I’ve looked at madness from most sides now.

A Family’s Shame:

Growing up with my suicidal grandmother, watching my brother’s fall into schizophrenia…I was hospitalized in the late 1960’s for being a teenage runaway with a drug problem. Psychotherapy was king, and it blamed the parents. My parents blamed our genetics, “the Wohler Madness.”

Anti-Psychiatry:

As a young woman in California, I devoured the writings of R.D. Laing, Thomas Szasz, and the Madness Network News. I believed electroshock and medications were deployed for social control of persons who were simply different. It was the Vietnam War era, and so much in our culture seemed poised to change.

Healing Myself / Helping Others:

In the ’80’s and early ’90’s I studied many forms of inner work and self-therapy: the Inner Child process, gestalt, yoga, Transcendental Meditation, feminist therapy, shamanic journeys and more. Finally a successful hypnotherapist in private practice, I gravitated to the works of John Weir Perry and Stanislav Grof: madness as visionary experience.

Ecopsychology / Earth Spirit:

Ecopsychology says mental illness is tied to alienation from Nature. Peaceful times in nature are my saving grace. I came to grasp divinity as the body and soul of our Mother Earth. Nature spirituality profoundly healed my psychological distress. I’ve spent the past 25 years sharing these ways with groups and individuals.

One Little Girl:

My husband and I adopted a gorgeous infant, later diagnosed with autism. Interest in nutritional approaches was new and promising. Meanwhile I faltered with chronic fatigue, constant migraines, and deep depression. But advances in autism treatment offered hope. Little did I know my daughter would end up saving my life.

The Nutrient Path:

I learned that our daughter’s autism wasn’t cured by drugs or mental institutions. Neither was it a death sentence upon our dreams for her. Special diets, treatment of candida yeast, potent vitamin and supplement regimens and heavy-metal detox brought our little girl back to the family that chose her.

Once I followed her lead, a complete body-mind healing took place. Energy, clarity, optimism, and motivation returned. I left my sickbed, and dark thoughts that decades of therapy never touched began to evaporate with ease. Lunacy lost for good!