Two in one weekend. A number of people (including my husband, give him credit for this) and including myself went to both. Mentally exhausting.
Both of these young people (16 year old Lukas and 22 year old Kathleen) died in mid August, directly or indirectly, from mental health issues along with self-medication with drugs and alcohol.
The program today was so long for middle aged people sitting at cafeteria tables. But everybody had their say and some very good speakers. I was on their team when they were at Changes and Kathleen was a puzzle. Mental illness came and went with abusive behavior towards her family. Yet she had some conventional achievement and awards. Always searching for the some way out but never finding it. Many times, her parents thought that Kathleen had found something that could settle her down. But she never did. She kept seeking and seeking spiraling down.
Her father read some of her writing she did for an art show. She described living in a city that continually lobbed grenades at her. It just never stopped. How could she cope? This somehow made sense to me, that she felt attacks from all sides even though things might look fine from the outside. A very experienced drug counselor said he told her once, don't always show up looking so good, it fools people. She died of a heroin overdose on the cusp of seeking treatment. She struggled against the addiction, but it claimed her at the end.
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