What Is Possible When You Get to the Root? The Peer-Run Wildflower Alliance Redefines Mental Health Care

Her phone pinged and a grey bubble rose to the surface: “Are you ready to come back?”

The answer was supposed to be yes. She should return and recover. All she had to do was find the right cocktail, her doctor had said, the right mix of medications to manage the voices and the visions that she had experienced since she was 6 years old.

Her first vision appeared like an apparition. After her mother discovered that she was being sexually abused by the upstairs neighbors, she was admonished and told not to go back. But in the middle of the night, she stood frozen on the landing. What she saw was a menacing shadow, a dark entity for her eyes only. She waited for it to move, took one step up – and it lunged at her. It was a wordless warning.

Later there were voices that spoke from different points in time, who all echoed what she had heard as a kid: Don’t tell. Don’t trust. No one sees you. No one wants to.

Continue reading on the Daily Hampshire Gazette. Written by Melissa Sances.