MY LIFE HAD unraveled so much. I was uncertain about my secular future as well as my Christian identity. Having denied the psychotherapist’s diagnosis of maturing bipolar disorder for so long, I finally acknowledged its accuracy. Then, I reasoned, If I internalize and implement effective strategies, I know the God I discovered in first grade will help me to enhance the quality of my life.

After being released from Wyman Park’s psychiatric unit, I contacted Elder Hickey and updated him regarding my recent psychiatric hospitalization. I almost begged him to resume the therapeutic process at Abundant Life Counseling Center where the driving principle was People Growing Toward Wholeness. When he agreed to pair his therapeutic acumen with my determination, somewhere in my spirit, I knew I would recover. I still had to convince my mind and my heart.

Returning for a second round of therapy, I was determined to destroy anything in my psyche that blocked my progress. If I could, I wanted to decrease the frequency and severity of my cycling. I had been episode-free for three years before I returned to this bottom. I had taken my medication as prescribed, had regular blood tests, and endured yearly extended urinalyses. And, of course, I had remained in my box.

The center now required clients’ medication management to be overseen by the staff psychiatrist, Dr. Smith. I agreed, knowing Elder Hickey’s pastoral care would excel any treatment the clinic had provided. I could say goodbye to the therapist whose tone I despised. Although I was resistant to therapy in 1983, I had learned Jim Hickey possessed the therapeutic capacity to see my potential and reflect confidence back to me. As he used this skill effectively, with my agreement to actively participate in the wellness process, my mental health was sure to improve.

Every Tuesday for more than two years, unless one of us was on vacation, Jim Hickey and I met, discussing topics I chose. Early on, we had to discuss the self-perceived negative impact I—that is, my illness—had placed on the Cole family.

Rather than impacting the world, as I had predicted in my senior essay before leaving Park, I worked in the acquisitions department at the JHU library. Not a menial job, but not what I felt called to do. My brother Martin once declared with disdain, “We wasted our money sending you to that school,” speaking of Wesleyan University. I retorted, “I don’t remember receiving any checks with your name on them while I was at school.” Although I had a comeback line, his statement reinforced my opinion that I had morphed from family academic superstar to family failure. And I really hadn’t drained my family financially. I had strained it emotionally.

I had developed an ugly duckling mindset concerning my role in the Cole family. Though it seems melodramatic to me now, while viewing myself through my periscope of hypersensitivity, I decided I was the defective sibling. Some days, deep within myself, I shouted, Do you think I like being crazy? During the therapeutic process, I learned to accept and love less than perfect me.

My emotional intelligence quotient needed a boost. Living in my box and wanting to avoid severe mood swings from elation to despair, I had locked myself into an unbalanced and unrealistically happy mood. Sadness, frustration, and anger became taboo emotions. It was important for me to learn how to regulate my feelings and my moods. I had to identify the emotions I had hidden under my salvation cloak of happy, happy joy. The most notable were fear, guilt, shame, and condemnation.

During my sessions with Elder Hickey I considered real-life scenarios, using a technique similar to theatrical scene study, whereby I forced myself to develop greater self-awareness. I acknowledged how positively my mother’s faith had impacted me. As Lena Younger told her daughter Beneatha in A Raisin in the Sun, “In my mother’s house, there is still God.”

Formalized Catholicism had provided a foundation for victorious living. Now understanding the Old Testament prohibition against praying to graven images, I no longer accessed God through dead saints. I now prayed to God through Jesus. Being a pastoral counselor, Jim Hickey opened and closed each of our sessions with prayer.

For a short time, he had me join a therapy group. I discontinued the process. I needed to focus my energies on regulating my own emotional health rather than entertaining and being drained by the spirit of depression that enveloped the group.

In one session, Elder Hickey asked me, “Charita, what do you really want to do?” Without hesitation, I replied, “I’d like to establish a Christian arts collective for youth. Besides studying vocal and instrumental music, they’d learn dance, drama with improvisation, and visual arts.” “Why haven’t you pursued that vision?” he asked. I had been living such a myopic Pentecostal lifestyle for so long, I no longer thought it was possible. Being an Apostolic pastor, Jim Hickey informed me that Pentecostal churches did exist in which members were encouraged to immerse themselves in the arts. “An abundant life includes more than eating, sleeping, going to work, going to church, and going home,” he declared. Since I’d received the Spirit of God in 1979, no preacher in the holiness churches I’d belonged to had embraced this opinion.

In more recent years, many congregations have updated their views concerning arts accessibility for born-again believers. Perhaps someday I will become involved in theater again. I would love to direct a play.

I had to explore my feelings about my parents’ marriage. I discovered I was angry with my mother for being too submissive to my dad. Although he provided financially, I felt nobody should endure emotional abuse. Though they were both part of the cycle, my reaction to what I had seen was a personal refusal to take crap from any man. As we explored my feelings, I was able to understand how unreasonable my expectations of my mother had been. Here was a woman, raised by an actively bipolar mother, who managed to keep her own family together. She was not going to abandon her children, nor did she expect us to abandon one another. I released the anger, realizing that Mama loved my siblings and me and made decisions concerning our well-being based on her personal evolution at any given time.

My Mama is an amazing woman.

I ACKNOWLEDGED MY parents’ love for me and accepted their interactions as unique to their relationship. I decided individual couples set the parameters for their relationships. A few years ago, I summoned enough courage to ask my elderly mother, “Why didn’t you leave Daddy?” She replied, “I had seven children.” I now understand that she, like my father, was committed to their marital relationship.

Because Elder Hickey was a pastoral counselor, we applied Biblical principles in my recovery process. He encouraged me to move beyond mental assent—knowing in my head that a scripture is true—to faith, personally applying the scriptures I read. In addition to traditional clinical conversational practices, he encouraged me to memorize specific scriptures, especially those that counterbalanced the fear I internalized and embraced in response to bipolar illness. I came to understand that I didn’t fear failure. I feared success. Finally realizing why I lived in a self-constructed box, I asked myself, do I possess the temerity to step out of my box?

By 1988, I formed a visual description of whom I had become: a faceless little girl in a yellow dress who had consigned herself to the west wing. In reality, the whole mansion and property belonged to her. For me, yellow was the color that symbolized hope. Even though my face was indistinct, it wasn’t distorted like the face of Merrick, the elephant man. I decided to embrace strength and move forward. Though it sounds trite, I had to figure out who I really was.

I noticed I had changed over the course of my illness. My former haughtiness had been replaced by humility and compassion. I figured nobody could exhibit the levels of out-of-control public mania I did and remain arrogant. Now, my interpersonal skills were even stronger than they had been in my Arts Circus days. Emotionally, I was developing both social expressiveness and social control.

It was most difficult for me to explore the shame I felt in the depressive phase of each episode, especially regarding the fiancé theme. I worked through a lot of psychic pain to ready myself for a loving relationship. As an eye-witness to my parents’ in-fighting, I had grown reluctant to surrender control in a relationship. No man was going to boss me around. I finally understood what a young man in my college class was seeing in me in 1977 when he asserted, “Charita, you intimidate guys.” I learned to allow myself to appear more vulnerable.

Toward the end of the therapeutic process, the unboxed me was forced to discover I was not as open to having a husband in real life as my delusional reveries suggested.