Please pray if you are religious or send encouraging thoughts to Ember, a friend of mine, community member on Glow, and fellow "survivor" (see my post Survivors Unite! In Woman for Mental Illness group for more explanation of what a survivor is). 

The odds, like some of us with mental illness, seem stacked against her. Her background is filled with tragedy, neglect, and abuse by her family and some other people she's come into contact with. She feels she has no access to help and like many people with untreated mental illness, is in desperate need of support. She had to be hospitalized and her mother in particular wasn't helping things. For whatever reason, her mother refuses to see her as ill. That is where you come in. 

We need to make her realize that it's ok to open up about mental illness to her personal friends and people at her church. We need to tell her that her mental health is worth more than all the high school diplomas that, for whatever reason, her mother seems to care for rather than for Ember's health. Her family cannot or will not give her the care she so clearly needs. 

Mental illness, like any other illness, can be treated but it cannot be fought alone! Who's willing to help give her the encouragement in her hour of need? Who's with me?!