Affirming and healing Print
Written by Alvina   

To All involved with NNAAMI.

My mother suffered form post-partum psychosis after the birth of my brother when I was 11. My father suffered form paranoid schizophrenia and suffered a major psychotic break after my mother became some what stabilized with her mental health for the remaining years of her life. My father's breakdown came when I turned 14 and in his delusion, I was his target for persecution. His condition became stable when I was in my early thirties.

I found your site by accident while doing research for issues of mental health as a nurse.

I cannot tell you how affirming and healing it was to read stories that could have been written by me regarding my own terror throughout my childhood regarding my parents mental illness. It was the first time I felt some one understood what I went through as a child. I am now 61, have raised two great kids and have two beautiful grandchildren. I still struggle with some relationship issues that go back to those childhood wounds. I marvel at, having lived a full life, what both parents were able to give me in spite of the mental illness that robbed them of so much happiness and self-fulfillment in their own lives.

Are there chapters in the USA for adult children of mentally ill parents?

I have enclosed tow poems, one addressing my loss of not having a father and two, not having any mothering during a critical development period in my life.

May God Bless You for all your work in this area.

Alvina
USA