Joyce Cooling’s Moving NAMI Tribute

Loved meeting Joyce Cooling

Saturday’s SF Bay Area NAMIWalk was a huge success, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide free services to families dealing with mental illness throughout the SF Bay Area. Kickoff Speaker Joyce Cooling, the fabulous jazz guitarist whose brother has struggled for years with mental illness, gave an incredibly moving tribute to her brother, her mother, and the folks at NAMI, who she said were a godsend to her mother during her struggle to help her son. Major kudos to Joyce for her tremendous support, to Laurie Williams, NAMIWalk Director, for putting on a fabulous event, and to all the NAMI volunteers who work hard every day to make life easier for families struggling with mental illness. The Approaching Neverland Team, comprised of many wonderful book club friends, was proud to have participated! More information about SF Bay Area NAMI can be found at http://namiwalksfbay.org/

Come see me on View from the Bay

Would love to have you join me on the set of View from the Bay for my appearance on May 7th! It’s free and should be a blast — you’ll have the chance to meet co-hosts Spencer Christian and Janelle Wang and see all that great behind the scenes stuff!
Here’s how to do it:
Tickets for the show are FREE but must be reserved in advance. Audience doors open at 2:15pm with a cut-off time of 2:30pm, the show is live from 3-4pm.
To reserve your seats please call the ticket request line at (415)-954-7733 or visit http://www.viewfromthebay.com and click on “be in our audience” and fill out a ticket request form. Or click on the link below to go to the online ticket request form. Simply fill out your information and press submit.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/feature?section=view_from_the_bay&id=6337461
Under “comments” please be sure to note “Peggy Kennedy.”

NNAMI’s Great Tips for Parents

Just found a great Australian site — National Network of Adult & Adolescent Children of Mentally Ill Parents — with super advice (see below). The site also features a great downloadable Family Management Crisis Plan.

http://www.nnaami.org

Tips for Parents with a mental illness for managing life with Children and Young people.

• Be honest with you kids.
• Let them know when you are feeling stressed.
• Talk to them about what you can and can’t do.
• Don’t wrap your kids up in cotton wool. (Hav to admit I’m a little in the dark about the cotton wool advice — pk).
• Let them do ‘kids things’ within reason, let them go to birthday parties and to the pool to the gym.
• Let them go to youth groups, sporting activities, church, religious activities.
• Don’t be over protective.
• Because when you are really unwell these positive experiences from these things can pay off.
• Let them talk to friends and develop friendships in these activities; you have to let them be part of their community.
• Keep well by taking your medication, have regular contact with your psychiatrist.
• Give your kids positive reinforcement.
• Tell them they have done a good job when they have done the washing up or the vacuuming or a task that you appreciate.
• Tell them that you love them, unconditionally, as often as you can.
• Does not matter what they do (your kids), good or bad, tell them that you love them.

I love book clubs!

I was honored to be a guest at a San Ramon group’s first book club meeting this morning. Meeting with this lively, lovely group of women reminded me of how lucky we women are that we feel so comfortable diving deep into our emotions to find the answers to what makes us tick and what makes us who we are as individuals. Within the course of 90 minutes, we shared our stories of mental illness and relationships and loss, and I think we all left feeling a little closer and a little less alone.
Thanks so much to all of you at today’s book club for coming and opening up your hearts 🙂

Approaching 2010

Sat down to write my new year’s resolutions today and came up with the following.

Do my best to utilize Approaching Neverland and our family’s story to help remove the stigma of mental illness.

Re-learn how to golf

Take a trip down the Amazon

Read read and read some more

Finish the first draft of Tiger Lil