Her ‘pretend mamas’ saved her life
COURAGE TO COME BACK AWARDS: Woman with troubled past is driven to help others
This is the second of six profiles on recipients of the 2016 Courage To Come Back Awards, presented by Coast Mental Health to six outstanding people who have overcome great obstacles only to give back to their communities. Their inspiring comebacks will be celebrated at a gala dinner at the Vancouver Convention Centre West on May 5.
Meredith Graham was in Grade 8 when she ran away from home and her mother to escape the physical abuse, neglect and poverty she had known her entire short life.
Now 27, the recipient of the 2016 Courage To Come Back Award in the social adversity category acknowledges the help and intervention of several woman she calls her “pretend mamas” for saving her life.
“There is no way I would be talking on the phone with you right now without their influence,” said Graham, who’s in the third year of a four-year program at Douglas College in Coquitlam to become a child and youth care counsellor.
At age eight, she had to parent her four younger brothers when one parent was jailed and the other was sick. There was violence between her parents and violence directed at her. Her parents abused drugs and moved often.
“It was volatile, unpredictable and highly stressful,” Graham said. “There was no safety, security or consistency. Every day was an unknown.”
She was diagnosed with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder at 13, thought about and attempted suicide, and cut herself to release the stress. At age 18, Graham was told she was bipolar, and last year she was told she had borderline personality disorder.
She said she’s not a victim who’s defined by her mental illness but a “trauma survivor” and she credits teachers and a church mentor with rescuing her by taking her into their homes and teaching her how to live.
“They mentored and they guided me,” she said of two women at her church. “I spent holidays at their home. They are my family.”
She said the women answered her questions about how to successfully perform the basic tasks in life and “they just wrapped themselves around me from the beginning.”
Before those women, Graham also moved in with two high school teachers at different times, the first when she was 15 and was caught with a knife in school.
One of the conditions of living with the teacher was that Graham attend church with the teacher’s family and “I happily agreed.”
She was also good at school and enjoyed learning because “it was the only place I felt valued.”
She said if it hadn’t been for the kindness of those women, “I definitely wouldn’t be here and I probably wouldn’t be in school.”
Graham received medical help for her mental illness, graduated from high school and moved on to college.
While studying, she works at St. Leonard’s, a non-profit organization that helps at-risk youth, as a youth and family development worker. She hopes to complete a doctorate in counselling so she can develop and run a “theatre therapy studio,” where she plans to use the arts to help treat young people with mental illness. She’s also involved with the peer health education program at Douglas, which teaches students coping skills, and volunteers with the Vancouver Foundation on an initiative to change the fostering system so children in foster care aren’t left to fend for themselves after they turn 19.
And she’s a student ambassador who helps raise funds for the Canadian Mental Health Association.
Graham said she’s learning to accept that she’s worthy of the support shown to her by others and feels she’s fulfilling a purpose in her life to help others, “even though my life was filled with a lot of darkness.”
She’s learning to “practise nonresentment with others in her life. And I’m moving toward forgiveness and acceptance.”
Elinor Knudson of the Canadian Federation of University Women, who on behalf of the organization nominated Graham, said the group decided she deserved the award after Graham addressed a monthly meeting.
“We were so impressed with her openness, her maturity, her honesty and the power of her presentation,” Knudson said. “She helped us to see what life is like for children and youth living in poverty and abusive situations.
“Meredith, in spite of her background, has grown to be an educated, articulate, poised and caring woman who wants to encourage and nourish others who have gone through similar situations and to help prevent children and youth from experiencing what she did.”