I am going to BEECH Retreat! I still can hardly believe it myself as it all happened rather quickly. I can only conclude that God wants me to go and therefore, I am willing to step WAY outside my comfort zone and grab the opportunity. I would say that I am excited about going except that I am ridiculously nervous. In no particular order, here are the things that when I think about them make me feel queasy:

1. I’ve never been to a blogging conference before. Most of the ones I’ve looked into have hundreds or thousands of attendees which does not appeal to me in the least so I’ve never wanted to go until I heard about BEECH. There will only be 80 attendees. I wanted to go but didn’t think it would be possible. Now it is and I’m going. But I worry. Having never gone, I don’t know what to expect.

2. I don’t know what to wear. I know this one sounds silly or vain but I’m just being real! I know it says “business casual” but what I’d really like is for someone to come look through my closet and say “yah” or “nay” to my options. Outfitting myself has never been my strong suit (pun not intended)!

3. I’m just little old me. I mean that literally and figuratively. Though I’m not that old, I am little. At only 5 feet tall, it can be intimidating being around average heighted individuals. And I’m just me…I have this vision of all the other women going as being secure, beautiful, tall, confident, successful, driven people who know what they’re doing. Which brings me to my next point…

4. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t have an elevator pitch (yet), have never marketed myself or my blogs to brands (and the BEECH sponsors are an incredible group of companies who would be a dream to work with), and as of this minute, have not yet written down my goals. That one will change as I plan to write out my goals for the weekend later this afternoon.

5. I am not prepared. I didn’t have business cards made but after some scrambling and quick designing (not my strongest point), I will be picking some up Wednesday afternoon before I fly out Wednesday night. I also have not packed. I need a haircut but won’t have time to get one. My list of things to do is a page long and I have a day and a half before I leave. I know I will forget many things or wish that I had brought others that I didn’t even think to bring.

6. I’ve never been on a plane by myself. I have flown with a baby or two as the only adult, but somehow, even having a baby made me feel less alone. This flying by myself through the night, transferring planes in two huge airports and arriving somewhere I’ve never been is a bit unnerving.

7. I feel insecure. In places where I am comfortable and know people, I am confident. Standing in front of a room full of strangers speaking about adoption, I am hardly nervous. I am actually pretty energized. But thinking of going to a blogging conference with the chance to meet with representatives from awesome brands and the opportunity to meet these blogging women who in my mind have it all together and suddenly, I feel about ready to throw up. All my insecurities rush to the forefront.

8. I’m scared I won’t fit in. I feel like I am in junior high all over again, about to go to the school dance and wondering if I will sit on the bleachers all night wishing a boy would ask me to dance. What if no one talks to me? What if everyone knows each other and I feel like I am standing on the sidelines, left out?

9. I’m comparing myself and coming up short. My blogs are mini blogs in the grand scheme of the internet. I’m sure they have higher traffic than some, but they are by no stretch of the imagination “mega blogs” and I am not a mega blogger. I’m sure in reality, some of the other people going to this blogging retreat are in the same place as me, but in my mind, they are all tech-savvy, writer extraordinaire, mega bloggers who are way out of my blogging league.

10. It will go by too quickly. This worry doesn’t seem to fit in with all the rest, but I love learning and there are going to be sessions and keynote speakers that I am sure I will learn so much from. I’m worried that the weekend will go by too quickly before I have the chance to soak it all in. I want to come home inspired and renewed and more knowledgeable and I know that if I am able to get past all of my other fears and actually get on that plane, before I know it, this blogging conference will be over and behind me. I hope there is time to meet as many people as I can and learn as much as I can in such a condensed amount of time. I don’t want to waste such an incredible opportunity and I do feel blessed to be going.

If I can conquer all my fears and don’t chicken out, I will let you how it went!

I have sat down to write this and then walked away unsure more times than I can count. I hope I can choose the right words and that I can walk the line of balancing our family’s privacy with doing what I think is right.

I cannot speak about the mental health system in the United States because I am Canadian but if it is anything like it is here, I shudder to think of the parents trying to access help for their kids there. I can only speak for my experience here in Canada but after reading this article, it is clear that the system in the U.S. has similar issues.

A year ago, I knew very little about the mental health system. I thought health care in Canada was pretty good and assumed that this applied also to mental health. I’m actually a bit embarrassed to say how little I thought about it. I had never had cause to access it and lumped it in to the regular health care system in my mind.

Eight months ago, our entire family was thrown into turmoil when one of our daughters developed severe PTSD and RAD. There was one particular incident that occurred, after which I knew our lives would never again be the same. I spoke to her pediatrician and got no help. I then called the Children’s Mental Health intake line. Believe me, when you call that intake line about your 7 year old, you are already desperate. I spoke to the worker for about an hour in a scheduled phone consult and was told at the end of the call that “this is above our pay grade and not the type of thing we are used to dealing with”. It was suggested that I take her to the Learning and Development Clinic at one of the hospitals in a nearby city. I was discouraged to say the least as I was expecting help and answers, but I was still determined to help my daughter.

I called the Learning and Development Clinic and was told that to even get onto the wait list, I would need a Psych Ed. report. They sent me out the forms. As we homeschool, Psych Ed. report costs would need to be paid by us. We were able to find someone willing to do one for the “low” cost of $1200. This was much less than other quotes we had received. At this point, given the severity of her condition, we had already found a private therapist and were paying $150 an hour for private therapy for her while we waited for her to be able to get help from the government. We were having to find creative ways to come up with that money. With seven kids, extra money isn’t in abundance and these expenses were adding up. I had called FSCD (Family Services for Children with Disabilities) early on after that first major incident and they stepped in to pay for child care for the other kids while I took our daughter to her many appointments, something I am very grateful for and the only thing that helped at that time for me to feel less alone and hopeless.

While we waited for the Psych Ed. report to be complete (a process that took almost three months), life at home with our daughter was spiralling out of control and I was feeling utterly powerless. At one point, I took her to her pediatrician again on a suggestion from her therapist (the one we were paying for privately) to ask for a blood test for a parasite that can cause some of the behaviours and thought patterns we were seeing. The results were negative but even more discouraging than that was that at the appointment, all the doctor did was order the test, as though it were perfectly normal that we were in this state of crisis with our 7 year old.

Finally, I held the Psych Ed. report in my hand. By that point, I had been just barely holding it together and what was keeping me going was the knowledge that once we had that report in our possession as well as a firm diagnosis of her condition, we could at least get her on the WAIT list for this program that we were told would help her. While filling out the forms to apply to get her into the program, I came across a question I was unsure of and phoned the Learning and Development Clinic for clarification. During that phone call, I was informed that our daughter would not qualify for their program as her issues are primarily mental health and that is not what they primarily deal with. This is the program that MENTAL HEALTH INTAKE told me I had to take her to!

I cannot describe to you the new low I reached that day when it seemed as though every door had been slammed in our face and we were even further away from getting help for our daughter than ever before. This was five months after we first began trying to access help for her. This had become literally a life and death situation and it felt as though NO ONE would help us. Except that God stepped in that day and we got an unlikely ally. Immediately after getting off that phone call in which I had begged the intake nurse to tell me if they wouldn’t help us, where I should turn and she had curtly said good-bye without offering so much as a suggestion, I received a phone call from a health care professional involved in one of our other daughter’s cases (thankfully, her issues are lung related, not mental health so we have excellent care for her). She noted that I sounded upset and I relayed to her what had just happened. She began making calls and asking her colleagues on my behalf to see what I should do.

The conclusion she came to was that my only options were to call mental health intake again, try to get a referral to a psychiatrist from the pediatrician and be put on another long wait list or to take her in to emergency at the hospital that deals with mental health. I chose that option during an extreme crisis here a few days later. I spent nine hours in the emergency room of that hospital with my daughter and walked out without even having seen a psychiatrist. I saw a crisis mental health worker and was told that unfortunately the way the system works is that the next step would be for them to have the same mental health intake worker call me the following week…the same one who had originally told me that my daughter’s issues were above what they can handle! I came home exhausted and absolutely hopeless.

The following week, I went in to the pediatrician again to ask for a referral to a psychiatrist on a crisis emergency basis and got that but not before she insisted on doing another FULL physical (including private area) on my already traumatized daughter. She and I both left the appointment in tears. Because of having gone to the emergency room the week before and the paperwork they had filled out there, we were able to get in to a psychiatrist on a crisis only criteria (meaning he was only willing to see us twice before closing her file). After doing another phone intake with mental health with the same person, she was able to get into a local therapist (who we did not have to pay for) which offered us some hope. However at the first appointment with that therapist, she too told us that this was above her level of comfort and our daughter needed more help than she could comfortably provide. I left there feeling dejected and afraid for what our future held. She did suggest a program in the city that may be able to help and referred us to another psychiatrist.

After getting on the phone with everyone who had ever been involved with our daughter’s case and begging them to advocate for her to get into this program that normally has a wait list of about a year, our daughter had an intake appointment a few weeks ago and it was determined that she does need to be in this intensive one year program that involves me taking her to appointments as well as working with her at home. Being involved in the program will mean that she will have to change psychiatrists again (for the third time in two months) and will have to change again when the program is completed. It will also mean us advocating for follow-up care when it is complete but it has at least given us hope that maybe someday our lives will become our lives again. For the past eight months, our entire family has lived in a hell that I would not wish upon anyone and the only thing that has been worse that living with what our daughter has been going through has been trying to get help for her and being told that there is none.

Had we not had an ally in our corner and FSCD helping with the practical side of things, I may have given up on trying to access services for her because just the day to day living was so exhausting that I hardly had the energy to advocate on top of that. As it turns out, I had to practically scream at the top of my lungs at anyone who would listen (and those that wouldn’t) to try to get access to basic mental health care. I have a new view and understanding of the mental health care system in my country and I can say that it is broken and in desperate need of an overhaul. Mental health issues are feared and misunderstood which are likely the reason they are underfunded.

Since our experience began, I have spoken to other parents who have had similar experiences with the system. Mental health services are lacking in our country and those that exist are hard to find and even harder to access. When you have a child who is a danger to themselves or to others and you are quoted wait times of nine months to two and a half years, that is unacceptable.

As we continue to advocate for adequate care for our daughter, my prayers go out to all those who are in similar situations where a system they rely on is letting them and their children down. Maybe it’s time to open a dialogue about a topic that doesn’t get the press or funding or compassion it deserves.