Marion's Story

Let's see.... I am a 35 year old African American woman. I have a 14 year old daughter who is in junior high school. I have a Bachelor's Degree in Social Work. I almost have a Master's, but I never finished it. That was three years ago. I started working for Dickinson Mental Health Center as a clinical social worker back then. I left that job last year, when things started getting kind of bad. I had been misdiagnosed, and my medication was all wrong, so it got hard to do the job. I don't miss struggling with all the paperwork, but I do miss working with the children at the Center.

My Disability

I have Manic-Depressive Disorder, also known as Bi-Polar Disorder. Initially I was diagnosed 9 years ago with a Major Depression. That's what I was treated for - but since it wasn't the right diagnosis, life went downhill from there. Last year I got the correct diagnosis, and since then we've been fiddling around with medications to get me stabilized. So these days I'm pretty much stabilized.

 People With Disabilities are People First

 I want to convey the message that people with disabilities are just like everybody else. We can live happy and successful lives. Which doesn't mean we are problem free - but we're normal, if you want to use that term. We deserve the same amount of respect. If you want to know how to treat someone with a disability, then think how you would want to be treated, and treat them accordingly. If you're wondering whether to help push their wheelchair, or help them get up, or whatever - the biggest thing is to ask them. Everyone has flaws, these are just different ones.

Always remember the person first. I am not a bi-polar disorder. I am Marion. It is just a part of me, but not who I am. The person comes first.

There are stigmas attached to various disabilities. With mental illness, there's that label of being crazy or violent, or not able to think. The majority of people with mental illnesses are victims, not perpetrators. It's the perpetrators who get violent. I am not crazy. I can think. I can be stabilized. With most mental illnesses, people can be stabilized.

Growing Up

When I was about three, back in Milwaukee, my brother and I (he's a year older than me) were given up to foster care. We lived in various homes and children's shelters, about nine or ten of them. We experienced physical and verbal abuse, and then we landed in our last foster home. When I was nine, I had a foster Mom who was a school teacher, and she caught us up in school. I stayed there until I was eighteen. I was very skinny, kept to myself, didn't have friends, cried all the time and was a bed wetter. At that time no one was giving children therapy for physical abuse, like they do now. I had a lot of issues no one knew about when I was nine. My foster care Mom handled me through sarcasm about wetting the bed and the crying. No support.

I remember being sent to the principal to sit until I felt better, and staring out the windows in classes crying. I think I was looking for my natural mother. I kind of remember having some sort of psychological testing as a child. My foster Mom told me that they said I was feeble minded - that's what they called it in those days. She told my brother and me how lucky we were because we could have been sent to some group home, far way, for years and years.

There was plenty of food and clothing, which I appreciated, but it wasn't nurturing. There were other foster kids in and out of the home, and they had three kids of their own. No one paid attention that Marion wasn't well. I tried to commit suicide as a child - in a childlike way. I knew that you could die by eating spoiled food. So I took the mayonnaise and hid it under my bed and waited. When it had gone bad, I tried eating it, but never got sick. When I was trained as a child therapist, I learned that this was a serious cry for help.

I made friends, but they weren't close, and my Mom didn't encourage us to do any activities, even though my gym teacher encouraged me to go out for track. The bedwetting continued until I was sixteen or so, and the tearfulness continued, and then I finally moved out of there when I was eighteen.

My natural brother, he decided to deal with it through turning to a life of crime and running away from home. Last we heard, about five years ago, he was in California. He was never was close to me - he considered me "Miss Goody Two Shoes". The last time we got together he tried to steal my stereo equipment, but then decided just to ask for money.

Adult Life

I found my natural family when I was 25. My father used to live in Minnesota, but he died a year later of hardening of the arteries. I got a call from my uncle in Oakland, telling me my family was here in Missouri. Then I came here and met a knucklehead that I thought would be a good husband. I married him, thinking it would be great to hang around where my family was. But he was an ogre. He finally left after two years, and good riddance. Here I am, still here. He's gone, but I stayed.

My family here was raised up in a city that had, until recently, been real prejudiced on the basis of race. The family has been here for generations - my aunts, their kids, and their kids' kids are here. Their attitudes don't change, so when I came down here, I faced issues of long held beliefs about racism. It really didn't exist where I was raised. I found myself different. My family had different values from me, different ways of dress, different child raising practices. I am the different one in my family.

I attempted suicide with some pills in my cousin's medicine cabinet 9 years ago - that's when they diagnosed the major depression. They tried to treat me with anti-depressants, but they never worked. Of course now I know they were the wrong drugs. It's common with manic-depression, usually they diagnose you with major-depression or schizophrenia. It usually takes eight years to get a correct diagnosis.

  Learning About VR

I was first referred to Vocational Rehabilitation back in 1988 when I was hospitalized at Dickinson Mental Health Center after that suicide attempt. While I was on the ward, a social worker told me about the Vocational Rehab program. Even though I had already studied social work in school, I had never heard of Vocational Rehabilitation so I didn't really have any idea of what VR did except. I told the social worker I was interested. Then this guy, Darren, just showed up to visit me in my room.

He explained some of what VR was all about and about eligibility and different services and such.

VR, is pretty easy to understand. VR assists people with disabilities to achieve employment and independent living. It's run under a federal law, the Rehabilitation Act, which has regulations that spell out the rules the State VR Agency must operate under to get federal funds.

Hearing this made me very excited that I could continue my education. I felt like, when I walked out of there, I could have a good plan for my life. I hadn't been sure I would be able to go back to school.

 The rehabilitation process starts with a referral of the person with a disability to a local VR office. That referral can come from the person themselves, their parents, teachers, doctors - anybody. I was basically refering myself.

Darren told me that I would have to go through the procedure to establish my eligibility to get VR services. That includes a review and assessment of medical and psychological records, getting to know the person's circumstances, and generally trying to figure out if VR services can assist in achieving an employment outcome.

I had to go through some neuropsych testing for my educational abilities and stuff to establish my eligibility. We got copies of my transcripts from the Wisconsin Community College. Then I went through the testing. At the next appointment I had with him, I asked, "Well, do the tests show that I have the ability to continue in school?" And he said, "You have the ability to do anything you want to!" That was really uplifting. Then we talked more about not just getting the bachelor's degree, but getting the master's degree. He was saying, "If you want that, you should go for that now." Until then, I hadn't planned on more than that. He kind of planted the idea.

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