There must be a place to ac­knowl­edge some mo­ments when liv­ing open­ly with a men­tal health di­ag­no­sis was not a neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. In the over­whelm­ing hurt that prej­u­dice, mis­in­for­ma­tion, ig­no­rance and stig­ma in­flict, this is a space cu­rat­ed to ho­n­our that.

It does not men­tion every­one sim­ply be­cause there is a space/word lim­it.

As a per­son with lived ex­pe­ri­ence (PWLE), or an ex­pert by ex­pe­ri­ence, there are times when liv­ing open­ly, as the World Men­tal Health Day 2026 theme sug­gests, did not neg­a­tive­ly af­fect my thriv­ing. On some oc­ca­sions, when it was im­por­tant, there were peo­ple who pro­vid­ed the need­ed safe­ty and re­as­sur­ances.

It is a fact that our minds are in con­stant neg­a­tive de­fault, pay­ing more at­ten­tion to threats, dan­gers, re­al or per­ceived, and neg­a­tive ex­pe­ri­ences. That de­fault is dis­cussed wide­ly in avail­able lit­er­a­ture.

The con­scious re­fram­ing nec­es­sary to em­brace pos­i­tiv­i­ty and not see every­thing (or every­one) as black or white is a dai­ly on­go­ing ex­er­cise for me, as my mind quick­ly runs to worst-out­come sce­nar­ios for even the slight­est oc­cur­rence.

I have tak­en to writ­ing “in­ci­dent re­ports.” Then, in point form, I list my feel­ings about the ex­pe­ri­ence. Af­ter, I write a prac­tice re­sponse to the in­ci­dent or per­son ap­ply­ing calm thoughts, prayers and bib­li­cal tenets too, all to counter my own cog­ni­tive dis­tor­tions.

Those de­lib­er­ate ac­tions help me dis­til the al­most al­ways au­to­mat­ic realm of see­ing, or feel­ing, the worst in every sit­u­a­tion. It is te­dious work, but it con­tin­ues to help me avoid im­broglios over things am­pli­fied to a cat­a­stro­phe in my mind.

In these lat­er years, I am em­brac­ing the pa­tience of wait­ing un­til my thoughts are not clam­our­ing be­fore ad­dress­ing sit­u­a­tions. In­stead of writ­ing a re­sponse to some­thing or send­ing a voice note im­me­di­ate­ly at the ruf­fling of the feath­ers, I am now bet­ter able to ap­ply the pause.

The pause asks: who is re­spond­ing? and ques­tions whether it is the reg­u­lat­ed mind or the ruf­fled feath­ers.

But long be­fore these sober un­der­tak­ings, when, I sur­mise, I must have been at what may be con­sid­ered the most un­bear­able, I met peo­ple who took time to un­der­stand my is­sues and nev­er pre­clud­ed me from the ex­pe­ri­ence or from the cir­cle.

Way be­fore I could rep­re­sent my­self as well as I do now, I met Hal­cy­on Lawrence, a younger woman with an un­usu­al ca­pac­i­ty.

In 2023, over 30 years af­ter we met and up­on her sud­den demise from ad­vanced can­cer, memo­ri­al­is­ing her as Dr Lawrence, a then as­so­ciate pro­fes­sor at Tow­son

Uni­ver­si­ty, I re­mem­bered say­ing her com­pas­sion for me and what­ev­er I was go­ing through in the ear­ly 1990s helped me ac­cept the love that I had al­ways been told God had for mankind – for me, re­al­ly (www.tow­son.edu/news/2024/hal­cy­on-lawrence-lega­cyandim­pact).

Way be­fore I knew what I now know, I en­coun­tered en­tre­pre­neur and at­tor­ney-at-law Al­li­son De­mas, now lead­ing the firm Me­dia In­Site.

I re­call a “bat­tle” with an­oth­er con­sul­tant that she had to me­di­ate and when we were able to speak of the in­ci­dent lat­er, she in­di­cat­ed to me how frus­trat­ed she felt at my un­re­lent­ing wran­gling.

If she felt any­thing else in those high­ly un­reg­u­lat­ed days, she must have over­looked it be­cause, for years, she em­braced my cre­ativ­i­ty and “mar­ket­ing ge­nius,” she said.

De­mas al­lowed me op­por­tu­ni­ties to serve at the Copy­right Or­gan­i­sa­tion of T&T in vary­ing ca­pac­i­ties as board di­rec­tor, me­dia and mar­ket­ing con­sul­tant, and more. We did beau­ti­ful work and I nev­er re­call be­ing made to feel guilty if man­ag­ing a day of odd moods de­layed work or re­quired couch re­cov­ery.

At the state-owned en­er­gy com­pa­ny, my penul­ti­mate work con­tract in T&T, in the ear­ly 2000s, there were two hu­man re­source per­son­nel, di­rec­tor and man­ag­er, who ex­celled in hu­man­ness and in HR.

Coreen Jones-Robin­son and Lennon Lash­ley both man­aged my health is­sues with del­i­cate in­ter­ven­tions to en­sure both my self-care and high-lev­el pro­duc­tion. They re­main cham­pi­ons of my work life ex­pe­ri­ence.

But board di­rec­tor at that state en­ter­prise, the late Magna Williams-Smith, who sat with me, see­ing how the stress of the work­place would un­rav­el me some days, made a re­al dif­fer­ence to the en­tire tra­jec­to­ry of my heal­ing jour­ney.

She, like oth­ers, val­ued the ex­per­tise that I brought to re­brand­ing and reimag­ing the com­pa­ny. She, like all oth­ers, knew that I would not miss a psy­chi­atric coun­selling ap­point­ment un­less there was a com­pa­ny emer­gency.

Be­ing a qual­i­fied med­ical pro­fes­sion­al, she took time to sit with me and make sug­ges­tions about man­ag­ing my well-be­ing. In her view, I need­ed to con­tin­ue to pri­ori­tise my care, but she al­so di­rect­ed me to a physi­cian who would make the great­est dif­fer­ence in man­ag­ing my men­tal health.

There were oth­ers from my life to whom I re­main grate­ful be­cause they re­spect­ed my re­al voice and af­ford­ed me the love and sup­port need­ed in dif­fer­ent sea­sons: the late Ald­wyn Collins, Judy Ray­mond, Deb­o­rah Mills, Pa­tri­cia Bethel, Babu Ketema, the late artist/po­et LeRoy Clarke and a few more good men and women.

I am grate­ful for those who al­lowed/al­low me to be re­al and the space to make re­al changes in this ragged, un­ac­cept­ing world.