MHA thanks the 20th Century Club, Kiwanis, & Licking Memorial Hospital

Thousands of Licking County families have benefited from the generosity of the women of the 20^th Century Club. Since 1977 these women have provided the money to send newsletters to new parents with the goal of helping families raise mentally healthy children. The women’s service club also provides volunteers to mail the letters to new parents for the first 5 years of the child’s life. That is 34 years of supporting Mental Health America of Licking County in the agency’s ongoing efforts to promote good mental health and wellness.

A few years ago, Newark Kiwanis Club also supported this effort by providing some additional funding to help pay for rising costs of mailing the newsletters. Licking Memorial Hospital is to be commended for gathering the names of the new borns and distributing the first issue of ParenTalk in the hospital.

In 1977, the newsletter was called Pierre the Pelican but it became outdated and ParenTalk replaced Pierre. ParenTalk is written by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Mental Health America of Franklin County. All first-time Licking County families are eligible to receive the 20 issues by letting us know the date of birth plus name and address of the parent/guardian. Our phone number is 740-522-1341 or email us at mhalc@alink.com.  The age appropriate letters are sent out monthly. We do ask you to let us know if you move, so you will not miss an issue.

ParenTalk deals with everything from post-partum blues to differences in children, to discipline and safety, bottle and breast feeding, tantrums and brain development, eating and sleeping habits, doctor checkups and difficult behaviors, self-esteem and getting along with others, early intervention and sharing, stress and family fun, communication and “telling stories”, learning and creativity, dealing with emotions and expressing anger plus a reminder that parents are a child’s first and most important teacher. Each issue is full of information, advice and resources for additional help.

Another big thank you to the 20^th Century Club for inserting into ParenTalk the Licking County Reading Foundation flyers that say Read for 20, a reminder to parents to read aloud to your child 20 minutes every day. Reading aloud to your child is the most important thing you can do from the day your child is born to prepare your child for success in school.

Mental Health America of Licking County is blessed by our Board of Trustees, donors, volunteers, clubs and organizations, a great staff of dedicated individuals and with funding provided by United Way and the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board.

--Paddy Kutz

Executive Director

The Ghosts That Haunt Me

I used to have a tabletop pre-transistor AM radio that would emit this warm orange glow through its back grill. It wasn't a very bright light, but you could make out the shapes of objects a few feet away. It was like sitting next to the embers of a dying fire.

The radio had a large yellowish tuning knob and I would run that from one end of the scale to the other listening for someone to tell me a story after my mother had left the room and turned out the lights.

There were the local stations like CFCF, CJAD, and CFOX, but on a clear winter night I could also pick up stations in Boston, Chicago and New York City. These stations would come in only after the dial had been manipulated with the delicate touch of a safecracker and even then the signal would be riding a wave of static that would routinely rise up and drown it out completely.

Between the peaks of static, I would hear about traffic on the Dan Ryan, nor'easters threatening the Cape Cod, Boston and the Maine coast. It was while listening to this radio that I was introduced to "traffic and weather together on the eights" and to "The Shadow."

On various nights at different spots around the dial, I would find rebroadcasts of old radio shows. These programs would mix sitcoms like Fibber McGee & Molly with shows like The Whistler and Inner Sanctum. These programs were once mainstays of the airwaves long before call-in shows and before computers replaced disc jockeys.

The Shadow was ideally suited to radio because only at home, in the dark, could you accept the idea that one man could convince another that he was invisible. In real life, if you saw someone talking to an invisible crime fighter then you would contact organizations like ours.

Whereas radio sitcoms tended to thrive when translated to television and the movies, the spook shows were much less successful. The camera could never show anything as vivid as the images conjured by the imagination. It's the same reason that the best ghost stories are the ones we hear around the campfire, or from our friends. We remember these stories long after the punch lines of a great joke, the phone number of that cute girl, or where we left our car keys. Our brains file them some place different, some place more primal.

***

It will come as no surprise then that my favorite Christmas story is a ghost story.

"A Christmas Carol" tells the story of a man haunted by memory, by perspective and by possibility. Though often read to children, the story of Scrooge is the story of adults and their changing perspective on the holiday.

Children don't need ghost stories to know what Christmas is all about. They learn very quickly that it's all about them.

This is such a powerful idea that the traditions of the season become like critical ingredients in a recipe that we try to follow throughout our lives in order to recreate the perfect Christmas. What we learn as we grow older is that, like in cooking, some ingredients are not always available and substitutions are inevitable.

When we were children, those ingredients seemed to be in abundant supply. With few exceptions, the tree and its decorations, the meal and its menu, the guests and their jokes didn't vary all that much from one year to the next. And that was pretty comforting. No matter what happened throughout the year, Christmas was a red and green colored constant.

After I left home, the reassuring consistency of a family Christmas became even more important, but instead of having the whole month to marinate in it I only ever seemed to have a few days.

Compressing Christmas into smaller and smaller windows seemed to make it all the more important to get home and reconnect and regenerate. The traditions that evolved over time became desperate stations that had to be checked off in the hopes that some of the old self-affirming magic would return.

It was no wonder that the holidays were exhausting and came to be anticipated with a certain amount of dread.

And then there came the years when I couldn't be home for Christmas and even that couldn't be experienced without mixed emotions: I was both disappointed and relieved.

Dickens' story does a pitch-perfect job of capturing the contrasts and the mixed emotions that Christmas evokes in me. Christmas Past haunts me, Christmas Present is unsettling and Christmas Yet to Come is always challenging me to change my ways.

As I think about Christmas today, I find myself in a kind of a neutral zone trying to figure out what is left after all of the trimmings have been packed away.

There are no default answers. I do believe that it is important to work for peace on earth and goodwill to all. I like finding the perfect present and bringing a smile to the faces of the people I care about. (In the absence of a self-affirming answer, I will settle for affirming others.) I take comfort in making time to watch "White Christmas" and "Scrooge" (the 1951 version with Alastair Sim). But, unlike Scrooge, I don't think I have yet woken up from my dream. I think I am still working on the meaning of the season.

***

When I was growing up, one of the holiday staples was the annual Christmas show of local broadcaster Paul Reid.

Each year, he would devote one night of his show to stories of his childhood growing up in Peterborough, Ontario, as one of sixteen children, interspersed with holiday readings and Christmas music.

Reid had a magnificent voice for radio. It was warm, mellow, deep and tinged with a bit of sadness. He would guide his audience through the evening on a snowy Montreal night and make us think we were seated in front of a crackling fire listening to familiar tales.

Reid's fondness for the depression-era Christmases of his childhood was as undeniable as it was removed from his position as a big city radio host. It was almost as though he was telling these stories as a way of keeping them alive for himself.

I used to look forward to this show each year because it was something to look forward to. It was a fixture and a benchmark of the approaching holiday, like opening the doors on an advent calendar. I have been thinking about it recently because I recognize and connect to Reid's need to present it as a way of sustaining himself.

In the end, maybe that's all there is. Perhaps it is in the act of creating joy and obtaining some measure of satisfaction that we are really learning from the ghosts that haunt us.

Happy holidays.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Thinking About those who are Struggling, Especially Children!

For 29 years, I have been writing about holiday stress and offered strategies on coping. There now are many sources of learning how to deal with life, some in the newspaper, some on the radio, some on television, and tons on the internet. Be sure to check out our website at www.mhalc.org to Live Your Life Well using our 10 tools which will help you to cope better. Let me offer my advice and referrals if you need it by calling me at 740-522-1341 or send me an email at Paddykutz@alink.com

All year long, not just during the holidays, it is appropriate to stretch beyond your own problems and issues and think of those less fortunate, especially children and youth. One way is to consider the poem by Ina J. Hughs who is often quoted, but not given credit. As you give thanks remember to:

Give thanks for children who

sneak popsicles before supper,

erase holes in math workbooks,

never find their shoes.

And offer love and hope to those who

stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,

can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,

are born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,

never go to the circus,

live in an X-rated world.

Give thanks for children who

  bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,

  hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And offer love and hope to those who

never get dessert,

have no safe blanket to drag behind them,

watch their parents watch them die,

can’t find any bread to steal,

don’t have any rooms to clean up,

whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser.

Give thanks for children who

spend all their allowance before Tuesday,

throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food,

like ghost stories,

shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub,

get visits from the tooth fairy,

don’t like to get kissed in front of the carpool,

squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,

whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And offer love and hope to those who

will eat anything,

have never seen a dentist,

aren’t spoiled by anybody,

go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,

live and move, but have no being,

whose nightmares come in the daytime.

Give thanks for and love and hope to children who

want to be carried and for those who must,

we never give up on and for those who don’t get a second chance,

we smother….and for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer!

We are grateful for our volunteers, consumers, Board members and donors to help us keep on helping for 57 more years in Licking County. I also appreciate the author, Ina Hughs. Remember, there is no health without mental health so look after yours and when you need help let me know. I’ll be waiting for your calls and your checks. Thank you.

Mental Health America of Licking County is partially funded by United Way and the Community Mental Health & Recovery Board of Licking/Knox Co.

--by Paddy Kutz
Executive Director

Today, Father, is Father's Day

I know what the calendar says, but for me today is Father's Day.

For more than 2 decades, mid-November can be counted on for two things:  cold, biting rain and a flood of memories about the complicated man who was my father.  Like the bracing sting of a cold rain that makes you put your head down and your collar up, memories of my father give me chills and remind me that I should have been better prepared.

Now before anyone jumps ahead and makes any assumptions, I use the word chills because his quick death from cancer abruptly punctuated our relationship and left me with lots of unresolved questions and feelings.  I can't think of him without wondering how he would think about what's happened to me, my brother and sister and the world in general.  I keep thinking that he and my wife's father would have liked one another and wish I could be certain.  I want to ask his advice about all manner of things and I can't,  I would like to take one more trip with him.

My father was a funny man.  He liked to laugh.  He liked to make people laugh.  And yet my clearest memories were of a quiet man who seemed to be happiest in his workshop or in the woods with his chainsaw.

He had an astonishing social network in the days when that was measured by handshakes and first names and not numbers on a monitor.  Whatever the issue, it seemed that he always knew who to call and if he didn't, he would find out.

One of the traits my father had in spades was that he was genuinely interested in people.

When I was in high school, my dad took me to England.  After spending a few days in London, he rented a car and we drove south toward Brighton.  We stopped for lunch at a place called the Ship Inn.  I will never forget my father's advice upon entering this pub.  He said you should always sit at the bar because then you'll really find out what's going on.

On this occasion, he broke that rule--I think it may have had something to do with me being under age--and we sat at a table next to the window.  As we were eating our lunch, my father became distracted.  There was something going on at the bar.  As it would turn out, the previous Saturday, the pub had run out of lager and had had to borrow a keg from a pub down the street.  We had arrived on their regular delivery day and now they were trying to figure out how to get the replacement keg delivered to the other establishment.

My father left me at the table to finish my sandwich and fizzy lemon and he went to the bar.  In no time at all he had volunteered to wedge the keg into the back of our car and deliver it himself.

And like that, he had transformed himself from a tourist to a local.  Suddenly he was a celebrated customer and surely he would have another glass to celebrate his new celebrity.

After the toasting, came the packing, or rather the repacking of the car.  Suitcases had to be moved into the back seat so that the keg could be loaded into the trunk.  A guide was assigned to ride with us to the other pub and see that the keg was safely delivered.

At the new pub--I don't remember the name, but I do recall it had something to do with birds--my father was again a celebrity:  the great problem solver from Canada who had volunteered to deliver the beer.  Such a noble act had to be toasted and so we spent another hour at another pub.

The barman took us on a tour and we were shown the owl that was the pub's mascot.  It lived in a cage in the courtyard behind the building.  I don't know much about owls, but to my eye it seemed like a pretty big bird.

While we were sitting there, celebrating the completion of our mission, my father's ears again perked up.  A group of French schoolgirls had come into the bar and were engaged in an animated conversation.  Always ready to be helpful, my father, in his absolutely fearless French, volunteered that there was an owl in the back of the bar.

Perhaps it was a question of cultural competency, perhaps it was because he had had one too many celebratory toasts, but whatever the reason, the schoolgirls were not at all interested in what my father was trying to tell them.  There was a brief pause and then they went back to talking amongst themselves as though nothing had happened.

Like that story, there were episodes in my father's life where he experienced tremendous success and others where communication was a barrier to understanding.  But also like that story, which he told for a long time after we got home, the takeaway is the story.  Dad loved to tell stories.  He liked best the ones in which he was the hero, but so long as it was funny, that didn't always matter.

That's what I have are stories, many of which I was present for and some where I was not, but that have been elevated in the retelling to the level of myth.  They are a comfort and a guide, like the fractured fairy tales from the Rocky & Bullwinkle Show:  they have a lesson, but perhaps not always a helpful one.

And then there is the story that began in the summer of 1989 when he learned he was sick and ended on November 16th at a pay phone in Toronto's Pearson Airport when I learned I had waited too long to make the trip home.

My father was not always an easy man to love, but, as I grow older, neither am I.

I miss him and have felt his loss more keenly as the years have passed.

Happy Fathers Day

Graham Campbell
--Associate Director

Self Care- An area so many of us neglect

So many of us in the mental health field, whether it be prevention, education, advocacy, or treatment, spend so much time taking care of others that we forget about ourselves. We may rationalize that it would be selfish not to attend that meeting even though we haven’t gotten nearly enough sleep all week, or we may label ourselves lazy if we try to put a little more balance in our schedule instead of stretching it to the max. But these are just the kind of things we need in our lives, especially working in the field of helping others.

We need balance, sleep, and a plan for not burning ourselves out. If we continually put ourselves last (because we think we’re invincible? I’m not sure…) there will be higher likelihood of us acquiring burnout.

Some symptoms of burnout include:

• Every day is a bad day.
• Caring about your work or home life seems like a total waste of energy.
• You’re exhausted all the time.
• The majority of your day is spent on tasks you find either mind-numbingly dull or overwhelming.
• You feel like nothing you do makes a difference or is appreciated.

The negative effects of burnout spill over into every area of life – including your home and social life. Burnout can also cause long-term changes to your body that make you vulnerable to illnesses like colds and flu. Because of its many consequences, it’s important to deal with burnout right away.

(Symptoms from http://www.helpguide.org/mental/burnout_signs_symptoms.htm).

It’s important to remember that you can have these feelings not necessarily because what you are doing IS mind-numbing or a waste, but because you have neglected yourself to the point that this is just how everything FEELS.

Some ideas for self-care:

1. Learn to air your feelings.  Don't keep them bottled up inside you. Share your sorrows and disappointments with someone you trust. Remember, expressed feelings are changed feelings.
2. Avoid comparing yourself with others by admiring their gifts and ignoring your gifts.  This kind of envy causes self-disgust. Put no one's head higher than your own.
3. Form a small group of people you can call on for emotional support.  Agree to "be there" for each other. Offer advice only when it is asked for. Listen without interrupting. Take turns talking and listening.  
4. Take time to play.  Remember that play is any activity that you do just because it feels good. Remind yourself that you deserve to take time to play.
5. Don't forget to laugh, especially at yourself.  Look for the humor in things around you. Let your hair down more often. Do something silly and totally unexpected from time to time.
6. Learn to relax.  You can find books, tapes, programs, classes, instructors and other materials to teach you how to relax. Relaxation improves the mind, helps the body heal, and feels so much better than stress and tension.
7. Protect your right to be human.  Don't let others put you on a pedestal. When people put you on a pedestal, they expect you to be perfect and feel angry when you let them down.
8. Learn to say no.  As you become comfortable saying no to the unreasonable expectations, requests or demands of others you will discover that you have more compassion. When you do say yes to others, you will feel better about yourself and the people you're responding to.
9. Change jobs if you are miserable at work.  First, try to figure out if the job is wrong for you or if certain people are causing you to feel miserable at work. Try paying more attention to the things you enjoy about your job and less attention to the things that annoy you. Remember that all jobs have some unpleasant aspects.
10. Stretch your muscles.  Break a sweat. Go for a walk. Ride a bike. Park farther from the door. Take the stairs. You don't need fancy clothes, club memberships or expensive equipment to add exercise to your daily life.
11. Practice being a positive, encouraging person.  Each time you give others a word of encouragement you not only feel better, but you build up your best self.
12. Pay attention to your spiritual life.  Slow down. Practice sitting quietly. Listen to your inner voice. Spend time thinking about the things which bring peace, beauty and serenity to your life. Find the courage to follow your own spiritual path if a traditional religion has not been helpful for you.

(12 suggestions from http://www.selfhelpmagazine.com/article/take_care)

In addition to all of this, I would suggest looking up books on secondary trauma or how to prevent burnout. Please take time to think about yourself, even if just a little.

We are all in this field because we have a passion for helping others, and that is a good thing. But we must always help ourselves first, because if we don’t, we one day may not be able to help anyone else.

--Anna Hagley
PAVE Assistant Coordinator

Get Enough Sleep

The next tool in the Live Your Life Well Toolkit, Get Enough Sleep, is timely as we hav just set our clocks back an hour and returned to Standard Time.
As the changeover date approached, radio and television were full of reminders and the promise that we could all enjoy an extra hour of sleep.

An extra hour of sleep: more than sufficient compensation for having to change all of the clocks in your house (and the batteries in your smoke detectors).

It is a compelling offer, no doubt.

I have spent most of my adult life in search of just a few more minutes of sleep.  Every morning, as my world comes back into focus, I try to calculate what trade-offs I have to make for just a little longer in my nice warm bed.

I go through all of the stages of grief at the start of every day before my feet ever hit the floor. 

Denial is immediate when the alarm goes off.  I don't care who you are, as soon as you turn off that noise, the first thing you do is get visual confirmation that the clock went off at the time you set.  Even though it went off at six-thirty every day this week, I will swear on a stack of TV Guides that I just turned out the light and it just can't be any later than one a.m..  Of course, the last thing I remember before going to sleep was the funny way that the cat was looking at me. 

Could happen.  I mean he's home all day with nothing better to do.  He could have figured it out by now.

But no, a blurry-eyed visual confirms that it is six-thirty:  time to get up.

The bed is warm, the room is still dark and the house cold.  Surely another few minutes won't matter.

And then the alarm goes off again and I realize that, instead of permanently silencing this morning terrorist, I merely wounded it by stabbing its snooze bar.

(I just want to say for the record that there is nothing satisfying about a five minute snooze.)

Maybe it's just me, but alarms sound angrier the second time around.  It's like when in the role of Jack Bauer, Keifer Sutherland is able to convey a measure of resentment toward the people who attack him and who he is then forced to kill.  "Look what you made me do.  I didn't want to wake you up, but you made me."

It does not bode well for the rest of the day when you start off being threatened by an inanimate object.

There is no bargaining with the clock, it must be silenced by any means necessary.  (For those who think I might be overstating this conflict, I draw your attention to the Runaway Alarm Clock that is designed to sit on the floor and then when it goes off, it also takes off.  It has wheels and can run under the bed, or even out of the room to simultaneously incur and avoid your wrath.)

The next stage is bargaining.  I'm awake, but still reluctant to get out of bed.  My mind begins trying to remember my schedule, how much time it takes to get to work.  Next, I reflect on issues relating to personal hygiene.  I had a shower yesterday, right?  Can I get through all I have to do today with an extra coat of deodorant and a hat?  My spouse describes her bargaining process as figuring out what she's going to wear and sometimes this process can take a long time.

There is an audible cue when you enter the depression stage.  It could be a sigh, or a grunt, or a favorite epithet:  whatever the noise, it is a sign of surrender.  The battle of another night's rest has been lost.  Once this point is reached it is not a question of if you are going to get up, but when.

The next and final stage--acceptance--comes pretty quickly.  Another day will not be denied and so I pull myself to my feet and shuffle off to the bathroom.

But the mind deprived of sleep is like a daytrader on crank:  it begins to plan on how quickly it can get back to bed and what compromises will need ot be made to make that happen.  Do I really need that class to graduate?  Will they miss me if I don't go to that meeting?  I worked over last week, I should be able to take off early today.

So I lurch through my day trying to get everything done so that I can get back to bed, but when I finally do get to go home and can go to bed, I don't.  I instead engage in a thousand different time wasters so that when I do go to bed I am so exhausted that I have these hallucinations about my cat.

We delude ourselves that sleep is something we can catch up on.  Seven to eight hours per night is an average, isn't it?  If I get three hours tonight and thirteen on Sunday then it will all balance out, right?  We approach sleep like we approach planning for retirement:  I will gladly sleep tomorrow for life lived today.

The sad truth of growing up is that while it seems like the days all run together, they are in fact closed sets.  If you don't get enough sleep today then there is no making that up:  sleep deferred is sleep lost and you know how cranky you can get.

Research documents the correlation between sleep and mood, something our mothers tried to teach us from the very beginning.  Granted, nap time for toddlers is just as important, if not more so, for their sleep-deprived parents, but it always seemed like such an artificial interruption in the day.

Like so many lessons that parents try to pass along it, at the time, had no context.  It was not until we have our own experience of sleep deprivation that we recognize the value of nappy time.

Other cultures have a much more practical relationship to sleep.  Like my dog who insists on being outside just in case he might miss someone who had not had the opportunity to tell how beautiful he is, North Americans think we have to be awake all the time.  We drug ourselves into being alert and then we drug ourselves to get some sleep.  There are many countries that stop in the middle of the day for a national time out.  It's the warmest part of the day, the world and its troubles will still be there in a couple of hours and, with a nap, we'll be better able to deal with them.  Like the song says "only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun."

We teach ourselves that sleep is a luxury that we can't afford, that there is too much to do and not enough time.  But, for a cultue, that prides itself on its capacity to innovate, our day and night sleep deprived society has deprived itself of an important fuel source to drive that capacity:  dreams.

I was recently forced to take some time off to recover from surgery and though I railed against the house arrest and the inactivity, I was struck by the fact that I was having vivid, cinematic dreams. On one occaision, the dream was so vivid that it woke me up and I cannot recall the last time that happened.

Provided the luxury of being able to ignore the alarm clock and forced to pull back from the stress of work, my mind was freed to take me places in my dreams that I had never been.  (That so many of those places and situations seeemed to result in my being chased by one malefactor or another is perhaps a subject for another time.)

My personal psychology to one side, the act of dreaming enables the dreamer's subconscious to make connections and create images that can inform their waking life.  Logic and due diligence will take you a long way, but sometimes to complete a journey you need a touch of the poet.

I'm back at work now and my dreams have been replaced by long days and short nights.  I have returned to a routine that allows me to process the task in front of me, but blinds me to a broader vision.  I get up because I have to and then stay up until I can't.  The net effect of this self-perpetuating cycle is a sense of numbness.  It's hard to feel much of anything except the depressed acceptance at the start of another day and the ache of exhaustion when it's over.

But, on the bright side, as least I get an extra hour of sleep once a year...unless of course the cat has other plans.

--Graham Campbell
Associate Director

Comforting Routines

Due to a family member's illness, I took showers for a while at a hospital fitness center. By the third shower, I had figured out to hang the towel over the shower door with one-third hanging on the inside of the door and the other two-thirds hanging outside the door. That way it was handy, reasonably sanitary, and mostly dry. I got better at remembering the dental floss and bringing a plastic bag for laundry. On the way to the gym, I stopped to get coffee at the cafeteria and I took the short-cut through the rear exit of the cafeteria.

Sometimes routine feels like a trap, a daily grind. But I am reminded how comforting it is to develop routines, even (or especially) in the midst of life's chaos. It reduces stress and exhaustion because you don't have to think about each little cotton-picking detail. 

--Judith Allee

Parent Support Coordinator

Ah, Technology

I remember when I got my first answering machine how exciting it was to see the little blinking red light and know that someone had tried to call . . . me! And had left a message! No more wondering and waiting if a potential employer had tried to call me. Or a potential date. The machine was a gift from my then just-a-friend (but husband-to-be), so occasionally the blinking light represented a message from him, as our relationship transitioned to the big Something More.

Now, to be honest, I have a small sigh of relief when the message light is off. It feels like one less "to do" on my long list. Except that I'm often rewarded by a message that totally makes my day. Sometimes it's from a parent who is excited about the change in his or her child's behavior. Or it could be a class member or graduate of our Getting Ahead classes (for low-income people who want a better life), or a volunteer who has found a rewarding niche. I have a confession: Sometimes I save an encouraging message for a week or so just so I can it hear again on a day when I need a little more glow. (Smart self care? Or pathetic? You decide.)

Ah, technology. I love-hate it!

--Judith Allee
Parent Support Coordinator

Scary Things

Recently, there have been some scary things going on in Granville. I’m not talking about the Halloween festivities, or eerie costumes, or a plethora of “spider webbing” hanging all around. I mean the incidents where someone was approaching young children and possibly enticing them to enter his vehicle. This activity would be the nightmare of everyone on Elm Street, but also of any parent I know. Especially if the child actually listened to what that guy had to say and got in the car.

As Mental Health America of Licking County's Director of Prevention, I have spent many years helping teach children how they can prevent such a nightmare from happening. I am proud to say that when these events happened, Granville Elementary School counselor Dianne Ryan was very much on top of things. We generally provide the Child Abuse Prevention Program (CAPP) to them in the latter half of the school year. It’s great to say that we have presenters in that school this week and next. She wanted to share all this important information with their students immediately, with special emphasis on how to avoid “stranger danger” and keep their students safe.

Child safety is something we all should be aware of at this trick or treating time of year. As a parent, we may be sure that our children wear glow in the dark clothing or reflective strips on their costumes. We may tell our children that they can’t eat any candy until we have looked at every single piece of it and checked it all out. But, do we also tell them to be very careful of strangers who try to entice them into cars, vans, homes, or even bushes? Do we talk with our children about the possibility that those people who want to hurt them may hold up a big chocolate bar or empty dog leash and plead with them to come help? Do we encourage our children to yell loudly if someone makes them feel uncomfortable in any way and always tell an adult when that might happen? Do we assume that because our children are in middle school or high school, they can take care of themselves? As parents, when do we ever get permission to stop parenting?

A parent of a first grader at Granville sent me an email asking about CAPP and if the program, or curriculum, could be evaluated. I responded in great detail and have heard nothing more. I appreciate that parent taking time to ask about our program. That is an active parent. All parents are more than welcome to ask any of our program coordinators about their programs. I am so glad that there are people in our community who help care for and about our children. MHALC has several of them employed here. The Child Abuse Prevention Program is simply one way to help keep kids safe, whether it is from stranger danger, bullying, or known-assailant assault. But the very best resource we have to keeping our children safe is the first person they see, the first person who should talk to them about these issues before things happen – their parent.

For more information please send me an email by clicking here, or you can reach me by phone at 740-522-2277.

--Jan GreenRiver

Director of Prevention

The Meeting I Didn't Want to Go To

Last night I had a meeting in Columbus to represent PAVE or Prevent Assault & Violence Education. The meeting was at the Columbus Public Library MLK branch on Long Street. It took a while to find it and it was in a part of town with boarded-up homes and businesses.

It was after a long day at work, a long drive, and a rushed lunch. The last thing I wanted to do was attend a meeting out of town, at night and where the library’s slow internet connection made the presentation drag on. I had even taken our PAVE President along to keep me company and I felt that it was important for her to hear about the changes being made in the Strategies Against Violence Everywhere (SAVE) Awards program.

Our group has been part of SAVE off and on since its inception in 1994. We have an amazing group of teens in our program this year and they still keep coming! Over 50 high school students from all over Licking  County –from Heath, Newark, Utica, Licking Valley, Licking Heights,  Johnstown, Granville Christian Academy and more! –have signed up to be part of PAVE. And they were so interested and dedicated to participating in SAVE this year that I felt obligated to attend and see if we would be able to continue with the program that culminates with limo rides and on-stage performances in April 2011. If we were going to do it, this meeting was mandatory.

I knew that there were changes coming to the SAVE program this year. Tracy Thornton who is the Awards Advisor with the SAVE program had told me that already. Normally our teens would have to spend a couple days in Columbus with mandatory conflict resolution and media literacy training, a Peace Camp and then auditions. This year however, we need to spend about 9 hours, or 1 session a week, with SAVE and Tracy could not travel to Licking County to provide those trainings. Once we worked out a plan for me to shadow her, I could teach our teens the new SAVE curriculum. There would be different levels of accomplishment that our group could achieve and that seemed very reasonable.

Someone we had been working with during the past year joined the meeting late. DingDing Ma from Asian American Community Services (AACS) was there and she works with their Healthy Asian Youth (HAY) program. We had been on their committee to prepare for the GenerAsian Next event held at OSU this past August.. That alone made the trip worthwhile. Tawnee, the PAVE President,  and I both got hugs from her, along with the sad news of an AACS staff resignation. I told her that I would miss seeing that person at regional events, but hoped that meant I would see DingDing more often and I offered to help her in any way she needed me or PAVE. She immediately said that she knew that and that she would love to keep working with us. Not just me, but the teens in our program, too! We had already shown them so much!

During the meeting, I had the chance to share PAVE and SAVE’s history together with everyone who was there. It was great to see so many smiling faces when I talked about how empowering the work was for our group and the fact that one student had been with us since he was a high school freshman, had done the SAVE Awards, and the video of that performance was now a teaching tool that he uses as one of our contract staff in the high school classrooms. It was such a win-win-win situation!

Many other representatives who were there had never been involved with SAVE or ever heard of PAVE. It was so rewarding to leave that meeting – the one I thought I didn’t want to go to – with those thoughts of all the new youth who will be impacted by participating in this year’s SAVE. I could picture our teens enjoying their limo ride as they exit and are greeted by “hundreds of adoring fans” yelling their names while flash bulbs are popping! Tawnee talked about the possibilities that PAVE could do for our performance this year and what we had done in the past…and everything that we had to live up to after all those comments and stories.

So now it begins…working with the teens to decide yet again how to spread their messages of anti-violence at SAVE, teaching them more about conflict resolution and media literacy, raising awareness about so many issues that touch them, and giving them some alternatives and solutions that they can really use and live with. That’s what PAVE is about. That’s why so many students are involved this year – they heard us asking: do you want to help? Their answer was a resounding “YES!”

--Jan GreenRiver

Director of Prevention 

PAVE: Advocating for Others, Healing the Self

At MHALC, we are all about education, prevention and advocacy. But we are also about relationships and fostering ways to improve them all the time. One of the impactful programs that we offer is the Prevent Assault & Violence Education (PAVE) program that utilizes high school student volunteers who go into the middle schools to tech about bullying, media literacy, physical abuse and sexual assault.

The students who do this might know what they are talking about in far too personal ways. Many of the students who teach about these issues have already experienced some of them. So not only do the students reach younger children about very sensitive topics, but they also learn healthier ways of coping themselves and create their own PAVE family setting. PAVE members are empowered by learning about the underlying reasons that may cause some of these negative behaviors. Then they are able to gain asset building skills to help them maneuver this portion of their life and be better prepared for what their future may hold.

Two PAVE members have shared parts of their stories with our group. In this posting are the words they want everyone to hear. Not only do they want other teens to know how PAVE has helped them, but they want schools, educators, parents, peers, family and other students just like them to know how PAVE can change a life. They are cared for, utilized, empowered, strengthened, and valued as members of this afterschool family. What may be most important about their vital membership with the group is that they are not judged, they are free to be themselves, they are welcome to bring friends – or not. They are accepted just where and how they are. Isn’t that really what we all want?

PAVE was a life changing experience for me. I was having a lot of family problems & was always depressed. One day I was talking to my friend Dallas about my problems so he brought me to PAVE. I have learned many ways to deal with my problems. Being in PAVE has turned my life around. Everyone involved in PAVE is like family to me. I can trust everyone and openly talk about my problems and not worry about being judged. PAVE really helps when you have problems or even if you just want to help people.

- Miranda Nixon

This is my second year at P.A.V.E. and I am glad to be a part of this group. I feel like I have a family here. Our first day we come together as strangers, and at the end of the day we leave as friends. 

            Recently, I had a personal experience with sexual assault - last month. I felt like there was no one I could talk to. I came to P.A.V.E and we had 'circle time'. That is where we sit in a circle and each person gets the chance to say what they are thinking, whether it was on the topic we discussed that day, or a personal issue that is weighing on your mind. When it got to me, I started to shake, and my voice was choppy. I told my story to everyone that was there. I felt very relieved that I was able to talk about it. The part that touched me most was what happened afterword. I was sitting in my seat, shaking and crying...and Miranda comes running to me, hugs me and says, "I love you Caley!"

            P.A.V.E is a great place to release your feelings. You can speak your mind and not worry about being judged, it is a safe place. Everyone there has touched me in some way. I will never forget the whole experience. I hope to come back after I graduate in the spring. P.A.V.E. Rocks!!

Caley

~Senior at Utica

--Jan GreenRiver
Director of Prevention

#4 Help Others

The fourth tool in the Live Your Life Well toolkit is "Help Others."

The man in the picture is Doug Seus.  He and his wife raise and train grizzly bears for work in film and television.

My wife and I had heard about their work and knew a little bit about Bart the Bear who had been in such movies as "Legends of the Fall", "The Bear" and "The Edge."  At least initially, news coverage of the bear and his blossoming movie career was interesting, but incidental:  like watching the Weather Channel.

What changed? 

We met a dog named Dexter.

Dexter was a Newfoundland puppy, who came to live with us in 1995.  

Anyone who has ever shared their life with a large breed dog will testify to the exquisite agony of that relationship.  Big dogs come with big problems and short life spans.  As it would turn out, Dexter would be with us for just under four years before succumbing to a host of genetic disorders.  Nursing him through his many medical challenges brought us closer and made us feel his loss even more profoundly.

It was while we were feeling the loss of our own 180-pound black and white bear of a dog, that we saw a documentary called "Growing Up Grizzly" profiling Doug & Lynne Seus and Bart the Bear. 

Hosted by Brad Pitt, the show profiled the unique relationship between the Seus family and their 1200-pound grizzly.  What caught our attention immediately was the genuine respect that the humans and the bear had for one another.  Central to that mutual respect was the close contact between species.  I recall the importance that Doug Seus placed on making certain the bear knew the smell of his breath and how he would look for every opportunity to breathe into the bear's mouth.

Perhaps the most striking aspects of the documentary were the sequences where they showed Doug and Bart wrestling.  By themselves, they might look like scenes from an episode of "When Animals Attack", but they were just two friends playing, rolling around in the dirt, splashing in the pond, and trying to pin one another to the ground.

It was in those moments that we lost our hearts to a man and his bear.  

We could relate.  Granted, the size differential between Dexter and me was substantially less, but I am here to tell you, that it is just as difficult to make a 180-pound dog do something he doesn't want to do.  Our relationship was not so much master and obedient dog, as it was more of a negotiated settlement.

This year marks the 20^th anniversary of the Seus’ founding of Vital Ground, an organization dedicated to preserving the natural migration trails of the grizzly.  Founded on the premise that where the grizzly can thrive so, too, can we humans, the organization seeks to accomplish its goal in much the same way that Seus was able to establish his unique relationships with his bears:  through mutual respect.  They raise money to buy land, but more often they seek conservation easements from landowners.

Mr. & Mrs. Seus established Vital Ground as a way of honoring their partnership with Bart who has since passed away.  My wife and I have supported the organization as a way of honoring the memory of our little bear.

In early September, Vital Ground held an anniversary celebration in Park City, Utah, near where the Seus family and their bears, Little Bart and Honey Bump, live.  An important part of the event, and the main reason that we went out there, was an opportunity to see Seus and Little Bart in person.

In an area the size of a tennis court, that was delineated with a shin-high electrified cattle guard, Seus and Little Bart wrestled, played and recreated his greatest hits from his many different film, television and commercial roles.

It was a remarkable experience to be separated by only the cattle guard, a strip of yellow caution tape and less than 40 feet from this magnificent animal and to feel no fear as he came lumbering from his trailer.  As he came into view, the crowd of about 200 began to applaud and it seemed to us that this big bear got even bigger—as though he thrived on the audience approval.

Mrs. Seus would describe each of the scenes and what Bart had been asked to do, and then her husband would work with his Bear partner to recreate the moments.  Along the way, we learned that Bart loves Sprite and whipped cream, but more than either of those, he loves to play with Doug Seus.  Everything else is just foreplay to a good wrestle.

To watch them roll around on the ground is to understand what a trusting relationship is all about.  You cannot scare or intimidate a 1200-pound animal and then let them pin you to the ground with your head in their mouth without any fear that they might “forget” what “off” means.  You have to be certain; you have to trust.  It was absolutely clear to each of us there that these two, the bear and his human, were equal partners and great friends.

At the end of their presentation, Navajo dancers presented a series of ceremonial dances, culminating in the rarely performed Bear Dance. 

Throughout the dance, I was watching Mr. & Mrs. Seus and was struck by their reactions.  I don’t know either of them, so this is pure speculation on my part, but they seemed to me that during this dance to honor the Bear spirit, they were engaged in a communication every bit as spiritual as were the dancers.  So symbolic a moment was this, that it felt wrong to take this picture, like wearing a Hawaiian shirt to a funeral. 

I decided to take the picture anyway, because of the pure honesty of their response to the Bear Dance.  These were not mere animal trainers, like the whip and chair wielding Gunther Geble Williams:  the Seus’ did not tame their bears, they built a relationship and in so doing came to understand—really understand—one another.

Helping others is transactional:  each party gives and gets.  Givers get just as much, if not more than getters get.  Doug & Lynne Seus rescued their grizzlies—Bart, Tank, Little Bart and Honey Bump, but it is also true that the bears, beginning with the original Bart, gave the Seus’ much more. 

Helping others is selfless and it is also selfish.  Our decisions to give of our time and money are just as personal as the recipients we select.  For my wife and me, we support the bears because it connects us to a football-sized ball of black and white hair that grew and grew until our lives finally had a purpose.

Helping others is a way to counteract the thumbs that are all too frequently on the scales of justice.  Because of human settlement throughout the Grizzly's natural migration routes, they faced a real threat of extinction.  Vital Ground makes it possible for the remaining populations coexist with humans and to survive in their natural habitat.

Whatever your passion, helping others is good for you and it is, quite simply, the right thing to do.


--Graham Campbell
Associate Director