 This is called a mother's journey. It's not particularly a message, it's not an outline, it's not a public speech, if you will, where there are points and sub points and notes that you can take as much as it is a story. Since our son passed away about 14 months ago, I have heard thousands of stories, thousands of stories from desperate people who are themselves struggling with a mental illness from the family members who love the desperate people who are struggling on the edge, from those who have lost family members to mental illness, those who hit the brick wall of mental illness and the brick wall one. I've heard thousands and thousands and thousands of stories. Some of them talk about the losses that mental illness can cause. Jail, addiction, homelessness, broken relationships, families torn apart by the chaos and the conflict, the confusion that happens between a mother and a father trying to figure out how to raise a child who has a mental illness, what a wife, how does she respond when her husband has a mental illness, how does a husband respond when his wife has a mental illness? What do you do when your best friend that you've loved all your life has a mental illness? Thousands and thousands of stories. But the story that I know best is mine and that's the story I wanna share with you today. We walked through mental illness for most of my son's 27 years. It wasn't a path that any of us, including Matthew, would have chosen. Given a choice, we would have gladly exchanged the path that we walked for nearly 27 years for one that had smoother walkways and fewer pitfalls, fewer hairpin curves, fewer precipitous cliffs. But we couldn't, not without abandoning our beloved son, brother, grandson, nephew, cousin and friend. And so we walked with Matthew day in and day out for 27 years. I'll tell you right now, I'm gonna cry. This is fresh, so we've been 14 months. In the spring of 1985, I was in the second trimester of my third pregnancy and other than extreme morning sickness, pregnancy was going pretty well. One day I stood ironing, we used to do those things. I stood ironing some of my husband's shirts and I noticed that my ankles ached. But I didn't think too much about it and I continued to iron. And I started thinking I've just been ironing too long. That's why my ankles are hurting, but I reached down at one point just to kind of touch my ankle because it started to ache a little bit more. And when I did, I noticed there were these red, like mosquito bites all around my ankles and moving up my leg. But I still didn't think too much about it. But by the end of that day, my ankles were so painful I could barely walk. So the next morning I called my OBE and I said, I don't know what's going on, but something is happening, I can barely walk. And my ankles and these red bumps are getting larger and they're moving up my leg. And he sent me to a rheumatologist and the rheumatologist took one look at me. I was feverish by then, feeling very badly. And he took one look at me, looked at my legs and he said, I think what you have is something called erythema nodosa. He said it's an allergic reaction similar to hives in that it's what's a self-limiting illness, something you ate or came in contact with or something going on inside your body created an allergic reaction. And just like hives, it'll be problematic while it's here, but it'll go away on its own. And I said, well, I'm pregnant. How long can this last? And he said, I don't really know. It's a self-limiting disease and when it's over, it'll be over. I can't give you anything for it because you're pregnant. I can't give you steroids or anything that I might naturally give you. So go home and wait it out. Well, as I barely walked back to the car, that became the last time I walked for three months because by the next morning, every joint in my body was on fire as though I had rheumatoid arthritis. I had gigantic red nodules on my legs. Each one of them were fiery, feverish. I couldn't get out of bed to even go to the bathroom. Rick likes to say that we went in our marriage from bliss to bedpans overnight and he's not far off. That's pretty much true. So in those months that I was in bed with this pregnancy, I was reassured by the doctors that I would be okay and that my baby would be okay. You have to know that ultrasounds were not part of a pregnancy in 1985 or routine pregnancy didn't qualify for an ultrasound. So I had no idea if I was carrying a boy or a girl, but I was so anxious that my illness, because I was so sick. I couldn't quite imagine that my baby was going to be okay, even though the doctors kept reassuring me that I would and I was very frightened. On Easter morning of 1985, as I laid in my bed, Rick was at church doing Easter services and I was in my bed, sick, couldn't move, had people coming to check on me while he was gone, but it was so difficult to even pick up the telephone because every joint was on fire, but I managed to pick up my Bible that day and it fell open. I would love to say that it fell open to this passage in Habakkuk because I read Habakkuk all the time, but that would be a lie. So all I know is that you don't know where Habakkuk is in the Bible. It's this little kind of obscure book that nobody reads. And so for it to just fall open to that book was like, really? So it fell open to this chapter in Habakkuk and I wanna read to you. As I said, this is my story and this is what I read that day in Habakkuk 3, 17 to 19. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vine, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God, my savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength and he makes my feet, which weren't moving, like the feet of a deer. He enables me to tread on the heights. And for me in those moments of extreme pain, extreme anxiety and fear about what was gonna happen to me and what was gonna happen to my baby, I realized that whether I ever walked or not, again, I would rejoice in the Lord. That whether my baby lived or died or was impaired by the illness, I could rejoice in the Lord. I would trust him and it was a turning point in the way that I handled a very difficult pregnancy. Well, Matthew David Warren was born on July 18th, 1985 and Matthew means gift of God and David means beloved and he was instantly our beloved gift of God. His birth was normal and I recovered. But we have often wondered if the months that he spent growing and developing as his brain developed in a very sick mother, if in some way it affected or wired his mind, wired his brain for some of the emotional and mental challenges he had the rest of his life, it's a mystery, I'll probably never know. In spite of that very difficult pregnancy, he was a really easy baby and that was great because I'd spent so many months completely in bed and he was incorporated into our family and older sister and older brother and we were quickly a happy family of five and I have very sweet memories of a quirky, goofy, hyperactive kid with a hilarious sense of humor. He was exquisitely sensitive. He could walk through the aisles of Target as about five or six years old and look at the, this is gonna sound really strange but those of you who work in this field will have some measure of understanding about it but he would look at the gift wrap. He would look at the gift bags that might be for children's birthday parties that might have little animals or cute little figures and he would cry and it was the most mystifying thing and would say, buddy, what is sad about that? And he would say things like, somebody worked really hard to make that bag, what if nobody ever buys it? Yes, yes, that's the way he lived his life, exquisitely sensitive to life and the things that happened and he had an innate sense of justice for anyone left out on the margins or alone. We did the normal family things, we were busy at church and in sports and in dance but at one year old, his personality, this easy going little baby began to change. He held his breath and turned to blue anytime he was hurt, anytime he was angry and he passed out many times. He developed a negative mood, hurling, candy land and shoots and ladders if he didn't win. I can see him as a two and a half year old calling the game board across the room if he ever lost and he would stay in that negative mood for hours and we were unable to distract him or copes him out of it. He was active and he was irritated and he cried a lot, sensitive to lights and sound and by the time he was seven, he started showing signs of depression. He would come home from school telling me he was sad and when I would try to figure out why, he couldn't say, he would just keep repeating the words, I'm just sad. We had moved across town at that point and my husband and I just assumed that maybe it was because we had moved and he was getting used to a new neighborhood and so we didn't really pay a lot of mind but when that became all that he said, when he stopped playing with his toys, when he stopped playing at school, when he was lethargic and apathetic, he began to realize this was something more than just sad that he was clinically depressed and within a year or so of that diagnosis came the diagnosis of panic disorder, he had his first panic attacks, ADHD and even Tourette's. Even though he was extremely bright and creative and inquisitive, school was a challenge as his hyperactivity interfered with learning and he had a sleep issue and he slept in the morning, slept in the day and couldn't sleep at night and just felt like every year brought one other additional mental health challenge to his portfolio and at 12 he was diagnosed as having early onset bipolar. By that time he was seeing a pediatric neurologist at UCLA because we didn't know where to go in our county, we live in Orange County, a county of three million people and there was nothing coordinated and it was just the same as opening the phone book and just sticking my finger on the name because I had no idea where to go, who to call and everyone I called didn't know what to do so finally we took him to UCLA and I talked to the doctor one day and I said something is still missing, this is what the ADHD and the sleep disorder and panic attacks and depression but something still wasn't fitting and one day he and I were running through the house chasing, he was about 11 years old, we were running, we were playing, we were laughing, we were chasing, we were having so much fun, it was a tickle fest and he was hiding and we were just having this great time and all of a sudden I realized after a few minutes I couldn't find him and so I began calling him and looking through the house and trying to figure where he was and finally getting a little anxious because he wasn't responding and I couldn't figure out where he was, I'm looking under the beds and I eventually opened a closet and he was huddled in the corner of the closet and he said I wanna die and I did not know what to do with that, we had just been laughing and playing and having a great time, how could he go in the space of two minutes from great fun and enjoyment to suddenly disappearing in a closet and telling me he wanted to die? And when I called his neurologist, that's when he said, I think he has early onset bipolar, I've just come from a conference and I think that's what's wrong with him. We didn't really know what was wrong and we didn't know how to fix it, we did everything we knew to do but it was with this increasing heavy weight in our heart that things were not right with our buddy and they were pretty severe. Our family and our friends were supportive but they were very puzzled in his behavior. I know that as has already been said, we got some of those questions of well, it's probably your parenting. I mean, people didn't say it quite that boldly but it was implied and you could tell by the look on people's faces that it was surely a parenting issue and if we were better at discipline, if we were more consistent, if we were just better parents, our son wouldn't be struggling like this and so we lived with that and sometimes because his behavior happened in the privacy of our home, other people would look at him and say, it's really not that bad, is it? We're all the time we knew how terrible it was. Teenage years had the normal awkwardness and angst but it was compounded by this growing depression and by that time he was taking handfuls of very powerful psychotropic medication designed to elevate his mood, calm his hyperactivity, reduce anxiety, help him sleep, then the medication to counteract the side effects from the medication that was supposed to help and sometimes when I would look at his pill box that he had every day, I would weep, I would weep because there were 30 pills in a day and he was still depressed. We changed schools, we changed therapists, we changed medications, we changed everything we could think of over and over to find relief to very little avail. Even so his creative spark remained bright, he loved ceramics, he was a fabulous writer, art, video games and anime became one of the loves of his life and during those years he alternated between a very passionate pursuit of his faith and anger at a God that he felt had let him down and we all limped along the side of him. My daughter mothered him and nurtured him and worried constantly about him. No one ever had a better big sister than his sister Amy. His brother Josh played endless hours of video games, played with him in the pool, shared his friends with him and you might have thought that as a brother he would have pushed his weaker sibling away being embarrassed or ashamed. He never did. Even as young children and teenagers themselves they stood by their brother and they were his biggest defenders and supporters. My husband and I did everything to distract him and his mood soured, we'd take him on magical mystery tours getting him up at 10 at night and taking places just to try to change his mood, played video games, played in the pool, twisted ourselves into pretzels wanting so desperately for him to be okay. We prayed, we sought help, we devoured books, stuff online, talked to psychiatrist physicians and nothing made the depression any better and for years he was very obedient. He obediently went to countless therapy sessions and he swallowed boatloads of drugs. He patiently listened every time I would explain why this time this is the best doctor, this one, this one is the best doctor Matthew or this medication, this medication I know is gonna make a big difference or this therapy or this school or this whatever and he would listen and sometimes there was a measure relief but never enough and as the years went by the relief grew less effective and his suffering intensified as depression took root in his mind and then the drum beat to the terrible finale. A new adult psychiatrist told him that he didn't have bipolar disorder, changed all of his medications and within months he spiraled down to new lows making suicidal threats a common topic of conversation and the dark times took us to the edge of hell and it was a new ball game. We did everything we do, we engaged in vigorous conversation with him about the meaning of life, the right to die on one's own timetable, the autonomy of the self, the ins and outs of religion and faith and ethics and morality and world politics and the glories of the world of warcraft and the mysteries of relationships and the value or lack of value and meaning and suffering. The inequities faced by millions who didn't have his advantages why scream rock music was so satisfying and why Adam Sandler and Mr. Deeds will be the best actor and movie of all times and we talked about those things over and over and over again and what I've come to realize as much as I knew my son and as much as I loved him. As much as our family loved him as much as his friends loved him, none of us would ever know how deep and dark or how difficult it was to be him. What it cost him to face another day that loomed ahead of him as a repeat of the day before and what a toll that constant effort to just maintain took on his psyche and over the years he grew increasingly weary of the fight and began to seek a way out and his frantic search created frantic responses in us and a terrible cycle of crisis, intervention, hospitalization and recovery began. Wrong diagnoses of his condition only heightened the struggle making treatment ineffective and unhelpful and over the years his willingness to attempt to find ways to live a more normal life slowly eroded until the future loomed over him in unbearable ways. He eventually lost his way spiritually concluding that if God existed he was cruel. Why else would he saddle a tiny little boy with disorders bigger than he was? And his torture became our torture and his pain our pain and his need our need. There were so few answers and fewer strategies moving forward it just kept getting worse. This creative whimsical justice oriented people-centered personality got lost in a disorder and yet in the middle of his own agony and torment he reached out time after time after time to people that he met on the internet offering compassion, offering love, offering encouragement to keep going. He found the loners and the outcasts and the one who didn't seem to fit and the new person and the oddball and the depressed and the suicidal and in countless chat rooms he encouraged and doled out relationship advice and actively tried to intervene with those that were considering taking their lives. And he would say to me with almost it baffled him but he would say with Irene his voice I know how to help other people. I just can't make it work for me. After one of his numerous hospitalizations in which he would say it doesn't help mom it only makes it worse. I pulled an old book off of my shelf and began to read it and it was about borderline personality disorder. And I remember sitting on the floor weeping knowing that I had just discovered the missing piece why all of the other diagnoses and all the massive amounts of treatment and medication and therapy didn't make things better. He had borderline personality disorder. And when I asked the psychiatrist who had been seeing him for three years why he had never diagnosed him with BPD he said he didn't fit the profile. And I said because I was new I said what profile? He said he was male and he grew up in a stable home. Yeah and I was horrified that a psychiatrist at a leading hospital in California was working off such old information and my son missed getting appropriate treatment for years maybe decades. But I felt better I felt hopeful because now we had a better diagnosis now there was one that really fit his symptoms but he wasn't impressed. His response, really mom? I mean really tell me that this is the answer. I don't believe you, I don't believe you anymore. There is no hope, I'll never be any different. Why would I hope only to be disappointed again and even if it could help it would be like trying to climb Mount Everest with chopsticks. One of the benefits of going off of so much of the medication was he lost weight. He had ballooned, gained 100 pounds. And going off the medication he discovered that underneath all of that medication induced weight was a guy with a pretty cool body and he began to work out with a trainer and this skinny kid who had blown up into this very large young man suddenly lost 75 pounds and gained biceps that were the envy of anybody who saw him and he's found a new reason to keep pushing himself to live. When he passed away he was in the best shape of any person in our whole family for generations. Just wasn't even fair. You can laugh it was funny. And we had so hoped that the success in achieving his goals in this one area would translate into meeting, being willing to try in other areas. And the last week of his life was actually one of the best weeks he'd ever had. He had a date lined up and he was thrilled. He made a new friend, he started a job. He hadn't worked in four years. He'd been invited to be a part of a select group within MMO Champion and if you know what MMO Champion is you know it's a big deal. If you don't, don't worry about it but it was a big deal. And he was planning to start therapy. He had an appointment with his BPD psychiatrist. He was gonna get a new iPhone the next day, get an upgrade coming. And all I can figure is that he'd gotten so used to drinking life out of a teaspoon and to suddenly to be drinking out of a fire hydrant. So many good things happening at once. Overwhelmed him. He was not equipped to deal with the concept of hope. And he was terrified that he couldn't maintain it. What if it was all false hope? What if all these good things, new job, a date, being invited to be a part of an online group? What if it all would fall apart and he would end up more alone, more depressed, more sad than he'd ever been before? And so this incredibly talented, loving, creative, sensitive, giving, funny, adorable, conflicted and broken guy picked up a gun that he had purchased illegally on the internet and he ended his fight. He and I were texting. He'd come to our house for dinner and told me all these great things but he also laid his head on our table. We said, mom, I'm so tired. I'm just so tired. I said, buddy, maybe you don't have to do quite so much. Maybe you know what the job that you're at. You don't have to go every day. You've gone two days this week. It's okay, you've got the leeway. You don't have to go tomorrow. And I just was trying to like, you know, just slow it down. You don't have to take in all of this. And I walked him out to his truck and I hugged him and an hour later he was texting telling me he had gone to his head and no matter how hard I tried, even though I had talked him off the ledge hundreds of times, now he had the lethal means and he stopped texting abruptly. And if you're thinking this is all so bleak, I can't stand to listen for another second. And my friends, maybe you were catching the tiniest fraction of what his and so many millions of other people's lives are like every single day. And perhaps it will allow you to have even more empathy for someone you know who struggles with depression and you'll begin to take their words more seriously and you'll commit to sticking by them through thick and thin so at least they'll know they're not in this fight alone. Maybe you'll join us and the one in five minds maybe you'll decide to make some noise about the deplorable state of psychiatric care in America and you'll advocate for better treatment and care and support for individuals who are just doing their best to slog their way through the swamp of depression and mental illness and you'll make some noise for the families who love them. How I wish he had received a more accurate diagnosis earlier before the mental illness had become so entrenched before he gave up hope. I have to tell you that we as his family are devastated by his death but we're not destroyed. We don't know what to do with Adam. We long to hold him to hear him singing his stupid silly songs, to do his Matthew dance. We love to wear stupid costumes. I wanna see him in one, especially the banana suit. I wanna fix him pancakes and watch anime and eat Korean barbecue and discuss hot button political topics. I wanna watch him snuggle and play with his dearly loved nieces and nephews. I just wanna hear his voice. As a Christian, I have to tell you that my faith forms the basis of the way that I face his death because I believe with all of who I am that even though something very tragic has happened, his death is not the end of him and I am confident that I will see him again in heaven. I completely and firmly believe that he is in a place where his best self is finally released, where smiles and laughter supplant the agonized sobs and the heavy weight of mental illness. It's been removed and I wait so eagerly for the day to join him and I fully expect him to run up to me in his banana costume or maybe a nacho libre mask to meet me saying, mom, you won't believe it. It's even better than you said it would be. But until then, I will long for him every day of my life. My job as his mother, his chief advocate, his caretaker, his nurturer, the fellow warrior in the fight, the lover of all things Matthew. My job as his mother, is finished. I carried him in my body, I gave him birth, I nursed him, I watched him grow, I walked beside him in his suffering and I was with him through text in his final hours. There is nothing else I can do for him because he's not here. But I can continue to fight in his memory, in his honor, and I will. I'm shifting my focus to seeking a better future for others, the developmental illnesses children. I will continue to fight for better treatment, care and support for all people with mental illnesses but children tug at my heart. Each boy and girl deserves a healthy and whole childhood. I'm determined to knock down the stigma and the shame, he lived with so much shame. He thought he was a freak of nature. I wanna knock down the stigma and the shame and the ineffective diagnoses, the overuse of medication to advocate for holistic treatment that includes the whole person, body, mind and soul to call faith congregations to action on behalf of the vulnerable and sick among us to develop psychiatric spaces for depressed people like Matthew, who are broken, but they're not crazy, to call our government to take a long, hard look at the existing mental health system and to make sweeping changes in the way that we care for those living with mental illness, to seek much needed funds for mental health research, more psychiatric, impatient beds. I have to pause here. Do you know, this is a travesty. In the United States right now, we are at the same level of inpatient beds as we were in this country 150 years ago. We are at the same number of inpatient beds as there were in the night, excuse me, 18, 15. I wanna beg our country to have the hard conversations about sensible gun control, to stop the ever-increasing violence. There have been 74 school shootings since Newtown that untreated mental illness is unleashing on our homes and our schools. I'll close with this. In the shocking days following Matthew's very violent death, a friend sent me Habakkuk 3, 17 to 19 to comfort me. The same passage, she didn't even know this, it was the same passage that I had stumbled on in great physical and emotional pain when I carried him in my womb 27 years ago. And I can tell you what I have learned to say in these last 27 years. What I said then, whether Matthew lives or dies, whether he receives the healing I so desperately wanted on this earth or not, whether I can understand the mystery of suffering or not. Yet I will rejoice and the Lord, God, is the strength of my life and I will be joyful in God my Savior. I think it's fitting that those verses bookend the life of my beautiful boy, Matthew David, the love and gift of God. And in his memory, I join you today to celebrate the ways that Clarity Children's Guidance Center is making such a powerful and life-giving difference in the lives of so many precious boys and girls. Thank you for all you do on their behalf. Thank you for caring so passionately for all the little Matthews that come here seeking hope. Thank you for equipping families to navigate the rough waters of mental illness more effectively and compassionately. It's a privilege to be a part of your effort and I and thousands of other families. Cheer you on. Thank you.