My Sister Died 51 Years Ago When I was 14. Memories Fade, But The Loss Never Does.

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(6-14-17) My only sister, Alice, died on this date fifty-one years ago after being struck by an automobile. I was 14 years-old at the time and it was my first experience with death. Nineteen years later, I awoke one night calling out her name. I realized then that I had repressed most of my memories about Alice because her death was so painful that my parents rarely discussed it. My good friend, Walt Harrington, who was then an editor at the Washington Post, suggested that I return to Colorado and investigate my own sister’s death as a reporter. Here is the story that I wrote in 1986. I am posting it today in her memory.With the passage of time, the hurt and memories fade, but in your heart, you still feel the loss.)

Missing Alice: The Story of My Sister

By Pete Earley for The Washington Post

Pete Earley and His Sister AliceMidway across Ohio, the man beside me on the DC-10 asked where I was going.

“Fowler, Colorado. A little town of about a thousand people near Pueblo.”

“Why would anyone go to Foouuller?” he asked, grinning as he exaggerated the name.

“A death. My sister.”

“Sorry,” he mumbled and turned away.

I was relieved. I didn’t have to explain that my sister had been dead 19 years. Alice was killed when I was 14. She was two years older and we had been inseparable as children.

I couldn’t talk about her death at first. My voice would deepen, my eyes would fill with tears. My parents would cry at the mention of her name, and we rarely spoke of her. Then it seemed too late.

After I left home, my mother would phone me each February 13 and remind me that it was my sister’s birthday. Year after year, I would forget — and find myself angry with my mother’s insistent reminders. It was just before last Christmas, as I shuffled boxes in the basement, that I ran across Alice’s picture and clipping describing her death.

“A tragic accident Tuesday, June 14, about 7:05 p.m., took the life of Alice Lee Earley…” I sat down on the concrete floor, closed my eyes and tried to picture her. I couldn’t. I tried to focus more sharply. Alice eating Sugar Pops beside me at the breakfast table. Alice washing the green Ford Falcon. Alice stepping on my toes while singing in Church.

The events I recalled vividly. Alice’s face I recalled not at all.

I could only see the girl in the photograph — an image I had never liked, the face being without joy or expression. But in my mind I found no other. For the next week, I seemed to think of Alice constantly.

One night I awoke in bed, turned to my wife, and said, “Alice, are you there?” It took me an instant to realize what I had done.

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How One Friend Helped Gabe Howard: From Suicidal Thoughts To Paying It Forward

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(7-12-17) Sometimes I believe we underestimate the power of one person to change another person’s life. Gabe Howard was once depressed, untreated, and suicidal. He was spared that awful fate because of one person intervening in his life. One person made a difference!

Today, he tells his story in his writings, podcasts, and speeches. “Society often sees people living with mental illness at their worst,” Gabe says. “I want to balance that out by living openly with mental illness.”

I am swamped completing my new novel this week, so I asked Gabe to write a guest blog for me. He chose the topic of the importance of caregivers taking care of themselves.

But first, here’s more of his personal story.

 

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One Tent, Not Two: NAMI’s Future Role In Our Lives

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(6-5-17) The president of the board at the National Alliance on Mental Illness sent out an email last week about “small tent” and “big tent” thinking.

Members inside small tents were described as those who want to focus exclusively on serious mental illnesses, defined as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe and persistent depression (SMIs). Big tent members were described as wanting to expand NAMI beyond SMIs to include autism, ADHD, and eating disorders as listed on the NAMI website.

This argument has been painful for me because I care deeply about NAMI. Because I do, I reject the “small tent” and the “big tent” thinking.

There should be “one tent” with enough seats inside it for different points of view.

Being pragmatic, I realize strongly-held opinions can divide us. But I also believe NAMI can work through whatever dissension exists by accepting five  Cs — civility, compromise, consensus, communication and cause. While we may not agree on every issue, our joint “cause” must be working together to help individuals with mental illnesses.  There should be no “us” vs. “them.” There should be “we.”

What is NAMI?

To me, the soul of NAMI is not its board or its national staff. They are reflections of NAMI. To me, NAMI is its people.

I have had the privilege of visiting NAMI chapters in every state except Hawaii and Mississippi.

Every local chapter I have visited is concerned about severe mental illnesses, especially individuals who are homeless.

Every local chapter I have visited endorses Crisis Intervention Team training and wants to end the inappropriate arrest and incarceration of individuals with severe mental illnesses.

Every local chapter I have visited wants to end emergency room psychiatric boarding, wants more crisis care beds, and more meaningful community services for the sickest of the sick.

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NAMI Board President’s Email Sparks Controversy. Called ‘Unconscionable’ By “Focus on Serious Mental Illness” Candidate

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(-6-1-2017) The President of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Board of Directors sent an email yesterday to the organization’s state and local leaders about NAMI’s upcoming board elections that one candidate is calling “fairly unconscionable.”

Without mentioning any candidates by name,  President Steve Pitman (shown in NAMI photo) wrote that the selection of five new board members will determine NAMI’s future for the next three years:

At issue will be whether we continue to build broad coalitions that allow for discussions of subjects like serious mental illness (SMI), hopefulness, recovery, stigma, etc.  This is the “big tent” approach that embraces “all”  in the conversation.  In the alternative,  NAMI would narrow its focus to that of serious mental illness in a much “smaller tent.”

The issue is one of strategy.  How does NAMI best build support for the issues surrounding SMI?  If one looks at the history of NAMI, this movement to a big tent approach has been slow and steady.  Through the years, the duly-elected boards of NAMI, with many different members, have supported this broadened focus.  The question now before our affiliates and state organizations is whether this big tent approach has helped to make the needed changes affecting those living with SMI and their families?  Going forward, what is the more effective strategy: big tent or small tent? Steve-Pitman-2015-thumb

The email, which I have included in its entirety at the bottom of this post, was read by candidates, who are campaigning on a “Focus on Serious Mental Illness” platform, as an attempt to sway the election against them. Four candidates have said that NAMI needs to focus more on SMIs, which include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe and persistent depression, rather than expanding its reach into other diagnoses.

One of the candidates on the SMI platform, D. J. Jaffe, sent me an email complaining about Pitman’s action.

     The NAMI board president, in spite of an obligation to remain neutral sent an email to all affiliates and state organizations couching the election as being for or against the Focus in Serious Mental Illness ticket versus for or against say , stigma, which others are campaigning on.  This is fairly unconscionable.  This went out at same time ballots went out to affiliates and state orgs.  

In an email, I asked President Pitman if he wanted to explain his reason for sending his email. He said that he had nothing more to add to his originial email. It was  distributed nationally by NAMI’s headquarters and Pitman wrote it as board president, which would suggest that NAMI’s current 16 member board and NAMI’s executive director, Mary Giliberti, agreed with Pittman’s statement.

The four candidates running on a Focus on Serious Mental Illness platform are:

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Happy Memorial Day: Remembering Those Who Fought For Our Freedom To Be Different

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My sister-in-law, Dana Davis, was deaf but she never let her lack of hearing slow her down. When she was a teenager, the local swimming pool said she couldn’t be a lifeguard. My wife, Patti, who was two years older than her sister, and Dana demanded an audience with the pool’s board of directors and convinced its members to give Dana a shot.

She got the job and did great at it.

Dana and her husband, Donnie, had one child, Matthew. He was born with Absent Radius Syndrome and  foreshortened arms. When the radius bone is missing the thumb does not form and the wrist is not supported, therefore Matt’s hands are curved.  My son, Tony, who was little when Matt was born, said that God must have known what He was doing when He picked a family for Matt because Dana would know what it was like to be different. She didn’t lower her expectations when it came to Matt.

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Feuding Continues Over Trump’s Pick For Mental Health Czar, Reports New York Times

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(5-26-17) While it certainly is not unusual for a president’s nominee for a cabinet position to raise a ruckus, most assistant secretary choices sail through.

It appears that will not be the case with President Donald Trump’s nomination for the newly created job of mental health czar. Rep. Tim Murphy (R-Pa.) continues to express his displeasure  with the White House’s choice and has not been shy about saying so.

The bickering caught the attention of The New York Times this week.

Trump’s Pick for Mental Health ‘Czar’ Highlights Rift  -The New York Times

By BENEDICT CAREY and SHERI FINK

Caption: Elinore McCance-Katz has been tapped by President Trump to fill the position of assistant secretary for mental health and substance use. The “czar” position was created to overhaul the mental health care system and bridge more than 100 related federal agencies. Steven Senne/Associated Press

For decades, therapists, patient advocates and countless families have worked to elevate mental health care in the political conversation. Their cause recently received a big boost when a new law created a federal mental health “czar” to help overhaul the system and bridge more than 100 federal agencies concerned with mental health.

But the White House’s choice for the first person to fill that position has already been divisive, exposing longstanding rifts within the field that may be difficult to mend.

President Trump has announced his intention to nominate Elinore F. McCance-Katz for the new position, assistant secretary for mental health and substance use. Dr. McCance-Katz is a psychiatrist whose long career has been focused on treating drug addiction, in particular opioid abuse. She has the support of several prominent groups, including the American Psychiatric Association and the National Alliance on Mental Illness, but others, including the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care, are skeptical.

A central tension in the debate is between the medical model of psychiatry, which emphasizes drug and hospital treatment and which Dr. McCance-Katz has promoted, and the so-called psychosocial, which puts more emphasis on community care and support from family and peers.

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