Welcome to My Bumpy Ride.......

Before you all read on, I guess it is best to introduce myself to you and let you know a bit about myself. I am Susan, and first and foremost, I am a mother to a wonderful young man. Though he is grown, he will always be that three year old little boy, that asked all those questions and expected answers to them all. Though I will tell you much about myself in this blog there is no one or nothing that is as important to me as him, even if I don't discuss him much, because he kina likes to remain private.

For years I was actively trying to find myself, but that was a big waste of time, since by doing so I was not living. All my life I have always known that I was "different", but was unable to know why that was. I first thought that perhaps it was because I was adopted, but that was not the case. Turns out, I am bipolar and pretty much have been all my life. This was explained to me about nine years ago when I had a major melt down. I tend to be more on the depressive side, but have on occasion been quite manic. My last episode was early thru mid 2008, with full blown depression. For five months, I bearly left my house, let alone my bed. Why am I telling you this? I just want it out in the open and let you understand that I discuss my illness from time to time.

Present day, I am currently a full time student, studying social work. At the end of 2011 I was approached by a mentor of mine, who mentioned a new program that was going to launch here in Rhode Island. This new program called the Peer Wellness Coaching, was something that I had always wished would become a reality and to add even more excitement was the fact that this mentor was inviting me to train for a position as one of the Peer Wellness Coaches.

So currently (spring 2012) I am part of the three phases of training and should be employed by the fall of 2012. What is even more excellent about this program is that they are aware of my education goals and are willing to work with me on maintaining those goals.

Also you might hear me mention NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), because I am actively involved with them. I am a facilitator and state trainer for the NAMI Connection groups (peer run support group) here in Rhode Island, and I also help teach high school and college students about mental illness through NAMI RI's Inside Mental Illness program.

So with all that being said...I hope you read on to my daily activities and thoughts and such.



Sunday, October 6, 2013

Just Over a Year

I am not totally sure exactly why I stopped blogging really, but I decided this week that I would go back to it.  Seems that the best way to start back again is to let you all know what I have been up to this past year. 
My father passed away on October 16, 2012 and since then I have moved in with my brother in Dad’s house.  It was a good move and my brother and I have actually managed to find a way to make living together work.  My brother got a rescue dog named Duke soon after Dad’s passing and he already had an all black cat named Neddy. As any one of you all who have read my past blogs might know, I had two cats named Roo and Pooh.  I think the hardest part of moving in was getting the animals adjusted to one another.  Soon after moving in though, each animal got sick.  Roo got the sickest and I had to use a syringe to get food, medicine and fluid into him.  Thankfully all the animals made it through and even Roo seemed to gain most of his weight back.
Also I managed to find a part-time job for now on the weekends, with the initial belief that I would continue with school down here in New Jersey.  Well as it turns out I have to wait yet another semester to continue classes.  I am actually more on with that then I thought I would be.  My last two semesters that I attended classes I had to withdraw because of my parents being sick, and that really bothered me, but at least I was able to withdraw and not have those grades on my transcript.  Because I am not going to take classes, I am currently looking around for a job on the weekdays, so wish me luck on that.
About my job.  Honestly, I really can’t go into too much detail, so I am going to make it brief.  I work in a mental health crisis call center.  The good thing about this job is the fact that I get to use my training as a Peer Specialist.  It was because of the training I received in Rhode Island that I was able to obtain my new job.  In another blog soon I will get a bit more into some aspects of the job that are good and some that are hard to adjust to.
Ok maybe some of you are wondering about Denny.  Well let’s just say I had a decision to make and it was hard but I believe it was the best for both of us.  If you all remember I really love Denny, but his drinking has always been an issue.  It was not like we argued a lot when he was drunk, but it was really hard for me to see him damage himself all the time.  I tried to help him, but he was not receptive to anything I had to offer him.  The year that he was sober was nice and honestly I really thought he was going to make it, but he didn’t.  Moving was the option that I thought was best because I had a tendency to enable him.  I would do everything for him and by doing that I was quietly saying to him that his drinking was ok.  I covered for his mistakes while he was drinking and that was another way of saying everything was ok.  By moving three states down, I left him to deal with his own mistakes and let him really see the damage his drinking is doing to him.  I am letting him hit his rock bottom and I can only pray that he will find a way out when it happens.  I still talk to him on the phone and have visited twice since moving, but I make the calls and visits very limited.

Well that pretty much catches you all up.  The picture above was taken somewhere between Albany and Cooperstown, New York while I was visiting with my aunt.  Hope I didn’t lose too many of you because of my absence.  TTFN.
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