The next step….

My daughter is being discharged tomorrow. She is leaving the hospital and round-the-clock care. It is good news, but it doesn’t mean it’s over. For so many getting out of the hospital after a physical illness means you’re well, or mostly well, and the worst is over. Maybe that is, at least in part, true here. Maybe the worst is over, at least for now, but she is not “well”. This is just the next step on the road to understanding and living with a mental illness. Therapy, changes in medication, and extra support have all played a role in getting her to where she is today and getting her discharged tomorrow. She has a lot of work ahead of her; we have a lot of work ahead of us.

We need to do a better job of checking in with her, monitoring her moods and behavior, and setting realistic expectations. We need to do a better job of listening to her verbal and non-verbal cues about how she is doing. She needs to be better about letting us know when she is struggling, managing friendships and maintaining realistic expectations on how much we can do for her because there is so much that she will have to do for herself.

She has the hardest task of all ahead of her. She needs to be her own biggest cheerleader. She needs to speak up for what she needs and accept that there are going to bad days and difficult situations ahead. She needs to hold onto hope through the dark times, knowing that brighter days are ahead. She needs to hold onto the friends who care and realize that they are doing their best to understand her, even when they don’t get it right. She needs to let go of the people who will never understand and never get it right. 

She also has to be her own strength. She has to reenter school and deal with the questions about where she has been, and the comments about how “she always seemed fine.” She has to go to school with teenagers who don’t understand mental illness, don’t believe it is real, or don’t want to deal with someone who has it.  She will have to face busy teachers who are trying hard to prepare students for final exams. She will need strength to get up and face each day. Strength to address the ignorance with patience. Strength to push through it all to do it over again the next day and every day after that. 

People are going to be under the false impression that just because she is no longer in the hospital she is okay. Everything is fine and life is back to normal. That is not true. This is just the next step. And we will continue taking the next step every single day, one day at a time.