WELLNESS EDUCATION
PROVIDING COMMUNITY WIDE EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMMING TO INCREASE KNOWLEDGE AND REDUCE STIGMA but I never actually told people what I experienced during my mental health problems. A friend of mine encouraged me to audition for This Is My Brave. I auditioned twice for the show in the Boston area. However, the Concord, NH show was the one that delivered for me. I was debating whether to audition a third time but then before the deadline, some driving force came upon me to audition. To be honest, I wrote my piece for the audition at the last moment. It was maybe a couple of days before the audition. “Canadian Goose”
A PUPPETEER’S DESCRIPTION OF DISCLOSING HER MENTAL HEALTH PROBLEMS TERESA MOLER, 2018 CAST MEMBER, THIS IS MY BRAVE NH Being a person with mental health struggles since I was a young child, I decided when I was in my twenties that when and if I reached recovery, I would want to share my story with others. I was told many times not to tell others that I had a mental health problem, so when I saw later in life that other people had this same problem and it was causing a problem in society, I decided to start disclosing my illness. At first I was picky with whom I told and started out by saying I had a disability. Later I would get more specific and say I had a mental health problem. As I got more comfortable I would say I had schizophrenia. This lasted for a while. I would not disclose what kind of specific symptoms I had. I would advocate for more mental health solutions,
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2019 ANNUAL REPORT
I was determined to get feedback on it before the audition. A friend agreed to listen to my audition and was really moved by my piece. That gave me the confidence to share it at my audition. I am a puppeteer and artist among other interests. I was informed of an art showcase in conjunction with Riverbend’s Mental Health Awareness Month. I had been in several art shows but never had put it in the perspective of mental health. I wrote the captions for my art work in relation to my mental health and my recovery. I have been performing puppet shows since I was 9. Puppetry is the passion of my life. So one could imagine that when my puppets started to become so real that they wrote the scripts and entered into my body and I started think I was one of my characters and talked like one, that I would be hesitant to share this with the public. I would imagine that the public would have thought that they would not want me to do puppet shows for them with this condition.
