Talk at Holy Redeemer Counseling Center / Poem: 302

Sadly, the original post I did about this is gone! Google ate it for a bedtime snack, after which they got a terrible case of the hiccups.

GUESS WHAT? It's back. Let's call it Foogle.

After my talk. Sister Gerri coordinated the whole program. I was happy with the turnout of 32 people.
My talk was held in the Motherhouse. The entire compound features a lovely chapel, a cafeteria, offices, an auditorium, and rooms where the nuns live.

My friend Noam Levine accompanied me, carrying in boxes and boxes of information for my talk. Sister Gerri Fitzpatrick rode down on the elevator with us to show us the room.

Two Jews in the house of Catholics, I said to her.

We have the same origins, she said.
Pope John XXIII. This drawing is by Charles Madden, who lives in nearby Maple Glen, PA. My friend Stephen Weinstein has the same drawing in his foyer, dedicated to Stephen. Madden is an artist and sculptor who does both liturgical and public works.

The above drawing is dedicated to Sister Martina and the Sisters of the Holy Redeemer. Click once or twice to enlarge.

Here's the Conference Room at the Holy Redeemer Motherhouse where I spoke on Understanding Bipolar Disorder and Depression. By evening's end. every chair would be filled. Noam counted 32 people in the audience.
Before the talk. I'm on speakerphone listening to a new client. I'd called to see how she's doing. Much better, she said.

While sitting here earlier eating lunch, I leafed thru my Yes I Can book. It's the story of my life with 20 years of bipolar disorder, plus my Keys to Recovery. About 14 of my poems are included.

While reading the poem "302" I thought, Why, everything is in here. Many of us with bipolar have ridden in police cars, shed part of our clothing, and certainly "lost the finer workings of our minds."

Read poem at end.

My 90 minute talk was just like a New Directions meeting. Totally interactive. I told them right away I wanted their participation.

They saw all the help that each person could provide!

Inevitably, someone is always gonna say, I've tried every medication there is and nothing works.

I mentioned ECT - electroshock therapy - and presto! - hands flew up in the audience. They'd had it. It was miraculous for one woman, for another it only worked about a week.

Typical!

Then I mentioned a new treatment - TMS - transcranial magnetic stimulation. One woman had it at Penn but it didn't work.

I said that's b/c they don't use a NeuroStar machine But psychiatrist Terrence Boyadjis in West Chester, PA, does and has great success. He spoke to our group last year.

A man called out: Yeah, but insurance doesn't cover it.

He'll work with you, I said.

The day after my talk one of the guys came to our Willow Grove Giant Supermarket meeting. We did on the spot gestalt training with him at the Giant to help change certain of his behaviors that get him in trouble.

Group therapy is the perfect venue for this, but there's very little group therapy around here. California, perhaps. Oregon, perhaps. But not in stodgy PA.

It's too tiresome to repeat all the things I said on my original blog, so, if you don't mind I'll just perform the poem again, striding in front of the audience and speaking with... feeling.

3 0 2

The following poem was written when I worked as a psychotherapist at Bristol-Bensalem Human Services in Bristol, PA. “302” is a nickname meaning “involuntary hospitalization.”

I watched
through the glass doors
of our mental health clinic
for the person to be 302d,
he would walk through
the outer doors,
a man who’d lost the
finer workings of his mind,
and would be delivered up
for safekeeping by the cops,
escorted into a tiny room that locked
and was filled with windows
that can’t be broken.

They were wild sometimes,
flailing,
crying out in broken words,
fighting to escape their captors,
believing until the end
deliverance was at hand.

From my perch at the door
the doctor joins me.
She is eating an apple and
talking about going out for
Chinese food after.
302-ing makes you hungry.

I tell her that once
I had ridden
in the back of a police car.
My senses gone,
alert,
radiating to the
staccato points of night
and the babble of the police radio,
I leaned forward in my backseat nest
like caged Hansel in the gingerbread forest
and stuck my little finger
through the iron grates that contained me.
It was all I had of freedom.

“Were you scared?” the doctor asked.
“Why, not at all,” I said.
“I thought they were taking me to a live
performance of the Nutcracker Suite.”

Thinking I was kidding
she crumpled up with merriment.

We watched as a police car
pulled in sideways.
Black letters like ribbons scrolled
across the door.

I watched as
a man stepped from the car,
steady, unafraid,
handsome as a game show host
striding on stage
to marvelous applause.
Barefoot,
his hair uncombed with
great prodigal waves falling upon
his brow,
his face had a pulled-down look
I hadn’t expected to see.
He’d played his chips and lost.

Chin up, I whispered.
This is your hour,
for now --
for all time.
Use it well.
Don’t get hurt,
run a comb through your hair,
And, for God’s sakes, pay attention
with whatever’s left inside you,
for this is the night of your 302.

Now, for those of you who absolutely can't get enuf of my writing, you can click on two blog posts I wrote for Patch.com.

My editor has urged me to establish a Patch blog. Since he's good to me, I did!

Here's the first entry about my Bipolar Talk at Holy Redeemer.

And the second entry.