Featured opinion-editorial by Jennifer Simas with forward by Linda Gordon

Nurturing Faith: A Caregiver's Journey through Turmoil and Triumph in the Face of Mental Health Challenges

This featured opinion editorial explores a caregiver’s faith in general and in crisis. We are introduced to faith in action and faith as an overarching support for resilience in the midst of loving one with mental health challenges. Faith need not always explain the small grievances of the day, the looming question of fate, but does seem to aid in the act of love through calm and crisis.

As she so eloquently states, faith is both identity and adoption much like the decision to live with and triumph through life and the mental health of those we love. Sometimes there is no understanding and faith offers perseverance. Moreover, belonging to a community of faith offers support from those of the same worldview. The coping strategies may range from prayer, meditation, and trust in science. Science, or medicine is not always in opposition to faith and literature is increasingly in support of the benefits of a faith walk in healing.

The faith walk also calls upon us to see our frailties and those of others with more compassion and less judgment. We are only humans and is quite a context in the framework of a faith walk where our strength is not viewed as independent of a benevolent being or never in need of aid. The compassion offered in mental health makes manifest love in lieu of stigma. We are called by faith to advocate for a better existence despite our humanness.

Jeni Simas in her own words…
Well, it's simple really, being a Jewish woman who is more culturally than religiously Jewish if that makes any sense.  Judaism is a very “this world” religion.  So, the idea is that you do good things here, not because there is some great Heavenly afterlife promise, but because it is the right thing to do.  There is the whole idea of Tikkun Olam.  It means that the world is broken.  It also means that the world will not be fixed or "right" in our lifetime, but that we should strive to do our part to help make the world better.  I see having Charlie and being able to learn about him and how he is just one of a million ways that autism can present as a great part of my contribution to healing the world.

We can’t find Charlie, Mama!  Charlie is GONE!!!”

           That was the sentence that sputtered out of my 11-year-old’s mouth.  

           It was Father’s Day, 2023. 

           My fiancé and I had not even gotten to the car when my daughter, now on speakerphone, started blurting out her fears, “He’s not here Mommy!  He’s dead!  I just know it!  Dada and I were playing a game.  He was out back.  We didn’t hear him for a while and now he’s dead.  He’s been runned over!  I know it Mommy!!!”  

           I call my friend who is like an older brother.  We are still at least 45 minutes away, but he is 15 minutes away.  Keep in mind, it is Father’s Day.  He both IS and HAS a father.  He says he’s jumping in his truck.  No questions asked.  Okay, that’s 3 people.  Who else can I call to look for him? 

  He was alive.  He was well as far as anyone could report to me.  He was eating snacks at a gas station (surprisingly not at the grocery store right across the street) half a mile from the backyard he had escaped from.  My best guess, he had hopped the back fence into the cemetery.  He had mostly walked on grass hopefully because he was barefoot, and it was 96 degrees out.  It had been in the upper 80s and 90s all week, so the pavement was scorching hot.  So, he had walked half a mile away toward a playground they often frequent, but also toward Interstate 95. 

           As for the rest of us, it took an hour or so for my daughter to be any kind of calm.  It is still something that gives her nightmares and I imagine it will jump through her memory now and again for eternity.  I hope it does not plague her to be as hypervigilant as me when I am not around, but only time will tell. 

             My hope is that this story of Charlie eloping makes others realize just how quickly tragedy can strike.  We are SO LUCKY that he is alive. 

Jennifer Simas is a mother and couples’ coach with The Intimacy Ally. Her podcasts include personal testimony as a trauma survivor and expertise in parenting and relationship counseling. Website: www.theintamacyally.com; email:theintimacyally@gmail.com