Death, Wildie & Geese

My friend Ellen and I were talking about a Facebook post I read in a group of parents whose kids are in treatment. A common complaint amongst this group is that their friends and families don't understand why they are shipping their beloved children off to sleep on the ground and shit in the woods with a group of strangers in the middle of the Southwest U.S.. I told Ellen I was lucky that my friends, family and acquaintances all seem to understand why I needed to send the Boy away.

Ellen said only one person--her financial planner who was helping her sort out the money for sending her daughter to Wildie--gave her grief about sending her daughter away.

"He asked me how I could send her off," Ellen said. "How could I not? She was going to die."

Now that the Boy is settled, I can more clearly see what I was trying so hard to avoid acknowledging: the Boy might die if I didn't get him help.

As much as I saw the potentially suicidal behavior from my son, it was hard to know if these were chronic feelings on his part or if they were occasional and fleeting thoughts. Twice, I was told the Boy might die by outsiders. First, his psychiatrist. I once asked if we should tell the Boy he needs to go to school if he wants us to take him skiing.

"Skiing might be the only thing keeping him alive," she said.

The second time was from my friend who suffers from anxiety and depression himself. Since he is an adult versus a teen, he generally has more insight into his illness than the Boy does.* Last spring when I told him that the Boy hasn't gone to school for four or five months, he fire hosed me for an hour about how the Boy needed to break the cycle of inertia. The sentences that haunts me are:

"You are at work all day, leaving him alone. You don't know how dark his thoughts are."

I know I have written about this before, but this is from a general diagnosis perspective instead of from acknowledging my own kid had a problem. In short: if you think your kid is going to die from untreated addiction or anxiety and depression, the treatment is Wilderness.

I was talking to another friend recently--I can't remember who--but she had assumptions about the type of parents who send their kids to Wilderness therapy.

"They are probably kind of disorganized," she said. "They might have a lot of problems themselves. You know--drugs, can't hold a job." In short, she thought these parents were the dregs.

"No," I said. "I've met these parents who send their kids to these programs. Sure, some of them might be slightly neurotic, but having a kid who is off the rails can do that to a person.

"But otherwise, if you took a picture of the families at the Boy's Wilderness program, the parents at Roosevelt, the parents at Lakeside and the parents at the Boy's boarding school, you wouldn't be able to tell them apart."

Which brings me back to my friend with depression and anxiety. We were at lunch and he said, "I've watched a lot of nature shows. I've seen the animals live and die. How are we different from geese?"

How are we different from geese? What makes me--an educated, affluent woman living in one of the most beautiful cities in the world--different so much so that I should be protected from the aspects of life that are determined by nature?

Or I could think of it from a different perspective. Last night I saw Parasite with some friends. "Money is an iron," said one of the characters. "It gets rid of the wrinkles." It can get rid of the wrinkles, but doesn't promise that the wrinkles won't appear in the first place. Wilderness therapy and boarding schools are irons that we are using to get the Boy the help he needs, to smooth out the wrinkles so that someday he might become a vibrant, engaged and beautiful adult.



* That may be changing as the Boy is in residential treatment. The Boy is gaining insights every day about himself.