DEPARTMENTS: FINE & PERFORMING ARTS
by bill wells
Director of Student Promotion
Fine & Performing Arts Jacey Regalado ’21 ‘not alone’ in her message Jacey Regalado ’21 had a message she wanted to deliver to the world. With the help of Wilbraham & Monson Academy, she did so. After completing her Novel Writing class at the Academy, Jacey self-published “High to Death,” a 33,000-word fictional piece about a high school student’s struggles with mental health and drug addiction. “I choose to write about drug abuse and mental illness because in the world I grew up in they went hand in hand,” Jacey explained. “People with really severe mental illness would turn a lot to drugs as an escape. “I grew up in a really wealthy community and the majority of the kids around me were raised by their nannies with their parents constantly gone, and enormous amounts of money at their fingertips. In such a lonely world, or out of boredom or curiosity, whatever it was they would try drugs, and with that later would come mental health struggles. I wanted to write something that could help anyone know they are not alone, with whatever they may be struggling with.” Jacey said her biggest obstacle while writing the novel was “a bit of self-judgment. While writing the book, I felt almost hypocritical of myself because a lot of the time I gathered passages from my own diary of all the pain I had felt in the past. Putting it into words was emotionally draining; passages from years ago and trying to think if I was even following the message I was trying to portray in my own book. It was definitely a journey of self-growth.” Jacey received her book in hand in May. A ceremony was held a week later on the porch of the Athenaeum to celebrate her accomplishment.
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