After Newtown

My Statement to the U.S House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce

On December 14, 2012, two days after I placed my 13-year old son in an acute care mental health hospital, the world changed.  The night of the Sandy Hook shootings, I wrote a blog post entitled, “Thinking the Unthinkable,” which included the shocking statement: “I am Adam Lanza’s mother.”

I’m not Adam Lanza’s mother. I’m Michael’s mother.  I love my son. But he—and I—and other parents and children like us—need help. Like many children with mental disorders, my son has been diagnosed with several conditions. Michael has taken a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals to try to control his rages. We have not yet found a combination of treatments and medications to manage his condition.

When I asked Michael what he wanted me to say to you, he said, “Tell them I’m not a bad kid. Tell them I want to be well.”

Michael is not a bad kid. Neither are the millions of other children who have diagnosed mental disorders in this country. And yet  we continue to manage mental illness through the criminal justice system. Too often, the only way loving parents can get access to much-needed services is by having their children charged with a crime.

My son Michael entered the juvenile justice system just one month after his eleventh birthday. While on probation, he received an array of social services including therapy and psychosocial rehabilitation, which taught him coping strategies. But once he completed probation, those services went away.

Before my blog went viral, I thought I was the only mother in America who was living in this kind of fear. But I learned I’m far from alone. 

Parents like me live in all kinds of fear. We live in fear of stigma—will my child be bullied for being different? Will my child be a bully? Will I be blamed for my child’s explosive behavior?

We live in fear of that unpredictable behavior—how will I know if my child is going to explode? What can I do to keep my other children and myself safe? What about his school and the community?

We live in fear of the future—what will happen when my child turns 18? Will my child harm himself or others? How will I pay for all the services I need to keep my child functioning?

Parents like me are struggling, physically, emotionally, and financially. And mental illness is still so hard to talk about, because the stigma—for parents and children—is real. But as long as parents continue to suffer in silence, the magnitude of this problem will only be recognized after tragedies like Newtown.  It’s time to talk about mental illness—and it’s time to act.

What do parents like me need from you? We need access to community-based resources. We need early and consistent behavioral intervention.  We need increased funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, as well as funding for school counselors and behavioral interventionists. We need increased research funding for effective treatments. And most of all, we need a national commitment to end the stigma that surrounds mental illness. As long as we keep treating mentally ill children—and adults—in prisons, it will be difficult for us to achieve true parity between physical and mental health.

Mental health is truly a bipartisan issue—a problem that keeps millions of American children and their families from enjoying “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” As a nation, we must explore creative and brave ways to provide a better life for children, families, and communities.

Link to the U.S House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee Forum: "After Newtown: A National Conversation on Violence and Severe Mental Illness."

Link to National Institute of Mental Health om Children's Mental Illness

Link to author, parent, and fellow panelist Pete Earley. 

The Anarchist Yoga Mom

How yoga keeps me sane and well

Almost one year ago today, a few weeks after losing a job I loved, I was standing in line at the grocery store when I got a call from my doctor. The results of a routine lab test were not good. I put down the milk, picked up a yoga mat, and headed to my first hot yoga class. Sixty days later, I emerged with a new body, and more importantly, a new mind.

Yoga saved me. The strength I found within myself on the mat, as I sweated and stretched and pushed myself past limits I thought I would never overcome, served me well in the coming months, as I faced challenges in my personal life that were also beyond what I thought I could handle.

That’s why I want to be a yoga teacher. When you find something that works, something that calms your mind, restores your spirit, energizes your body, you want to share that something with everyone you know. My surgery was successful. My job loss was temporary. The strength and poise and inner sense of peace I gained were far more valuable than what I lost.

Through the pain of loss, the universe gave me time to connect with myself. And yoga—which means union—was the instrument of that connection.

Today my son and I were featured in a Nova documentary on PBS with a truly awful title: “Mind of a Rampage Killer.” But the documentary itself, crafted by Miles O’Brien, told a compassionate and compelling story about families’ struggles with mental disorders. My son and I were honored and humbled to be a part of this critical conversation. We have learned firsthand the power of advocacy, of speaking out and sharing your story.

Mental health is an overwhelming problem for families everywhere. I think that yoga can be a part of managing this difficult illness.  The practice of yoga strengthens the body and mind. I want to share this path to strength and serenity with others, even as I continue to develop in my own practice.

One of my former yoga teachers used to say, “This is simple. It is not easy.” I have adopted this mantra as a guide for my own practice and my life. I have learned to accept myself, my limitations. I have learned to ask for help. I have learned to let go.

Today I introduced Gabriel Azoulay to our BikYasa class at Hollywood Market Yoga in Boise. Gabriel has practiced yoga for 20 years. His favorite pose is full camel because it opens the heart (my own favorite is camel because it gets rid of the excrement, if you know what I mean). Gabe developed Bikyasa because he wanted to share his practice with others. He is a knowledgeable, passionate instructor, and I am really looking forward to learning more over the next few days.

Yoga teacher training is the reason vacation days exist. The next few days (minus a few mandatory faculty meetings and appointments with my son’s healthcare providers) are all about me. That’s not selfish—it’s self-care. If your family is struggling, or if you are caregiver, take time for yourself. Consider coming to the mat, to Child’s Pose. 

Sometimes all we can control is our breath. And sometimes, the grace of that gift of breath is enough. 

From Anarchist to Advocate

Learning from the pros on Anderson Cooper’s “Guns under Fire”

It’s a standing joke among my friends: before my blog post about my mentally ill son went viral, I did not know who Anderson Cooper was.

Let me explain this grave lapse of cultural literacy. After September 11, 2001, I sat in front of our television in slack-jawed horror, watching the towers fall over and over, for weeks. Then one day, I looked away from the TV and saw my four year-old son building a tower out of blocks and crashing his toy airplane into it.

So I gave up television. I didn’t actually mean to give it up completely—I’ve always been an early adopter and figured we would have the content on demand by 2003. My timeline was a few years premature. And by the time technology caught up, I was no longer interested in TV.

Now I get all my news from Facebook. It’s the perfect mix of local (kids, pets, vacations) and national, and since my friends are so clever, I trust them to pick the New York Times and Wall Street Journal and HuffPost articles I should read.  In that respect, Facebook has been a real timesaver for me. Okay, I’m not kidding anyone here. Facebook is a complete waste of time. But since I’m not watching “Jersey Shore” or “American Idol” or “Downton Abbey,” I feel okay about it.

Still, it’s become apparent that my Facebook friends aren’t quite clever enough. Because if they were, they would have been as agog over Anderson Cooper as the blurred-face woman in the picture above (she looked like a four year old girl about to meet a Disney Princess).

Cooper is the real deal—whip smart, funny, compassionate, able to shovel through the bullhorn bullshit that passes as public discourse these days and emerge with a squeaky clean smile.

When Anderson Cooper 360 decided to do a town hall meeting on guns, the producer, Kerry Rubin, called and asked me to talk about my experiences as a parent of a mentally ill son.

I couldn’t say no. And it was one of the most amazing and humbling experiences of my life.

I got to meet Amardeep Kaleka, a gun owner whose father was killed in a rampage at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Sarah McKinley, who made headlines when she defended her home and her baby against intruders. Tio Hardiman, who works with Chicago’s youth to try to change potentially destructive behaviors and save lives. And Veronique Pozner, who lost her sweet young son in the tragic Sandy Hook shootings. 

Their stories all give nuance and complexity to a debate that too often looks like something drawn by toddlers with crude, bold crayons.

I also met Joshua Boston, the former Marine whose letter to Senator Diane Feinstein about her proposal to ban assault weapons also went viral. Josh is a passionate and articulate spokesperson for gun owners.

I shared a car on the way to the Town Hall with the inimitable Gayle Trotter, an activist, attorney, and mother of six who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about how guns actually make women safer. Gayle is as powerful an advocate for her Second Amendment rights as the Brady Campaign’s president Dan Gross (one of my oldest son’s heroes) is for gun control.

(In case you missed it, I’m not an anarchist—I’m a Libertarian. Not a big fan of laws, generally speaking. But also not a big fan of gun violence and school shootings.)

And I’m not a big fan of former NRA president Sandy Froman’s repeated use of the word “insane” on the program (at least she avoided “deranged” and “evil”). Every time she said it, I winced. Still, thanks to the First Amendment, Froman has every right to use that word, and while I wish she wouldn’t, I am not going to engage in ad hominem attacks (Dan Gross, on the other hand, was consistently respectful to people who suffer from mental disorders).

Highlights of the afternoon included meeting Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Jeffrey Toobin, and watching Kerry Rubin in action—she’s like a conductor who takes raw notes on a score and turns them into a full orchestral suite.

In my own moment on camera, I got one good line in—“Why can’t we use our resources to make people less dangerous?” I don’t really remember the rest of what I said, just that Anderson Cooper’s eyes are really that blue.

In the end, Cooper couldn’t solve the gun problem in one town hall meeting. But he gave a hint at how to solve it when asked which team he favored in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Cooper responded with a grin, “Beyoncé.”

Sometimes when we can’t agree on something important (Ravens or 49’ers, for example), we have to look for something we can agree on. I am grateful to Anderson Cooper and his entire team for an impartial and thoughtful contribution to a vital conversation about guns and mental health, and for including me in that conversation. 

It’s not easy to be an advocate, but sometimes our causes find us, even when we don’t expect them. I’m grateful for the opportunity to change a national conversation. Maybe it’s not about guns: maybe it’s about mental health.  

Find a Room to Welcome Him

It’s a miracle! My fourteenth annual Christmas carol is finished, and it’s not even midnight yet. I started this little tradition back in 1998, when I was directing a children’s choir and read about the composer Alfred S. Burt, whose lovely "Star Carol" was one of his annual Christmas compositions (in lieu of a card). I thought, “I want to try that!” So I wrote a simple carol for my choir about a stable, a manger, a star in the sky. My own children still love the song and sing it to me.

This year, I had planned to use Christina Rossetti’s lovely Thread of Life as my text—something about those telling lines, “Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof, so stand Thou too aloof,” seemed to match the mood of this dark season, haunted as we all are by theodicy, the enduring problem of evil in the world.

But I was struggling. The creative process is so mysterious to me. Sometimes music just pops out of my brain like Athena bursting from the head of Zeus. And sometimes I have to fight for every note, for every chord resolution. None of the chords in my Rosetti piece were going where I wanted them to.

Then on Christmas Eve morning, a dear friend posted these delightful words from Robert Herrick:

See him come, and know him ours
Who with his sunshine and his showers
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The Darling of the World is come,
And fit it is, we find a room to welcome him.

And there it was. THERE was this year’s Christmas carol. December to May. Winter’s chilling morn to verdant corn field. Showers to flowers. No, of course life is not that easy (believe me, I know!). But at Christmas, we celebrate peace. A baby. Family. I don’t want to sing the problem of evil in the world today. I want to sing the Darling of the World and find a room to welcome him (The amazing John Rutter has also set this text to music, so I am now in good company).

Critics will want to attack the curious transition from A major to G major in measure 6. I will freely admit that I was under the influence of sugar when I wrote that.  To make matters worse, I then got stuck in the relative F-sharp minor and “resolved” it all by sharping the tonic (A) to A-sharp in the last measure, ending in F-sharp major! I know, right? Like I said, sugar will do strange things to you. Or egg nog (oh, bite my tongue! Bite my tongue!).

A final note just in case someone happens to be actually reading this (apparently, my blog is not anonymous!). My ex is a good guy. He really loves his kids. So do I. It’s easy (and sometimes even a little bit fun) to judge people. But God or whatever mystery you sense in awe and apprehend wants us to love people instead. Try giving a little love this year, even to the people you don’t agree with.

Merry Christmas! 

A Joint Statement from Sarah and Liza

Many of you have seen Sarah's excellent blog in the past few days. I think she makes some important points about children's privacy. http://sarahkendzior.com/

We have been in contact, and I am truly impressed with her professionalism and her concern for children. We have written the following statement that we would like to share:

“We would like to release a public statement on the need for a respectful national conversation on mental health. Whatever our prior disagreements, we both believe that the stigma attached to mental illness needs to end. We need to provide affordable, quality mental health care for families. We need to provide support for families who have a relative who is struggling.

“We both agree that privacy for family members, especially children, is important. Neither of us anticipated the viral response to our posts. We love our children and hope you will respect their privacy.

“Our nation has suffered enough in the aftermath of Newtown. We are not interested in being part of a ‘mommy war’. We are interested in opening a serious conversation on what can be done for families in need. Let’s work together and make our country better.”

Thanks, all!

Thinking the Unthinkable

Michael holding a butterfly

In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

Three days before 20 year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, then opened fire on a classroom full of Connecticut kindergartners, my 13-year old son Michael (name changed) missed his bus because he was wearing the wrong color pants.

“I can wear these pants,” he said, his tone increasingly belligerent, the black-hole pupils of his eyes swallowing the blue irises.

“They are navy blue,” I told him. “Your school’s dress code says black or khaki pants only.”

“They told me I could wear these,” he insisted. “You’re a stupid bitch. I can wear whatever pants I want to. This is America. I have rights!”

“You can’t wear whatever pants you want to,” I said, my tone affable, reasonable. “And you definitely cannot call me a stupid bitch. You’re grounded from electronics for the rest of the day. Now get in the car, and I will take you to school.”

I live with a son who is mentally ill. I love my son. But he terrifies me.

A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.

That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.

We still don’t know what’s wrong with Michael. Autism spectrum, ADHD, Oppositional Defiant or Intermittent Explosive Disorder have all been tossed around at various meetings with probation officers and social workers and counselors and teachers and school administrators. He’s been on a slew of antipsychotic and mood altering pharmaceuticals, a Russian novel of behavioral plans. Nothing seems to work.

At the start of seventh grade, Michael was accepted to an accelerated program for highly gifted math and science students. His IQ is off the charts. When he’s in a good mood, he will gladly bend your ear on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to the differences between Einsteinian and Newtonian physics to Doctor Who. He’s in a good mood most of the time. But when he’s not, watch out. And it’s impossible to predict what will set him off.  

Several weeks into his new junior high school, Michael began exhibiting increasingly odd and threatening behaviors at school. We decided to transfer him to the district’s most restrictive behavioral program, a contained school environment where children who can’t function in normal classrooms can access their right to free public babysitting from 7:30-1:50 Monday through Friday until they turn 18.

The morning of the pants incident, Michael continued to argue with me on the drive. He would occasionally apologize and seem remorseful. Right before we turned into his school parking lot, he said, “Look, Mom, I’m really sorry. Can I have video games back today?”

“No way,” I told him. “You cannot act the way you acted this morning and think you can get your electronic privileges back that quickly.”

His face turned cold, and his eyes were full of calculated rage. “Then I’m going to kill myself,” he said. “I’m going to jump out of this car right now and kill myself.”

That was it. After the knife incident, I told him that if he ever said those words again, I would take him straight to the mental hospital, no ifs, ands, or buts. I did not respond, except to pull the car into the opposite lane, turning left instead of right.

“Where are you taking me?” he said, suddenly worried. “Where are we going?”

“You know where we are going,” I replied.

“No! You can’t do that to me! You’re sending me to hell! You’re sending me straight to hell!”

I pulled up in front of the hospital, frantically waiving for one of the clinicians who happened to be standing outside. “Call the police,” I said. “Hurry.”

Michael was in a full-blown fit by then, screaming and hitting. I hugged him close so he couldn’t escape from the car. He bit me several times and repeatedly jabbed his elbows into my rib cage. I’m still stronger than he is, but I won’t be for much longer.

The police came quickly and carried my son screaming and kicking into the bowels of the hospital. I started to shake, and tears filled my eyes as I filled out the paperwork—“Were there any difficulties with....at what age did your child....were there any problems with...has your child ever experienced...does your child have....”  

At least we have health insurance now. I recently accepted a position with a local college, giving up my freelance career because when you have a kid like this, you need benefits. You’ll do anything for benefits. No individual insurance plan will cover this kind of thing.

For days, my son insisted that I was lying—that I made the whole thing up so that I could get rid of him. The first day, when I called to check up on him, he said, “I hate you. And I’m going to get my revenge as soon as I get out of here.”

By day three, he was my calm, sweet boy again, all apologies and promises to get better. I’ve heard those promises for years. I don’t believe them anymore.

On the intake form, under the question, “What are your expectations for treatment?” I wrote, “I need help.”

And I do. This problem is too big for me to handle on my own. Sometimes there are no good options. So you just pray for grace and trust that in hindsight, it will all make sense.

I am sharing this story because I am Adam Lanza’s mother. I am Dylan Klebold’s and Eric Harris’s mother. I am James Holmes’s mother. I am Jared Loughner’s mother. I am Seung-Hui Cho’s mother. And these boys—and their mothers—need help. In the wake of another horrific national tragedy, it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness.

According to Mother Jones, since 1982, 61 mass murders involving firearms have occurred throughout the country. (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map). Of these, 43 of the killers were white males, and only one was a woman. Mother Jones focused on whether the killers obtained their guns legally (most did). But this highly visible sign of mental illness should lead us to consider how many people in the U.S. live in fear, like I do.

When I asked my son’s social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. “If he’s back in the system, they’ll create a paper trail,” he said. “That’s the only way you’re ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless you’ve got charges.”

I don’t believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michael’s sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesn’t deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to rise—in fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population. (http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled)

With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally ill—Rikers Island, the LA County Jail, and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nation’s largest treatment centers in 2011 (http://www.npr.org/2011/09/04/140167676/nations-jails-struggle-with-mentally-ill-prisoners)

 No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, “Something must be done.”

I agree that something must be done. It’s time for a meaningful, nation-wide conversation about mental health. That’s the only way our nation can ever truly heal.

God help me. God help Michael. God help us all. 

This story was first published online by the Blue Review. Read more on current events at www.thebluereview.org

Semper Fi

What It Means to Be the Daughter of a Marine

I am the oldest daughter of a United States Marine. Born in the Pink Doctor Building during the final years of a Cold War conflict we did not win, I learned to walk on Honolulu’s sandy beaches, waving to the improbable sky hippopotamus that hovered over the sea behind my base house, its tandem rotors thumping rhythms I felt in my bones, its lights flashing red and green, port and starboard, my father’s way of signaling his love to my mother and me as we collected blue glass balls that washed up on our beach. The glass balls, my father said, once floated fishing nets in far-away Japan.

My father, USMC Captain Theodore Thomas Long, Jr., piloted CH-46 Sea Knights during the final gasps of the Vietnam War. He earned his nickname, “Machine Gun,” when he asked his CO to transfer him from an assault squadron to a unit that flew medical rescue missions. Anybody who knew my father knows he could not have flown a gunship. He was not that kind of guy—he was the kind of guy who wept every time he read the ending of A Tale of Two Cities, who sang “When You Walk through a Storm” so clear and sweet it gave you goose bumps.  

My father’s Vietnam was not Ken Rodger’s Vietnam, not the “confused alarms of struggle and flight” described so vividly in Ken’s documentary of the siege of Khe Sahn, Bravo: Common Men, Uncommon Valor. You see, my father was an officer. He joined the ROTC in college, where he majored in Political Science. Dad started his thesis with the intention of defending the Vietnam War and the United States’ role in it. Upon researching the subject, he concluded that the war was indefensible. Then he graduated and went to fly helicopters in Vietnam anyway, because that’s what you do when you love your country: you support it, right or wrong.  And my Dad, the fatherless liberal Democrat Mormon boy from Utah, loved America.

Here is what it means to be the daughter of a United States Marine who served in Vietnam. Your first word is “jet” (“No, helicopter! Helicopter!” my Dad would say).  You belt out “From the halls of Montezuma” while the other kids are singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” You are never, ever allowed to say the word “Army.” When you forget to do your chores, your Dad yells, “Drop and give me 20,” and you do. On Sundays, the only movies you can watch are the following: Patton, The Great Escape, Victory at Sea, and Chariots of Fire. But mostly Patton. You and your siblings can reenact the entire film.

In sixth grade, on your Dad’s advice, you read The Iliad, holding your breath: “Sing, goddess, the wrath of Achilles.” Your teacher is disappointed with you because you write an epic poem in dactylic hexameter about a war between ants and wasps instead of a pretty lyric about butterflies.  In high school, you have your first crush on Lawrence of Arabia and begin to contemplate the oxymoronic problem of Heroism in the Modern Age. You learn what the word ambiguous means. You learn that things are not black and white. You learn to love America anyway.

In 1991, when you are home on break from college, driving with your Dad, who has just been diagnosed with acute myelogenous leukemia (a war he will not win), you find your way blocked by barricades, a parade with tanks and ticker tape to honor heroes of the Gulf War. Your Dad starts to cry. “They spit on me,” he says. “When I came home, they spit on me.”

I thought of all these things when I saw Bravo for the first time. Author and 1968 Khe Sahn siege survivor Ken Rodgers has been a longtime friend and mentor. I wrote my first novel (probably for myself) under his tutelage. There is nothing like learning the power of strong verbs from a man who experienced them like Ken did. Seeing Bravo made me understand some things I’d always wondered about my own father, about the war that shaped him, and by extension, me.

What I learned  from watching Bravo is this: you are never more alive than when you are facing death. In that moment, you are the Ubermensch, hyper-alive, hyper-aware. You can see bullets pass you by. You can contemplate their curves, their hard, deadly tips, the lovely crimson clouds that they create when they impact something not protected by a flak jacket. Watching Bravo, I learned that war is hell. But I also finally understood why we keep waging it. At some level, war is fun. And nothing else in life quite lives up to that powerful chemical cocktail your body slams when you face death (except maybe childbirth, but that’s another story).

Here is what it means to be the daughter of a United States Marine who served in Vietnam. When your father dies at age 50, they bury him near Hill Air Force Base, in the shadow of mountains, beneath the flight path. A bugler plays Taps. The guns salute. They hand your mom a folded flag. You don’t know whether the cancer that killed him was part of a cluster that afflicted Vietnam pilots, or whether it was because he was born in Reno, Nevada in 1944, or whether it was just one of those things.

You love America anyway. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Read more about Bravo at http://bravotheproject.com