Helping the Future Generations

I would like to share a very personal story, that brings tears to my eyes to write…

Last night I was on a call with my sister and she was talking a mile a minute. She was going on about how she should “have autonomy over her body and that just because she can’t manage her emotions, doesn’t mean she should be treated like an animal and injected with medications.”

To hear her words, somehow makes me feel that we failed her in some way…

This call came, after her release from a mental health facility that she spent 4 months in at the age of 38. Within that facility, it was the trial and error of many medications, trying to get her into a balanced brain state. Each medication, one that she had been given successfully over her 25 years of battling mental illness and is now no longer effective.

Currently, as an adult - she is becoming something commonly known as “treatment resistant”.  With the altering of her natural brain chemistry, in her critical years of brain development as a youth, alongside 25 years of going into Psychotic states, after intermittent periods of non-compliance with medications, she now exists in her 38 year old body with the capacity of a 16 year old, dependent on my mother.

What does her future look like?…

Three weeks after her release, she is slowly slipping back into her “manic state” even after being injected with a medication that was “working”. This is no longer a situation that can be effectively managed. The only solution when she is a state of mania is to let her become one of the countless, souls homeless on the streets, (as she has been so many times) as it is impossible to contain her while in mania, or to be kept locked behind 4 white walls, screaming for her freedom.

The phone call I received last night, brought me back to the year 2000, when she was only 15 years old.  It was the first call I had with her, after moving to University, when she started to lose her mental stability and her first episode of what the doctors called  “mania”.

That was the call I knew, I was loosing my sister to mental illness…

But it wasn’t a fluke.

It came at the same time that my father’s wife left him and my sister felt abandoned by a woman who became a very important part of her life. The icing on the cake to multiple other environmental stressors, that sent her into this spiral and catapulting her into what we would now call in adulthood a “mental breakdown”and what the doctors at that time called “Bi -Polar Disorder or Manic Depression”

This break down was followed by her being strapped to beds, injected with medications and locked in isolation, while she screamed on the top of her lungs in between the four white walls that would actually keep her safe, as she began into a journey into the prison of her mind.

Mental Illness is not something that you are born with, although there is science that shows we can have a genetic predisposition.

These genes can be turned “on” when in the face of situations outside of us - environmental factors/stressors.

What if there is a way to help children before they get to that point of breakdown, or the inability to cope with extreme stress?

What if we don’t have to sentence children to a life sentence of medication?

I mean, let’s face it - these drugs are not a solution, they are masking symptoms of the underlying root issues.

Today there are more 13 year old children on antidepressants than there ever has been in history. With the new age of social media and cyber bullying, kids are struggling more than ever, with anxiety and depression.

If you are on this site, chances are that you have began or continued to battle your mental wellness in your adult life. Psilocybin Therapy came into your radar as a possibility or has been a solution.

These kids are the future and there must be a way that we can help children in a better way, through learning how to manage emotions and finding grounding in themselves, instead of turning to medication as the first step.  

Medication should be a temporary solution or a last resort.

To watch my sisters heart-breaking journey over the last 25 years with no mandated therapeutic intervention, only medication and mental health facilities, has me questioning everything in our approach to youth mental health.

The result in our inability to effectively manage youth mental health is, a bi product to addictions, as a way of feeling “better”. Most addictions are built on a foundation of trauma or inability to cope with emotions.

After having worked in the Holistic Treatment of adult mental health space since 2015, starting within a Holistic, Private Addictions and Mental Health facility. I then founded Arcadia Healing in 2018 and over the years, have seen hundreds of adults coming off the life sentence of Psychiatric drugs, finding inner peace and transformation and ultimately a new lease on life, with hope and optimism for their future.

Maybe it doesn’t have to get to the point of needing a Psychedelic for your children, when they become adults and instead maybe we can do more now and give them a safe container to work through their emotions, while finding themselves at the same time.

I would love to create this place of support for your children.

I am considering opening up an online and hopefully future in-person space for youth, where we can explore the inner self through meditation, acceptance of self, journaling and guest speakers, therapists to help guide your precious children to a greater sense of self in the world.

If this is something you feel you would like to offer for your children, (it will be a FREE or donation based community)  I want to hear from you.

This is something that is very close to my heart and that I feel very strongly, can truly offer youth hope before medication.

Please submit your information in the button below so that you can be enrolled in a seperate email list, as I build this new community for youth.

Tara xo