Hope Begins in Darkness

“Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.”

—Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Our fourth issue’s theme of Hope, coupled with our inaugural writing contest to raise awareness of the issues surrounding mental health, comes at a historic and important moment given the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. With the world as we once knew it changing daily, literature, art, and music could not be more important ingredients in the spread of hope, providing outlets to help maintain our mental health. In a recent New Yorker article, How Pandemics Change History, Isaac Chotiner interviews Frank Snowden, a Yale professor emeritus of history and the history of medicine and the author of Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present, who reminds us that epidemics not only shape societies, but also art, literature and our culture in general. Snowden reflects that epidemics have historically taken advantage of the existing poverty and inequality within societies, and that our response is a reflection of “our values, our commitments, and our sense of being part of the human race and not smaller units,” and that “epidemics are a category of disease that seem to hold up the mirror to human beings as to who we really are.”

For those suffering right now, please read on and know that you’re not alone. According to Mental Health America, a community-based nonprofit focused on the needs of those living with mental illness and mental health, one in five people have a mental health condition, and one in two are at risk for developing one. It is a health condition that needs to be better understood. The existing stigma must be made a thing of the past, and the related diseases need to be treated effectively, now more than ever. There is no shame is being afraid, anxious, or depressed at any time, and we share resources on the cover page if you feel an urgent need for help. Do not hesitate to reach out to a friend or loved one. To better connect our Please See Me community during this difficult time, we will be hosting our first Twitter chat on Tuesday, April 7th at 7:30 p.m. CT (8:30 p.m. ET / 5:30 p.m. PT). We will be using the hashtag #PSMLitClubChat to provide a point of gathering and discussion on content within this issue.

Many people in the world remain in physical or emotional pain because mental illness is often misunderstood or misdiagnosed. Existing treatments leave room for improvement, making adherence an ongoing challenge. As a result, many people self-medicate, self-soothe in destructive ways, or simply give up on traditional Western medicine. The stories, essays, and poems contained within this issue reinforce that many people who fall into vulnerable populations—like the mentally ill, elderly, socially isolated, and people of color—need to be heard and their health better managed. We may all be living through the same pandemic, but the degree to which it impacts one’s physical and mental health varies dramatically.

Those who survive, live with, or love someone with mental illness present hope and resilience time and again, making this issue’s theme and contest complementary. Our cover image and collection of paintings by Laura Vitale express the complex interplay between mind and body, and also the price of diagnostic inaccuracy and the need for meaningful patient partnerships. Vitale’s art is a product of frustration and fortitude resulting from her struggle to be accurately diagnosed and treated over the last forty years. In Comorbidity, our winning creative nonfiction piece, Tod Richardson portrays how his family’s life was overtaken by mental illness after his older brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Richardson captures the guilt and joy he felt while fighting to hang on to hope for a normal life for his young family while at the same time waiting to hear the worst about his brother because it was too painful to hope that this time it would be different for him.

In fiction winner Eren Harris’ Bodies in Flight, two formerly suicidal inpatients at a residential lockdown center meet for lunch 10 years after receiving treatment. Harris aptly captures the tenuous hopefulness of where life might go for each character after this meeting, showing that, where mental illness is concerned, there are often more questions than answers. And in Aubrey Zahn’s winning poem, The Fall, she uses the Greek god Persephone to unveil the masks we wear publicly in our pretense of normalcy, and the resilience of human kind “to get up seven times and fall down eight.”

Which ultimately leads me back to hope. Writing and creating art to express pain or the hope one might overcome illness is at the heart of Please See Me. Journaling and creative expression have long been accepted as positive outlets to better understand the self and others, to experience catharsis or simply to vent. Every piece included in this issue shows that despite the challenge, we are a determined and hopeful species. We survive hardship, illnesses both mental and physical, and may not even know what we are capable of until tested like we are today.

We still have choice and free will, and how we choose to respond in the face of this crisis will define who we are and the world that will remain for our children and grandchildren, our nieces and nephews. We are all in this together and need to confront this threat to our livelihood and well-being with courage, supporting one another as we find solutions together. We are already seeing our collective resolve and continued hope for a better world play out by the unflinching dedication of our frontline healthcare providers who continue to put themselves in harm’s way to care for others, as they have during the AIDS, SARS, MERS, and Ebola crises. The way we live may be changing, but our need as human beings to connect with one another remains a constant necessity.

Tracy Granzyk is the editor in chief of Please See Me.