Mentoring

Tomorrow marks the first of four days I will be leading a Peer to Peer class for NAMI. My awesome friend, Jamie, the cutie in the red shirt, and I will be teaching together again for the second time. Another friend will be teaching as well, and I think the three of us will work together wonderfully. Peer to Peer is an educational program taught through NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. It is led by three "mentors," peers who are living well with mental illness, and is a structured program intended to educate others with mental illnesses who may need help and assistance with learning about their diseases and how to live well daily in spite of them. The class will be Thursday and Friday from 5pm - 8pm, then again on Monday and Tuesday 5pm - 8pm. I've met a few people who will be attending the class, and I believe that they will all be excited and thankful that they participated. Taking the Peer to Peer class myself made such a huge difference in my life, and the main difference was HOPE. Meeting so many people who have suffered the same hell as I have, laughing and joking about issues I never knew other people experienced, turned me into a more confident person. I've always heard there is strength in numbers, and through NAMI I've found this to be undoubtedly true. NAMI has given me back the enthusiasm to contribute, the willingness to believe in my future, and assurance that Bipolar I Disorder was not successful in stealing my plans for living a full and healthy life. I've always said that serious mental illness is a thief that comes in like a ghost and snatches your dreams and plans and everything you love right out of your hands, and before you know it, your hands are empty and all you can do is stare at the nothing that they hold. But NAMI has given me the ability to wrestle some hope back away from that thief, and that is a powerful tool with which to start to rebuild my life. jody