The Lasting Power of Stories

There’s a lot of heartache in the world and it’s not all far away.

There was a call for public comment on behavioral health services in our community. I went to speak on behalf of older adults who I think get forgotten a lot of the time when it comes to mental health services. Stigma, isolation, disability, so many things influence how readily an old person will seek out mental health services. Suffer in silence is a phrase that comes to mind.

It went well, what I said, except for the part that when I thought they called my name to come up and speak, they really hadn’t. Even with two cochlear implants, a cavernous meeting room can still screw me up. I glide with that, though. I used to be mortified. Now, I just keep going.

Three people spoke about their loved ones’ experience with the mental health system. It was a trail of missed opportunities, misdiagnoses, mistakes, and suffering. The stories were heartbreaking. A woman’s son put in jail, not given his meds, released on the street, in the hospital, back and forth, back and forth, and in the middle of all of it, her husband dying. She read her testimony following each word with a finger to keep her place. There was so much to say.

I could see the officials listening hard. Afterward, one of them said to me, “I thought things were so much better.”

That, right there, is the power of stories.

There were only five people who offered public comment out of a county of nearly a million people to a board overseeing a huge mental health system serving thousands of people. But those five people said things that the folks in charge will carry around in their pockets for months. It’ll shade what they do and how they think.

Showing up and telling our stories. It’s a force multiplier.

____________

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash