's face in Newsweek, I went to bed one night facing the wall. I was not asleep. I will never forget a loud, unexpected man’s voice hurling out of the night. It was so loud it hit me like a chunk of flying concrete. This is what it said:

“Freud's intrusion into the 21st century is blurring the line between true mental illnesses and the shadows and haunts of ordinary human unhappiness.”

There was no doubt in my mind that the voice did not come in a dream or some vague somnolent state; It wasn’t surreal or ghostly; it was loud, real and I was entirely awake.

It clobbered me with a clanging, commanding single sentence that became the cornerstone of a letter to the editors of Newsweek addressing the perception that mental illnesses were the product of dysfunctional families; old ideas perpetuated by the undying image of Sigmund Freud.

Yes, Freud was a genius and a pioneer; a brave soul willing to enter the marmalade of the mind and try to make sense of it.

Along the way, he legitimized the suffering caused by mental distress and moved it into the province of medicine.

Freud himself knew psychotic illnesses were probably biological but his “fatherly” face was hijacked and superimposed over mental illnesses as a template of early family dysfunction.

Years after Freud died his misapplied influence remains a blanket over the 21^st-century understanding that mental illnesses are powerful, biological and destructive diseases of the brain.

I didn’t know then or now whose voice hit me that night, but no matter; it set off a rippling percussion between the outdated afflictions of blame, shame and guilt and the fact that these illnesses are no-choice, no fault- diseases of the brain.

I didn’t know Newsweek was going to print the letter until I saw it in the April 10th edition about a week after I sent it to the editors.

Science and reason have firmly established the biological nature of mental illnesses but slippage into fault-finding remains.

Fingers of blame still point at people living with these illnesses as lazy, irresponsible or so reprehensible as to deserve their fate and at families staggering under the weight of unseen suffering.

The misunderstood influence of Freud is not minor or flippantly Freudian; it is an old statue guarding old ideas.

Completely capturing the outdated image of Freud is difficult; his patriarchal presence endures in a limbo of freely tossed shadows obscuring the biological realities of true mental illnesses.

Without a high-profile groundswell of change in the way we regard these illnesses every passing year just gives Freud another facelift.

Peggy J. Symons © Copyright

Capturing the Looney Room

The Looney Room came to me in bits and pieces; some were like shards of broken glass.

I took my mother to the emergency room of the local hospital. We were left alone so long when a nurse finally came in we said something about leaving.

He laughed and said everyone is free to leave unless they are in the Looney Room.

I knew the Looney Room. It was a small, secure room with a thick, unbreakable observation window located across from the main hub of the emergency room. Anyone held in the Looney Room probably had a mental illness and was in direct sight of doctors and nurses.

I thought of telling the nurse that I had been committed to a psychiatric facility from this hospital but I knew it would only be a tiny chip in a solid, high wall of stigma.

As my mother and I waited, I thought of thousands of Looney Rooms across the nation and that prejudice and ridicule still overshadow the veil of tears that brought people to the hope of hospital care.

So, I didn’t see the Looney Room from outside of its thick glass. I saw it from the inside and thought there was nothing I didn’t see.

The persistent mentality of the looney room is discouraging. It should have vanished along with the word lunatic decades ago. The Looney Room, so causally thought to be funny, was hiding the torment of mental illnesses as a cast of comical characters under a mountain of mocking prejudice.

Several weeks later when my mother and I returned to the emergency room. I overheard the staff dealing with a young man who arrived after swallowing enough pills to kill him.

Apparently, they gave him a form of charcoal the binds overdoses, moves through a person and then out. I heard staff laughing about the man “shitting out” the charcoal binding the overdose. How could they not see death and its lethal doses stalking him?

Why would anyone would keep jabbing these illnesses with laughter and ridicule?

Before we left I briefly entered the despair of the Looney Room and prayed it would be free of the ridicule that made its bed there. Too many lives have been chopped short by suicide or the unremitting severity of mental illnesses to laugh at the magnitude of suffering. I knew there was nowhere to put the Looney Room except its proper place.

So, I stopped at the thick window and looked into deeply into this place of great suffering; I saw an unexpected light. It was beautiful and far greater than the artificial light coming from the ceiling. It was the light of compassion.

In the depth of the vision I noticed the workers I hadn’t seen before, the quiet ones who never laughed. They were holding broken hands and crushed spirits with purity of heart.

I saw the hands of those who laughed reach out to those who were at the brink of despairs final moments. I saw healing rise and prejudice fall. I saw the resurrection of hope.

These were the hands holding the place where levity will not overtake compassion; laughter and derision will not close the doors into hope.

This was the turning of hearts that shattered the glass between hope and hopelessness and broke through the intensity of misperceptions labeled the Looney Room.

The Looney Room was no longer the Looney Room.

As I wrote this chapter of the Gift of a Captive Mind I saw the future when laughter will not run through the lives of those who are falling in the darkest, most desperate moments in their lives.

When someday becomes every day and there will not be any Looney Rooms in the nation.

Let us keep our eyes focused on the future when the word “lunatic”, used in reference to mental illnesses, will never blemish the face of another speaker or those who would take the barb at the end of the jester’s sword.

And into the days ahead as the light of compassion breaks through the misunderstandings that have held mental illnesses in contempt of the truth.

The future is so close; hope is the key to the Looney Room. All we have do is turn the key in the lock, let the light in and the heart of the nation will be moved.

Who would ever think that a light in a Looney Room could enlighten the eyes of a nation?

Capturing the Little Cat Feet

Little Cat Feet

One of the most treacherous traits of this illness is its slow roll. It is not like a sudden drop off the cliff. It rolls in on “little cat feet.” like the fog moving in on the words of poet Walt Whitman.

For several recent months, I kept hearing people call my name over and over; some were so loud I whipped around to see who was calling me. They met me in some shadowy days preceding this page. They were some form of hallucinations I suppose but they not appear like roaring lions or voices with teeth. They were soft but certain.

I kept seeing things out of the corner of my eyes momentary mistaking them for something else.

This summer tropical storm warnings were up over Florida with the additional possibility of tornados. One of my friends was out of state so I went over to pick up some things in her yard that could have become projectiles in high winds.

When I was in the back yard, I heard a woman calling my name. I looked up into the closed porch and saw her just outside the door but just for a few seconds.

She was a dark figure with no features. I could not discern her face or hands.

She was wrapped in some kind of darkness that cloaked her so closely she had no defining identity but I knew I didn’t know her. Although she disappeared quickly, she frightened me.

Then, when I went into the house I thought I saw my cat but this was not an outright visual hallucination either.

My friend keeps an off-white porcelain jug on the floor near the doorway between there kitchen and living room. The jug was the same beige color as my cat.

I caught the jug out of the corner of my eyes thinking “what is my cat doing here?” but after a tiny moment I realized it was the jug, not my cat.

They still haven’t gone away. Something small and dark ran past my feet early this morning.

I wish I could fully capture these things with my eyes or hold them at arm’s length to see who or what they really are but they move too quickly.

What re-opened the door to these living shadows? Years of sleep apnea? Aging? Or did they just figure out how to slip past my medicines?

Time will tell.

(Several months have passed. The fleeting phantoms that came in on little cat feet rolled back into the fog in which they came. The coast is clear.)

Eventually, research will permanently capture the pitter-patter of little cat feet. Hopefully, no one will ever stumble over them again.

Peggy J. Symons © Copyright

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Dust in the boxes

Dust in the Boxes

Dust in the Boxes was the most haunting image of mental illness I ever held in my hands.

The vision hasn’t dimmed or faded with the passing of time. It is as clear and present as the day I saw it.

I don’t remember where I saw the inside of an abandoned state mental institution; whether it was a documentary, a few pages of a narrative, a lecture, a dream or something half remembered. Somewhere in the mix a story rose that wasn’t there before.

And so I saw a giant state mental institution, one of many that were built in the early 1900’s. Completely banished from society, thousands of people lived out their lives and died in these massive monuments to despair.

In the 1950’s the early psychiatric medications came to market. Some people improved enough to return to their communities. The hospitals emptied even further in response to a 1960’s federal mandate to deinstitutionalize people with severe mental illnesses.

With most patients gone some of these institutions closed and then were abandoned entirely.

Time reached up and overtook the memory of the inmates. There was nothing left except cemeteries lying adjacent to these huge human warehouses.

Some filled to capacity over the decades, and with no other options, cremation was the final resting place of severe mental illnesses.

I came to the edge of this historical vision and opened the door into one of these crumbling institutions. I was struck by the silence, nothing was moving in these ruins not even the breath of life.

The light was dim and I walked into deep shadows. I looked around and saw a shelf with a half a dozen small, worn cardboard boxes lined up against a wall. The boxes were filled with ashes.

Unknown and unclaimed, they were the dust of people who lived and died as captives to these giant institutions and the hopeless hold of mental illnesses.

I picked up one of the boxes and turned it over and over in my hands.

There was no name inscribed on the cardboard. Anyone who entered these human warehouses was sentenced to obscurity.

But I knew who they were; they weren’t the remnants of ghosts, they were the mothers and fathers, the sons and daughters, the children and the brothers and sisters who were committed to these institutions and never came home.

I saw a small window in one of the walls of this concrete crypt. It was hazy and yellowed with age. It was raining outside of this forsaken place. It was always raining.

I put the box down and pressed my hand against the pane. Rain drops were hitting the window. They hit hard; the falling rain was hopelessness and its river of tears.

I put the silent box of ashes back on the shelf, it was filled with despair and heavy in my hands.

The door into the vision closed and I left. But my memory of the people who lived and died in the wracking anguish of untreatable mental illnesses will never pass away.

The only things that separate me from the dust in the cardboard boxes is time and modern medications.

Peggy J. Symons

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Empowerment

Empowerment: Is the knowledge that all of us have gifts and talents to bring to the table of life and that no one’s gift is in anyway diminished because it comes from the hands and hearts of someone living with a mental illness.

Empowerment: Is understanding that all of us have no fault- no choice disorders of the brain that require daily medications.

Empowerment: Is about respecting our limits and the setbacks all of us have; it is about having the courage to pick ourselves up and keep trying.

Empowerment: Comes from the well springs of courage; it is ours to give and ours to take.

Peggy J. Symons Deland, Florida

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HANDS HELD NEAR

The Light Brigade

Hope opens its hands in the Light Brigade.

So deft, so fleet, so far away,

Shadows stole my soul away,

Swept into a sea of night,

I saw no life, no love, no light.

Then I saw hands held near,

The dark began to clear,

One by one the shadows fell,

And took with them the dark, the hell.

Hope now lives within my soul,

Reflecting love the shadows stole,

The more I see, the more I’m free,

The more I’m free, the more I see.

I wrote this poem a while back. I shuffled it into some papers and then forgot about it. It was only a simple poem with uneven rhymes.

I found it recently and knew that it was never lost, only tucked away in time waiting for the fullness of a vision yet to come.

About three weeks ago I had a vision. I saw a long line of outstretched hands. Each set of hands belonged to a person who helped me along my way. They were the hands of hope- holders and they were always near, even though the darkest days of my life.

They were passing a light from one to another. It was a beautiful sphere of glowing white light about three times the size of their hands. The light was hope.

I noticed that even as the light was passing down this long line its purity never dimmed or changed and that everyone who passed this beautiful light to another was touched by it themselves.

I was so surprised to see the last set of hands in the line were my own.

The Cost of Gridlock

The ongoing gridlock over expanding Medicaid to 800,000 uninsured Floridians is an open opportunity to look back over the most striking damage done when the House of Representatives walked off the job in a high profile clash with the Senate over Florida uninsured.

Sudden adjournment left pioneering bills improving treatment for serious mental illnesses to die without action.

Thousands of Floridians struggling to survive these illnesses were casually dismissed as nothing more than collateral damage to the ideological war over Medicaid.

Startling statistics show that ninety percent of the individuals who die of suicide, including our children, had a mental illness. Incredibly, suicide is the third leading cause of death for children ages five through fourteen.

The special session on the future of Medicaid is an unnoticed permission slip for lawmakers to keep looking away the life and death nature of serious mental illnesses as if it doesn’t matter.

The Florida Legislature cannot move forward without looking back into the shattered hope of desperate families and the catastrophic toll of untreated mental illnesses.

Peggy Symons

Deland, Fl.

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The Fog

Several years ago I
had a vision of the unseen suffering caused by mental
illnesses.

I saw a deep shroud
like the fog that rolls over San Francisco Bay every afternoon around four
o’clock.

In the vision, the
fog was peeled back about half way.

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Introducing Major Sam Cochran

February 13, 2009

Annual Appreciation Breakfast Honoring Central Florida’s Crisis

Intervention Teams

Introduction to Major Sam Cochran

Major Sam Cochran worked with the National Alliance on Mental Illness to create the Memphis Model for Crisis Intervention Team Training (CIT) following the shooting of an unarmed man with a mental illness. CIT is a forty hour course designed to teach law enforcement officers how to recognize mental illness and de-escalate crisis situations. This training has gone out across the nation as the gold standard for law enforcement encounters with people who have mental illnesses.

Major Cochran was the keynote speaker.

Good Morning,

My name is Peggy Symons.

I am an individual living with a serious mental illness and an advocate with National Alliance on Mental Illness of Greater Orlando.

Thank you for the privilege of introducing Major Sam Cochran.

NAMI has been presenting the consumer and family perspective for eight years now, but

I had not met Major Cochran until last June when he came to the national NAMI convention in Orlando.

So I went looking for him. Where did I find him? Where else but in a Crisis Intervention Team workshop.

I waited until the seminar was over and the room was nearly empty.

I went up to Major Cochran and thanked him on behalf of thousands of people, who like me, struggle everyday to survive mental illnesses, many of whom he would never see.

I thanked him for his work and told him that he is bringing light to many shadows.

He spontaneously reached out and gave me a big hug.

I knew and he knew that he was embracing all of us who are walking through life with the brain disorders that cause mental illnesses.

He was embracing fairness and the hope and promise of a new day.

Years ago, the National Alliance on Mental Illness came to the table with Major Cochran with an impossible job; to prevent the arrest and jailing of people whose only crime was a no choice- no fault disorder of the chemistry of the brain.

He took it and he ran with it.

He picked up a torch for us and carried it around the world.

He passed it on to tens of thousands of other people.

One of NAMI’s greatest rewards is to go into a classroom of CIT officers and see the light of recognition and compassion flash across the faces in the room and, in that instant, know, they have become our torchbearers and keepers of the light.

Over the years of his leadership and service Major Cochran has reached into the shadows and margins of America to lift us up into the light of legitimacy.

Because of Major Cochran’s dedication to helping us, our humanity has never been reduced to notes in the margins of CIT handbooks.

Our lives and our safety is written into every page.

When I saw Major Cochran this morning I considered the fruits and impact of what he has done with his life.

I saw the same vision I see every time we go into CIT training.

I see a pond of crystal blue water.

I see each officer as a pebble dropped into the water with ever widening circles of influence.

The ripple effect of Major Cochran’s work has saved thousands of people from the consequences of severe mental illnesses and from guns that would otherwise have been drawn resulting in the loss of our lives.

Major Cochran’s message and his mission have remained steady and true.

The light he has carries is now the light of our shared vision,

Please join the National Alliance on Mental Illness of Greater Orlando as we welcome Major Sam Cochran.

Peggy J. Symons of Deland, Florida

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