Tuesday, January 19, 2010

A Little History First...


1/17/10

For quite some time I have been wondering just how to write about my mother, Treasure Rice. She had so much experience and wisdom from a well-lived, long life. She used that life to learn more about herself, raise a family, be a great wife to an adoring husband and try in the best way she knew, to help alleviate the suffering of people with some form of mental or emotional stress/disorders. Call it what you will, but it is all suffering when one experiences a “break-down”, panic, or has some nervous/mental illness or brain disease. There continues to be new descriptive words for so many maladies. When Mom first put her toe in this water, she was indeed what was once called a “psychoneurotic.” I know she had depression, anxiety and other difficulties. In Recovery terms, she called herself a “nervous patient.” It was in 1947 her life came to a head. According to the therapists she was consulting, the outlook was bleak for her. She even began to wonder if it was time to give up. Then, for her, a miracle happened. She discovered Abraham Low, MD, a neuropsychiatrist in Chicago who told her she could get well! He was developing a system that was helping others and would help her. That was the big moment. The turning point in her life that would come to help not only herself, her family, but thousands of people over time.

Much has been written by Dr. Low and can be viewed and bought on the Abraham Low Self-Help Systems web site. There is also a biography, My Dear Ones. It gives a lot of Dr. Low’s story and some of mother’s story as well.

This blog will have the purpose of sharing with you, my family, friends or those who are seeking to evolve, mother’s words that she passed on to me and to others. Some come directly from what Dr. Low told her and some from what she learned. She was very good at synthesizing both information and experience and then sharing it through both her own words and being an example of how one might “be.”

There is at present, no order to the letters I’m sharing, but I hope I can glean something more than memories and lessons. Hopefully some of her essence will flow to you as well. I will try to keep each entry short with a hint in the title of what she wrote.

I will also share my own experience of having panics, anxiety, depression and how I handled it and who helped. Of course this is a lifetime of learning, so, as the saying goes, “the beat goes on”. After I had my breakdown, Mom was telling me one day about how after practicing and integrating the Recovery system, we are often better than we were before we broke. I recall her saying Dr. Low said through our practice we were a human beings "plus." Please remember that when I say something like "I recall", that, it is going back many, many years and certainly is not anything authoritative! This blog may look and feel different, but I hope it will be of some interest or help to the reader. It has been so interesting for me to "recover" my mother in her letters. The name of the blog "recoveringtreasure" is a play on both of our names and our inner work. So here it goes!


3 comments:

  1. Well Treasure Ann you have a follower. I am looking forward to hearing more. Joe

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  2. As a long time recovery "user", I attented my first meeting in Brighten at the home of your mother, Treasure Rice. I then went on to the Jewish Community Center in Southfield- attended there for a year, and was given another lease on life. Thanks to your mother, I found a way to deal with my own mental illness.

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  3. Thank you for sharing that Tina!! I remember those home meetings in the early days.

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