Watching my loved one become violent and an incoherent stranger certainly tested my faith. My very close family member has bipolar disorder, which is a mood disorder - a disease of the brain.
We were at a hotel together and my loved one flew into a rage. The next thing I knew, all of my suitcases were outside the hotel door. In my mind came the words "She’s sick, she’s sick." It just kept echoing. I recognized that this was indeed a mental illness and I had absolutely no control over it, that I would have to let go or I would be destroyed.
I didn’t know what was wrong, but throwing me out of the hotel room really crystallized that this was indeed a mental problem. When I began to see the early manifestations of early bipolar disorder, I went into denial. I told myself, "This is something she will outgrow. This is a phase, etc."
But once I recognized that this was a sickness, being in denial, I didn’t talk about it outside of the family and I forbid anyone else talking about it. This is our secret.
A secret is really a burden. I didn’t allow myself to seek any help because I couldn’t talk about there being a problem. Once I recognized that this was indeed a problem, I began to open up and I shared with a friend who encouraged me to talk to a mutual friend who had a mentally ill family member. At first I resisted that, I didn’t want to. She said "You need to talk to Nancy." I said "I really don’t know Nancy that well, I don’t want her knowing my business; she might tell my business." You know how black people are. Our business is of paramount importance. Things got worse and finally I did call her and indeed we had something in common.
We stayed on the phone for hours and I felt better when I hung up than I had before I dialed the number. We agreed to meet and we met at church and stayed after and went to brunch and talked some more. She was not as secretive as I was. She knew other people and she said "I’ll call these people and we will get together." We formed a support group of about seven African American women. We all loved people who had mental illnesses and we came together every two weeks.
We would come to pray mainly and to share. We would pray for our loved ones and ourselves and we would share what was going on in our lives. It was an enormous relief to be able to be with people with whom I could be open. I didn’t fear judgment. I didn’t fear condemnation. I relaxed and we all agreed that we would respect and hold confidentially. I trusted the women so we just started meeting every two weeks, like clockwork.
We rotated houses, we came together to pray, eat and share. After the first time, we started laughing. We started laughing about what our relatives were doing. It wasn’t funny, but it was a relief to see some sort of lightness. That it was not so awful and dark that we couldn’t laugh about it. That was Spring, then what we noticed was we wanted to start hanging out a little bit. "Let’s pray and let’s share and then let’s go to the movies. Let’s pray and let’s share and let’s go to the dinner. Let’s pray and let’s share and did you say you knew someone who gave massages? Call them up."
As we began to relieve ourselves of our burdens and our deep dark secrets, we left space for joy to come back. Then I found out from a friend about the National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI). My friend is white. And nobody wants to own up to being mental ill or having a mentally ill loved one. But black people really, really, really, really don’t. And because we really don’t, we are in denial for all kinds of reasons. We don’t have any information. I didn’t know anybody, but this white woman knew about NAMI. So I put on my high heels and went over to Beverly Hills to the NAMI meeting. And I got involved with it and then I told my other support group members and they went and all got involved.
After we took the teacher training course, we were able to teach it. We joined there support group for family members. During a conversation we said, "Why are we coming over here to Beverly Hills, where we don’t live when the need is very great in our own community?"
We got our 501C paperwork done and we opened NAMI Inglewood which will soon be NAMI Urban Los Angeles, in a predominantly black community. That has been what has sustained me, the support came through prayer.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, Hebrews 11:1.
Editor's Note: Author Bebe Moore Campbell died at age 56 at her home in Los Angeles from complications due to brain cancer on November 27, 2006. More on Campbell and her contributions.