A Nouwen Network - Awareness Raising

& Stigma Reduction

  …”When I experienced a crisis state in my untreated mental illness, I lost the ability to think, read and 

write, plan and even lost connection with who I felt I am. I was totally numb emotionally, yet couldn't stop crying. I lost a huge amount of weight because I didn't know what I was supposed to do with food.

Through the next 10 years I have had to learn new skills to compensate for lost ones. My Dave bought me drawing lessons and then painting lessons. I have discovered that when I try something new like this or joining a choir, or nursing injured baby birds that it feels uncomfortable, and difficult and then I know I am growing new brain pathways.

Now I am an artist and a public speaker.

I continue to learn new ways to manage my illness and ask people to be patient and kind recognising that I am doing my best "

~ Lisa Bagnall

Jane Frazer Cosgrove.  September 2013.

…”The theologian Frederick Buechner has written“Vocation is where our greatest passion meets the world’s greatest need”. For most of my life I have had a passion for justice and inclusion. This has found various expressions both at the ‘grassroots’ alongside isolated and disadvantaged individuals, and in formal advocacy. The passion for mental health ministry that has grown steadily stronger within me for more than a decade, is a specific expression of that same passion for justice and inclusion, and a sense of a call to advocacy.

Parker Palmer in ‘Let Your Life Speak’ says “Vocation does not mean a goal that I pursue. It means a calling that I hear. Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am." The core truth that I have ‘heard’ my life telling me is that I am the beloved child of God, that we are all God’s much loved children. I have wanted to share this truth since my youth. Never have I had more passion to do so than I do now.

Those whose lives are affected by mental health issues suffer injustice and exclusion so often, and at so many levels, that the domino effect frequently places them among the unemployed; the homeless; and the imprisoned; and their healthcare needs go unmet. What pulls most at my heart is the fact that on top of all this, they are often either excluded from, or ‘fall through the cracks’ of ministry provision. 

I grew up on a sheep station in far western Qld. Whenever I encounter those who, due to mental illness, have been pushed to the edges of society, made invisible within their churches, and are being starved of friendship and spiritual support, the Ezekiel 34:18 text echoes within me: 

“Is it not enough for you to feed on good pasture? 

Must you also trample the rest of the pasture with your feet?

 Is it not enough for you to drink clear water?

 Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? 

Must my flock feed on what you have trampled 

and drink what you have muddied with your feet?”

 I feel this even more intensely when I meet people who have had heavy burdens of false responsibility placed upon them by those who believe praying the ‘right’ way will prevent or cure mental illness.

When I listen to my life telling me who I am, I am listening to many chapters and ‘strands’ of story. 

Through several generations of my family, the awful pain of mental illness in the form of depression and anxiety has touched me, and the people I love. My family also lives with the traumatic losses of loved ones who died by suicide. 

My faith story is a strand running through all my stories, through experiences of both joy and horror, giving me comfort, strength and hope. It carries the knowledge of my being the much loved child of God; of God being my Friend since childhood; of God always staying with me no matter what (regardless of whether or not I ‘feel’ it), and of God ‘going ahead of me’. 

“The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged." 

(Deuteronomy 31:8)