Mental Health Healing through Storytelling by Robin M. Pizzo

Courtesy Photo: Robin Pizzo, Director of Education, WKAR/Regional Director of Michigan Learning Channel.

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May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and May 9 was proclaimed as Mental Health Day for Children, Youth, and Their Families by Gretchen Whitmer. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, this year’s theme, Stigma Grows in Silence and Healing Begins in Community, ensures no one struggles alone. The NAMI website also promotes, “Your Story Can Spark Healing.” This is a profound truth that I embrace each time I share my personal story. Also, the reason why I created the I Feel series is to invite all youth to share their story to ensure they receive the support they need for mental health wellness.

Life started rocky for me. Today, most would define it as traumatic. Although in the early seventies, few words were used to define or even discuss mental health care, experiences, or diagnoses throughout the country, but even more so within the Black community. The words most often used were demoralizing and stigmatizing. The intention behind these words almost kept me from receiving the support I needed.

My birth mother, Naomi, experienced a late-in-life mental health illness because of a closed-head injury. This injury fractured Naomi’s mental stability, which developed into schizophrenia with paranoia. This diagnosis resulted in the termination of her parental rights. My older brother and I were placed in foster care. He was seven, and I was two. This was traumatic enough. Yet Naomi’s mental health disease continued to fracture into glimmers of light amidst the darkness. When there was lucidity, Naomi fought to reclaim her children. This meant abducting my brother from foster care numerous times, which led to a childhood of instability, separation, and scarcity. For me, it meant continued abduction attempts even after I was adopted into a loving home at the age of five. These attempts occurred for years.

Despite this tumultuous start, I’ve lived a life healthy, whole, and in service of others.

Evidence can be found in my 28-year marriage, the raising of my four children into healthy, contributing adults, and the compassion in each helping hand I offer. I know my wellness is a result of receiving care for my own mental health as a child after my first-grade teacher recommended it. At the time, she recognized I was emotionally fraught and withdrawn and requested a conference with my adopted mom. When Mrs. Collins shared her concerns, my mother was surprised, distraught, and a little lost. Mom understood physical health but not early childhood mental health. After my teacher assured my mom she was doing an amazing job protecting me, she recommended I begin therapy to receive counseling.

This was a solution my mother was unfamiliar with because in the Black community then, and too often now, seeing a therapist was taboo. Stigma, criminalization, systemic racism, and historical mistrust were reasons the Black community avoided therapy and why my mother lacked understanding of its ability to help a child with their emotional and mental well-being. These reasons created barriers in care for children and families that remain today. For seven-year-old me, mental health care through therapy established my wellness journey. This is why my work as Director of Education at WKAR and the creator of the I Feel series is significant. The series, now in its second season, called I Feel Talks, helps children understand, express, and manage their feelings by sharing their stories and being heard.

Research shows that mental health and wellness begin at birth. Therefore, supporting children with strategies to manage feelings due to life’s experiences scaffolds early childhood development and social-emotional growth. My hope is that my work will guarantee every child is supported and heard, just as the adults and therapy in my early years assured I was. For more, check out wkar.org/I-Feel.