Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Mom, Kylee, and Mia came to visit


Yes, it was a bright and squinty day. These pictures above were actually taken on Sunday. Mom arived Thursday afternoon. We went through pictures to trade or copy from eachother's scrapboks and collections. We talked and had so much fun.



Kylee, Mia, and Candy (Mia's other Grandma) came on Friday. Mom and I had gone to a thrift store and found some fun toys. One is a large music toy with piano keys and a monky that dances when she touches any thing. We scrubbed it down, and had it ready for Mia. She just loved it!



It was so fun to watch Mia. Although, Mom is a better picture taker than I am, so maybe she'll post her pictures on her blog. Mia loved to crawl around and find something that she's not supposed to get to (usually something that an adult has).

Mia would do a kind - dance while she was waiting for another bite of food. (I am having such a hard time posting pictures to the right places here, that I'll post that one later.)
Mom and I also went to view all the mountains that suround us from a bute that shows what the different mountains are by a diagram pointing to them in the middle. I didn't realize we had that many. I thought thought there were only 7, but there are so many more. It was a spur of the whim idea to go there, so we didn't have our cameras with us. Bummer.


















Sunday, May 17, 2009

Corvallis ABHA committee meetings

This whole trip to Corvallis and back was more incredibly amazing than I could have ever dreamed! Stuff happened that just opened up my world! And I’m feel like I'm really living again!

The trip over was so beautiful and scenic. I loved it. I got to stay in the Hilton 2 nights, use their hot tub, and have dinner Thursday reimbursed. Breakfast Friday morning was a “continental breakfast” at The Hilton. I have “continental breakfast” in parenthesis because it included the chef cooking up anything you wanted, waffles, omelets, French toast, anything, and bacon, sausage, hash browns, then anything like muffins, toast, and all sorts in the serve yourself area. We brought these back to the Board Room, where they had it all set up for our meeting.

There were about 45-50 people, including several from ABHA itself at the committee meeting. Because Rebekah (from ABHA) had requested that I bring my workbook, “Making a space that feeds your soul”, to the meeting so they could see it, I set it next to where she was going to be sitting for her to get to when she got a chance; she was busy setting up and getting ready to open the meeting. Somehow she was able to flip through it before starting.

When she opened up the meeting, she held it up announcing that this was my book that it was really good and encouraged everyone to look at it during the breaks. So literally everyone did, including the ABHA staff. They not only liked it, Several wanted to buy copies at the high cost I have to sell it at to cover printing costs. They said it was well worth it and I should charge more.


When those who were there from ABHA got to really look through it during the art show, all of them loved it. One who was a psychologist, graduate of Stanford, said, “It's not just good, it’s incredible! A few people from ABHA began talking about how it would be great to use in the Mental Health system, and that maybe there could be some sort of block grant written to facilitate that! Later, Rebekah talked to me about maybe getting a grant to go to a wellness conference in New York and present my book there.
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So back to the committee meetings:

There were agendas and objectives for the meetings. The Chair of the meeting, along all other members (excluding ABHA staff) deal with some sort of mental illness. I found there was a bit of talking about the problems that needed to be fixed, and allot of talking about why they needed to be fixed, whining, venting, etc, even after everyone had agreed that it needed to be fixed. So I would quite often raise my hand and bring us back to the objectives, “Alright so I am hearing that this is the problem; could we look into doing X”, which seemed so logical to me. But everyone acted like that was genius. OK, so objective one- check, Etc. We made headway.

One problem that was voiced was getting legislature and congress to listen. Well, I heard what was being said, more negative emotion accusations and few backed up facts, So I suggested a professional presentation with fliers or other eye catching publication, that compared where we are heading by cutting MH funding by comparing the outcome by using an actual existing model like: the East Coast - having cut MH funds drastically, former MH clients are now unmedicated, on the streets, homeless, with a highly incresed drug use population, and a drastic rise in crime. Compare that cost to the county, state, and federal government with the cost of providing adequate MH services. – Then leave them with the professional literature to consider it for a while.

Hmmm, that might work.

When we split into separate committees, I went with the Children and Family Advocacy Committee. We just had to come up with an end product of 2 objectives. There was a lot of talk. A lot of “oh, I didn’t know that resource was available, or that grant, or that service was no longer available.”

We decided that everyone knew a piece of the puzzle, but no one knew very much. So I suggested, "ABHA has a website, make a link to a blog or forum so everyone can add up to date information." It seemed that that should have already been in place to me, but again, it was thought of as an incredible idea. I wrote it down as objective one in my notes, but no one else did.
Then the discussion went on to what needs to be done to create the “umbrella” of programs for transitional age youth. A lot of discussion about schools offering this and that, but no MH programs available. So they thought to look at what other systems provided. I asked, “Could we look at what we need, and what isn’t being covered also?"

Ok, so 15 minutes till we have to go out & present 2 objectives, and we still aren’t touching base on what the objectives are. Few have taken notes, and the ones who have, are still confused about this. So I raise my hand because it’s about time, and say, “so what I have down as , objective 1 is to check on the legalities and options available to gather and share info real time on a board, forum, or blog linked to ABHA’s website. "

So no one else knows what objective 2 is. So they ask me what I have down. So I list off what I heard it to be, plus I asked if perhaps gathering info on what transitional youth need and what programs there are available for them, could also use a forum to make that information and ability to post available to everyone as things change.

So the chair said, “Ok, what I will do is read about what we talked about then turn the time over to you to state our objectives. This went well and the Adult committee wanted to combine for the real time info forum because they had the same problems.

I asked 1 ABHA staff if I talked too much. He said, “You don’t talk enough!” The other ABHA people felt my involvement really helped facilitate the meetings.

To top it off, I was reimbursed $.55 per mile. That's 3 times as much as I spent on gas. And I was paid $15 per hour for 6.5 hours of meetings. That will definitely help when I have to move to a one bedroom.

Then on the way back, I stopped to enjoy the scenic pull outs. It was gorgeous! Just being out in the pines, hearing and watching the rapids of the McKenzie River, and picking up a rock here or there to remember the trip with, made me feel like I was home again and remember family trips when I was young.

What an empowering trip! Good things are begining to happen and I'm going UP!