My intent with my memoir is to bring awareness to what millions of people and families struggle through, to lift the stigma and shame; to share from a deep soul level, with authenticity, and straight from the heart, the pain, the trauma, the lessons, the victories, and the hope. I wish to share the lessons I learned and the spiritual wisdom I gained to help others navigate this path. I wish to bring awareness to the dark side of some of our mental health systems from our experiences. Not to stay in the energy of blame and injustice, but to invoke change. If my story can reach one person, one parent, one family, and touch them at a deep level, if it helps one person to let go of their guilt or their shame; if it urges one person to reach out for help and is a catalyst for change, if it provides a glimmer of hope to anyone who is covered in the darkness of despair, then I have accomplished my purpose.
I do not share this to evoke sympathy. I share to evoke change. Change in whoever reads this. Change in a broken system. Not by focusing on all the negative aspects. But by planting a seed of awareness with the wish to invoke the desire to create something new. I do not share the way we have been mistreated or the injustices of some of these systems to play the victim, but instead to become an agent of change. To bring something beautiful out of the dark experiences. To transmute my pain into purpose. The dark into light.