Martha
Martha
Education and empathy are so important
I remember sitting with my father in his logging truck, driving around and listening to music. I remember when we went to Pearl S. Buck’s Shop and cleaned it out together. I was his pal.
Martha’s mental health journey is intertwined with her father’s. She was close with him as a little girl, but things changed as she got older. Her father began to drink more. Martha recalls trying to distract her father so he wouldn’t beat her mother. At just 12 years old, Martha convinced her mother to leave.
He was a good man—when he wasn’t having an episode. My mother, brother, and I left in the middle of the night. We had no money. We had to boil water from the river to take a bath. But I knew it was the right thing to do.
Martha grew older and went to college. She recalls being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), likely related to her difficult childhood, and feeling anxious when she heard people yell. She worked hard in therapy to navigate her traumatic response, anxiety, and depression. Periodically, she would hear updates about her father.
He was homeless for 20 years. He slept under the town hall steps, even during the cold New England winters. It was hard to hear this.
When Martha was in her late 30s, her brother reunited with their father and urged her to do the same. At this point, their father was in his 70s and so impaired by paranoia that he wouldn’t sign any papers to receive medical help. Martha and her brother signed for him and received his past medical records.
This changed everything. I saw how much my father was struggling while I was growing up. I read what he was going through. His mother died in a car accident when he was 5, and his father died by suicide when he was 17.
I had thought my dad was just a mean alcoholic, but he was struggling with mental health and trauma. I finally understood.
Martha found compassion for her father. When others suggested her father may prefer to stay sick, Martha didn’t listen. He did not have insurance, but Martha and her brother ensured he stayed in the hospital. They purchased him a small, one-bedroom home. Slowly, her father came back into her life.
I told him he needed to stay on his meds if he wanted to keep seeing us, and he did. It wasn’t perfect, but the violence was gone. He spent Christmas with me and my family, and they loved him. For the rest of his life, we had a loving relationship. I had my father back.
Even with the help of her brother, caring for her father was a challenge. Not all of Martha’s friends stuck around for this difficult time in her life, nor could they understand her efforts to repair her relationship with her father. Still, Martha is a passionate advocate for eliminating stigma around mental health. She encourages people to educate themselves on this topic.
People don’t always understand that it is not their choice. Many people fear schizophrenia, and I understand. When I see headlines of people struggling with this condition, I wonder if we could have helped them before they got to a point of violence.
Education and empathy are so important in this work. Because I educated myself, I found empathy and compassion, and I saw the illness from my father’s view. That has made all the difference.
