There is a day coming that would make my living openly as a person managing mental ill health worthwhile, a time that makes good meaning of handling various diagnoses for several decades and sharing my experiences fearlessly. That is my comforting notion.
Today, though, as the world gears up for its big mental health advocacy moment on Saturday, I reflect on the support that has given me courage to be open, advocating fearlessly for those like me, and highlight examples too, of the pain suffered from bigotry.
I recall my first year writing this column more than a decade ago. The history of this space began because I had practised being open with people who had the good sense to understand that mental illness did not make me a “mad” person.
The editor who crafted a space to talk openly about managing the mind had had the “misfortune” of working with me as staff, except she is brilliant and progressive and suspended judgement.
I say misfortune because until my life became regulated, working relationships were difficult.
For me, coping with managing people while hardly knowing how to manage myself was tough. For those working with me, mostly, they treated me with stigmatised off-handedness, holding court and conspiracies to make my life difficult because I was difficult – “Miss Bipolar” was my label.
Being open allowed/allows people to rag on you. It gave/gives people space to have regular panchayat, not in the historically supportive mode, but more in my mother’s context. When she said “they having a panchayat about we,” we understood it to be gossip.
My early life was in a rural community steeped in gossip, and it is that very experience on my journey that teaches me to hold space for myself despite continued prejudice. My mother taught me very early that people “don’t pelt stones at trees with no fruit.” That was my confidence-building lesson.
She also told me that I had “brains and beauty,” and with that I could do anything in life. I was eight. That was philosophical architecture on which to build and flourish.
And when, eight years later, I became “Miss Verina daughter, the mad one,” she was unmoved by the folly of “these infidels” (her semantics again). I was still her bright child, and she expected progress.
Despite that, living in a prejudiced and bigoted space remains hurtful.
In 2012, when I began writing this column, people had varied responses. A seasoned journalist interrupted my trip into Port-of-Spain for a jazz show by using my time to tell me why I should not speak of private matters so openly. He was visibly distressed.
One relative came to me and said a government minister at the time had scheduled a call to her to ask her to “warn me about what I was doing.”
Artist LeRoy Clarke was supportive when I sought his counsel. He had had a close-up view of my life but also witnessed my willingness to help others. He chuckled: “Just know they will call you the mad lady writing in the Guardian.”
In the ensuing years, I had a cousin who stole from me (before everyone else plundered the place I call home). When I confronted her, with no plausible defence, she declared, “Girl, you really as mad as they say, oui!” Then promptly placed my expensive plant in the ground outside her gate.
Each time I see it, I think, “This is madness!
A nationally respected creative, having used my expertise for ten months in one year recently, signalled his intention not to pay the day after his last major event. I challenged the radio silence that came after months of multiple conversations daily. He seemed displeased that I called him out.
I dropped the discussion of appropriate/adequate compensation when, after decades of supporting his work, he declared the prejudice he seemed to have held. With utter contempt, he sneered, “I did not call you because I know how you does get.”
Once I started writing openly about my life and struggles managing mental illness, employers, including the government of T&T, never found my qualifications good enough to respond to my resume.
And of course, you may already know that the guardians of life refused me life insurance and my “score was too high” to be afforded health insurance.
My life as a person with lived experience (PWLE) improved despite the pain I carry from the continued bigotry I am made to experience.
While I remain supportive of using one’s voice for change, I am compelled also to caution about being open with lived mental health experience because it comes with severe hurt and constant exclusion.
I continue to speak of the meaningful support I have had, as well. But for now, this is my reflection as we mark World Mental Health Day, this Saturday (October 10), themed “Lived experiences heard: real voices, real change.”
October 10, 2026, is also the 100th anniversary of my mother’s birth. November marks 17 years since she died. I am because of her.
