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This is My Brave show participants warm up before rehearsing their acts at the BNH Stage on Thursday evening Credit: SRUTHI GOPALAKRISHNAN \/ Monitor staff<\/p>\nCynthia Whitaker sat alone on a bench at center stage, her face bathed in a warm glow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She had just begun to peel back the layers of her mental health journey when a gentle voice came from offstage, encouraging her to lift her gaze and look farther out, so her story could reach every corner of the room.<\/p>\n
On Thursday evening, Whitaker joined fellow performers at the Bank of New Hampshire Stage in Concord to rehearse for the National Alliance on Mental Illness\u2019 \u201cThis Is My Brave,\u201d a showcase scheduled for May 7, where participants share their personal experiences with mental health.<\/p>\n
For Whitaker, the president and chief executive officer of Greater Nashua Mental Health and Weare resident, the decision to bare her story was driven by a message she believes the mental health field itself has been too quiet about: that professionals who dedicate their lives to helping others are not immune to struggling themselves, and that asking for help doesn\u2019t make anyone any less fit to lead.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are in recovery and are CEOs all over the world,\u201d she said in an interview after her rehearsal. \u201cBut people haven\u2019t talked about it. So the stigma still exists when it is mental health for people in higher positions.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s show features nine performers. Four are mental health professionals. Two others work on the front lines of care in a different sense: a teacher and an EMT.<\/p>\n
Melissa Wieters, the show\u2019s director, said the mental health workers in this year\u2019s cast are showing others in their field that it\u2019s okay not to be okay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think when mental health professionals come forward and share the stories of their struggles and how they reached out for help,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re really opening the doors for other people to do the same thing, not just anybody in the community, but leaders and other professionals, people that are expected to be perfect all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is My Brave show participants warm up before rehearsing their acts at the BNH Stage on Thursday evening Credit: SRUTHI GOPALAKRISHNAN \/ Monitor staff<\/p>\n
From auditions through rehearsals to the final performance, counselors are available at every step of the process. For some participants, telling their story over and over again can feel like pressing on a bruise that never quite healed.<\/p>\n
Whitaker\u2019s path to this stage began with loss and pain accumulated over decades. At 26, she was in a car accident that left her unable to walk for months. At 39, she suffered the loss of twins during her pregnancy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each blow carved its own wound \u2014 nightmares, hypervigilance, avoidance and the full weight of symptoms that trail unprocessed trauma.<\/p>\n
Through all of it, she kept working and leading.<\/p>\n
She shared only fragments of what she was carrying, and even then, only rarely.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Next Thursday\u2019s performance will be the first time most of her colleagues learn that their leader, too, has been navigating her own mental health struggles and has been actively seeking help to manage them.<\/p>\n
The vulnerability of that revelation is written into her act. One of her lines cuts to the heart of the silence so many leaders maintain: \u201cWhat if they knew? Don\u2019t let them see you struggle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a little overwhelming,\u201d Whitaker said later. \u201cAt the same time, in my brain, I know that the people who do this work, and the people that are my colleagues, and my friends, are not going to think less of me, they\u2019re going to think more.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show weaves together narrative and poetry performances, and for most participants, the vulnerability of sharing the stories that broke them is only half the challenge. Many had never set foot on a stage before, or had a microphone clipped to their collar.<\/p>\n
Gina Rainone, 33, a nurse at Riverbend Community Mental Health Center, knows firsthand what it looks like when someone hits rock bottom. She has lived it. Her own struggles with substance use and mental illness landed her in emergency rooms, led to involuntary psychiatric admissions, and pulled her through some of the darkest chapters a person can face \u2014 homelessness, an abortion, and domestic violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She\u2019s turned her life around. Today, she is sober, grounded by therapy and yoga, and has a life she has painstakingly rebuilt.<\/p>\n
Rainone said she has been open with those close to her about her mental illness, but at work, she has kept those two lives carefully separated. Next week\u2019s performance is the first time she will let them converge.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like this would be a good opportunity to finally feel like I can share my story, and I\u2019ll be able to kind of combine those two lives,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m interested to see how my coworkers react, and what their interpretation of it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of the performances in the show are about more than just confessions.<\/p>\n
The community event seeks to challenge the narrative that mental illness so often carries\u2014 that it defines an identity rather than an illness, that it breeds isolation or signals an ending rather than a turning point.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can be a doctor. You can be a CEO, be a leader, do whatever,\u201d\u00a0 Whitaker said. \u201cBeing a trauma survivor doesn\u2019t disqualify you. It qualifies you differently.\u201d<\/p>\n
For more information, go to www.naminh.org\/timb<\/a>.<\/p>\n If you need help<\/p>\n