I attended the Milwaukee (AREA) Time Exchange pot-luck and orientation last night at the Highland Commons apartment building on Beloit Rd. and 67th Street in West Allis. Highland Commons is a building dedicated to providing housing for persons with mental illness issues. It was very interesting to participate in the event because it included residents and people from the wider community. The interesting thing was trying to figure out who had mental illnesses and who did not. This was interesting to me on two levels: 1) I found the sorting harder than I expected, 2) I had to recognize the fact I was actively engaged in sorting “us” from “them”, something I’d rather not admit to doing.
In some cases it was clear that one or another of the people at the gathering had challenges that kept them from focusing or tracking their thoughts efficiently. In most cases, however, the people were just people who were talking about the gifts they had to share and the things they could use a little help with. I quickly realized my ability to determine who May, or May not, have some sort of mental illness was very limited.
I found myself wondering why this exercise of figuring out who has a mental illness was important to me. I quickly recognized the exercise only got in the way of my being present to the people in the room. I also realized that the people who did not engage in this sorting exercise got the most from the time we had together.
One of the most enduring memories of the evening will be that of John, one of my cohorts on the time exchange Inclusion Team. John is developmentally delayed and is generally very quiet and subdued. That was not the case last night. John was transformed from “a disabled person” to just another soft-spoken person in a room full of good people. I’ve never seen John so happy and energetic. The very sad thing is John didn’t change, just the context changed.
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