Address to open Western CT State University's Social Work Professional Development Day

Good morning! It is a pleasure and an honor to be with you to kick off this day of professional development. I hope that the day ahead is educational, inspiring and renewing.

I was asked to speak to you this morning on your theme of mental health: why it’s important, the challenges, and what’s being done. It’s a big assignment and as I thought about how to tackle that assignment, I arrived at a theme of my own – stories.

In this room, we probably all have some familiarity with the numbers. You may not be as surprised as the general public to learn that almost 19% of CT adults experienced some form of mental illness in the past year, or that suicide is the 10^th leading cause death in our nation and the second leading cause of death for people ages 10 – 34. You might not even be surprised to learn that more people die by suicide in our country now than in car accidents or that suicide deaths account for the majority of deaths by firearms in our country.

You undoubtedly know that since the closing of CT’s public mental hospitals, many too many people with mental illness wind up in prison, homeless shelters, or on the street, without access to treatment and support services that would help them recover. It won’t surprise you that 64.2% of adult inmates have a mental disorder, but that fewer than half of them receive any treatment; or that 39% of homeless individuals report some form of mental illness and 20 – 25% meet the criteria for serious mental illness.

 

These are compelling statistics to be sure. However, I have found that the most powerful data about mental health comes in the form of stories. And it occurred to me that as social workers, you are collectors and brokers of stories. You extract stories, aggregate stories, shape stories and advocate with stories. So let me add some to your collection.

I was invited to speak to you about mental health because this past spring, Fairfield County’s Community Foundation published a report called Healthy Minds, Healthy Communities. There is a story behind this report, and it actually goes back to December 14, 2012. I’m quite sure I don’t have to tell you the significance of that date. The tragedy that struck Sandy Hook that day rocked our entire nation. In response to that tragedy, President Obama issued a call for a National Dialogue on Mental Health, an initiative to convene community conversations all around the country to gather stories that highlighted the barriers and strengths of the mental health response, and encourage communities at all levels to take action that would bring change and improvement.

At the Community Foundation we wanted to answer that call and we reached out to the Southwest Regional Mental Health Board to help. They brought together some community partners and with a small grant from the Community Foundation, trained facilitators and began convening community conversations all across coastal Fairfield County throughout the fall of 2013. Healthy Minds, Healthy Communities summarizes the findings from those community conversations.

Conversations were held in urban and suburban areas, in homeless shelters and in senior centers. We had groups that reached Spanish speakers, shelter residents, and LGBTQ youth. But despite the diversity of the groups that we brought together, the stories that emerged were strikingly similar and 5 major themes emerged.

The first theme that emerged was the need for increased awareness and understanding of the signs and symptoms of mental illness. The stories went something like this, “I realize now that I was struggling with depression, but when I got caught using drugs and alcohol in high school, my parents thought I was being a rebellious teen.” One group summed it up like this, “Our parents, teachers and administrators, and children are struggling to understand and address mental illness…we recognize the need to provide our community and schools with education to understand and address mental health.” A social worker participating in one of our groups said, “There needs to be intervention in the school system. People need to stop looking away or saying, ‘It’s not my business.’”

Recommendations for addressing this challenge included awareness building activities like mental health fairs; training programs, like QPR (Question, Persuade and Refer) and Mental Health First Aid; and increased early detection and access to care through schools and doctors. School-based health centers, which operate in 22 CT communities, including Bridgeport, Danbury, Norwalk and Stamford were recognized as an excellent model for increasing access to behavioral healthcare for children and youth.

The second common theme in the conversations was the need for increased awareness of how to seek help. How many of you in the audience know what 211 is? Well, for those of you who don’t, you are in good company. 211 is CT’s 24 hour information line. It is a resource for finding community-based mental health, substance abuse and other services and supports and it is also the most expedient way to access mobile crisis services for both children and adults. Yet, the majority of participants in our community conversations had never heard of it. I could fill the rest of my time with stories of caregivers who struggled first to find any treatment, then struggled to find the right treatment, and then struggled to find treatment they could afford. In all of these stories, parents and caregivers felt like pioneers, forging new frontiers to ask questions and mine for information, as if no one had ever faced a challenge like theirs in the history of mankind. 

Our groups actually set right to work on this challenge. As a result of the conversations, some towns have already begun efforts to increase the visibility of 211 on all town websites and public information, and to develop their own lists of local mental health resources. Just this fall, the Southwest Regional Mental Health Board launched its new web resource targeting teens and young adults called TurningPointCT.org and Laurel House in Stamford is in the process of launching Resources to Recover: RtoR.org, a website where people can educate themselves about various diagnoses, find information about treatment options, and get provider recommendations from the people who know them best – their patients.

The third theme that came out of the conversations was the need for increased availability of services and providers who were equipped to meet the unique needs of diverse populations. Depending on who was in the group, different needs emerged. Young people and parents from suburban towns focused on needing a release from the pressure cooker environment in their towns. Our Hispanic participants shared that their linguistic and cultural differences compounded their feelings of isolation. One of our Spanish-speaking participants described waiting two hours for mental health services at a hospital, only to finally meet with an employee who was Spanish-speaking, but not a clinician. Despite the fact that Hispanic teens have higher rates of suicide and eating disorders than their peers, participants felt that schools were inadequately equipped to respond to them in a culturally sensitive manner. LGBTQ participants pointed to a dearth of affirming providers, and noted that the isolation that they face is often compounded when they have another marginalizing factor, like race, language, culture, age or citizenship status. Senior citizens noted that factors like physical disability, immobility, and loss of social networks contributed to the high rates of depression and substance abuse experienced amongst older Americans.

The recommendations from these groups focused on promoting connectedness, increasing access to culturally sensitive and affirming providers, and removing other barriers to care, such as linguistic, transportation or accessibility barriers.

The fourth theme in the conversations was the need to increase access to quality care. While public and private mental health resources exist throughout Fairfield County, participants in our conversations noted multiple barriers to access, including a shortage of Intensive Outpatient Programs, long waiting lists, scarce services and support groups for young adults, shortages of school social workers and school psychologists, shortages of psychiatrists, and shortages of bilingual providers. You’re getting into the right field.

It will come as no surprise that affordability was identified as a huge barrier to treatment. While mental health parity is law at both the national and state levels, it is clearly NOT a reality. Caregivers in our conversations told stories of agonizing over having to choose a less effective treatment option or provider, or worse yet, no treatment, because of insurance or financial constraints. I spoke to a caregiver just recently who told me about a conversation she had with her insurance company. The company would only pay $3,000 of the $65,000 charged for the residential treatment required by her seriously mentally ill child. When she challenged them on it, the customer service representative said, “Well, he didn’t appear to be a threat to himself or others. If he had killed himself or someone else, we would have covered it.” I wish I was making that up.

That story highlights another part of the parity problem that goes way beyond what insurance does and does not cover. Unlike physical illness, with mental illness, it’s not enough that you are suffering and in pain. Your pain and suffering isn’t judged to be real until it is causing visible, tangible damage to your life or the lives of others. At a recent public hearing to inform the development of an integrated behavioral health plan, parents stood up one after another to share the stories of their struggles to get attention for their children. “I knew something was wrong, but the professionals kept telling me it was normal,” one said. “As long as she was doing okay in school, nobody really cared about our concerns,” another commented. Can you imagine a doctor discovering an outwardly imperceptible tumor and saying, “You know what? I can’t really see that without an MRI. Let’s wait to treat that until it’s really big and painful.”  Why do we tolerate mental suffering to a degree that we do not tolerate physical suffering? We’ll return to this question.

And here’s yet another perspective on the parity problem. The graph you are looking at

 displays the change in the number of deaths from 2000-2010 for 6 of the top 10 causes of death in the United States. You can see that for 5 out of the 6, deaths declined - from a whopping 42% for HIV/AIDS to a modest 2% for breast cancer. However, during that same period, deaths by suicide INCREASED by 31%.

This next graph shows NIH research dollars in millions for these same six causes of death for the period from 2009-2012. Do you notice anything? For HIV/AIDS, a disease on which we have spent upwards of $12 billion on research over three years, we are realizing that stunning 42% decline in the number of deaths. By comparison, the investment in suicide research isn’t even in the same order of magnitude as the other leading causes of death – only $165 million over 3 years. And the result? An equally stunning 31% INCREASE in the number of deaths. How do we tolerate this?

Fortunately, there is some movement at the state and national level that offers promise for system-wide change. At the national level there is the recent passage of the Excellence in Mental Health Act which represents the greatest federal investment in community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment in history and helps insure access to quality, effective services for people who did not have access before. Congress also recently passed provisions of the MODDERN Cures Act, which will allow providers to quickly begin using diagnostics that can dramatically improve the safety and effectiveness of prescribing psychiatric medications. And, we have seen increased funding for the National Violent Death Reporting System. Up until recently this uniform reporting system was only being implemented in 18 states. With the recently approved $7.5 million increase, the system will now be implemented in 32 states, including CT. Why is this important? Almost every major cause of death has a system in place for uniformly collecting comprehensive data about deaths by that illness. That data has been the foundation that has helped to inform the incredible advancements we have seen in cancer treatment, heart disease, HIV/AIDS and other illnesses. The National Violent Death Reporting System will help us to get that data for suicide deaths. 

At the state level the Young Adult Behavioral Health Services Task Force is studying the provision of mental health and addiction services in the state, with a focus on services for people ages 16-25; and last year the legislature directed the Department of Children and Families to produce a comprehensive, integrated behavioral health plan for CT’s children. A draft of that plan was released just last week and the plan will be finalized this fall.

The last and perhaps the most consistent theme across our conversations was the need to erase the damaging stigma faced by people who suffer from mental illness and their caregivers; and in my humble opinion, this is a big part of what drives the parity problem.  Time and time again, participants told stories about how the stigma surrounding mental illness kept them from seeking treatment, or reaching out to others for support and encouragement. I know it also keeps people from advocating for change. One mother said, “For me, I would scream from the rooftops to get help for my daughter. But I know for her, if she knew other people heard about her struggles, it would be devastating, because the stigma is there and people can be so cruel.”

Other conversation participants talked about the media’s part in perpetuating the stigma that surrounds mental illness. A Stratford teenager said, “The media does not portray what someone who is mentally ill is really like. They will portray a serial killer and not talk about problems that many people can relate to.” A mother described how that stereotype of mental illness affected her personally, when she made the decision to send her teenage son to a residential facility – a difficult decision she made in consultation with a psychiatrist who had followed him for many years. “There is a perception of mental illness that you’re ‘off the charts,’” she said. “Because his symptoms didn’t manifest externally, parents and others in the community would come up to me and tell me they didn’t agree with my decision.” Little did they know that her son was having suicidal thoughts.

A number of awareness campaigns at both the state and national level are trying to get at this issue of stigma. The Jed Foundation, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, The Trevor Project and other organizations have national campaigns aimed at reducing stigma, increasing awareness, and increasing help-seeking behaviors. Hartford Hospital has launched a “Stop the Stigma” campaign and a Wilton student, Isabel Zayas, started a local chapter of the national Let’s Erase the Stigma campaign at Wilton High School.

At the heart of the most successful of these campaigns are the stories: real, unembellished, and heartbreakingly common. And we all have one. Yes, all of us. Given the incidence of mental illness in our country, it’s pretty safe to say that if you haven’t experienced some form of mental illness yourself, you know and love someone who has.

I have a story, too. My connection to this issue pre-dates the headline grabbing tragedy at Sandy Hook. Mine is one of the overlooked stories. It is the story of my beautiful, smart, and multi-talented teenage daughter, Emma, who struggled to give voice to her troubled inner life. Together, we looked for help from doctors, therapists, teachers and guidance counselors, only to be told her issues were “typical teenage stuff” and “normal teenage stress.” When her grades began to drop significantly in her junior year of high school, teachers and her therapist were unalarmed and unresponsive. Her pediatrician was blasé about the impact of a hormonal disorder that was keeping her from getting periods, causing weight gain, and was known to cause depression. Her mostly silent struggle ended five days before her 17^th birthday when she took her life. My life ended that day, too. Or at least my life as I had known it.

You see, when it comes to mental illness, our biggest failing as a nation is that we have failed to accurately tally the devastating cost of letting these diseases go unfettered. We have failed to add up the cost of lives lost, of lives shattered, and of lives spent in the shadows.  If we think we can’t afford to solve this problem, we should take stock of the price we are already paying.

But, you all know this, I suspect. People don’t often come to the profession of social work without a story of their own. I’m guessing that behind the passion for change and for helping others that each of you is going to bring to your new profession is a story that fuels that passion. And as you launch your new careers, you will be in the very privileged position of hearing other people’s deepest and most personal stories. Don’t ever underestimate the power of those stories to connect, to inspire, to educate, and to drive change. Thank you.

How You are Helping to Prevent Suicide

This will be our sixth year participating as Team Emma in the Out of the Darkness Walk benefiting the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). Team Emma was founded just a couple of months after Emma died by Jessica Ricchetti, one of Emma's very wise friends. In the wake of Emma's death,  Jessica wanted to try to understand Emma's death and help to prevent other suicide deaths in the future. AFSP was her answer, and we followed her lead.

Many of you followed our lead. Without knowing much about suicide prevention or AFSP, you generously and faithfully donated to Team Emma each year and helped us raise many thousands of dollars for the cause. We know that you did that without questioning where your money was going. You did it to support us. We are so grateful for that expression of unconditional love.

But we think you deserve to know not just where your money is going, but what your money is doing, because you are making some really great things happen!

Keeping it Local
Many of you may not realize that half of your money stays right here in Connecticut to support all kinds of programs:

• Chapter volunteers run a monthly support group for survivors, which can be a real lifeline for people who have lost a loved one to suicide. 
• Every year the local chapter of AFSP hosts a survivor conference to offer support and education for people who have lost loved ones to suicide. 
• Our chapter has paid to train volunteers in a number of different suicide prevention protocols and educational curricula. These volunteers are available to provide education and/or training for your school or group.
• Your support helps us to purchase and produce educational and informational resources that Chapter volunteers distribute at health fairs and resource fairs.
• We sponsored Mental Health First Aid training for youth leaders in Stamford and Norwalk high schools. These youth now know how to recognize signs of depression and mental illness and how to be a resource to their peers. We look forward to sponsoring this training at more schools!
• This fall we are sponsoring a Mental Health First Aid training for first responders, like police, fire, and EMT/ambulance. This training radically improves the response and safety for first responders and also ensures a safe and effective response for the person in crisis. 
• We have partnered with an area movie theater to sponsor PSAs about suicide prevention that will run in September and will reach thousands. 

Advocacy

Every year, AFSP brings more than 200 advocates from all over the country to Washington, D.C. to learn about important advancements and advocate for legislation that can help prevent suicide. Many of you know that I have participated in these advocacy forums for the past two years. It is an amazing event. We descend upon Capitol Hill and together manage to make personal visits to every single congressional and senate office over the course of one day. The visits, the personal stories, and the compelling facts and data we share are making a difference and we have had some notable victories in the last two years:

• Passage of the Excellence in Mental Health Act which represents the greatest federal investment in community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment and helps insure access to quality, effective services for people who did not have access before.
• Passage of the MODDERN Cures Act, which will allow providers to quickly begin using diagnostics that could dramatically improve the safety and effectiveness of prescribing psychiatric medications.
• Increased funding for the National Violent Death Reporting System that will allow this universal reporting system which, until recently, was only being implemented in 18 states, to be implemented in 32 states, including Connecticut. Almost every major cause of death has a system in place for uniformly collecting data about deaths by that illness. That data has been the foundation that has helped inform incredible advancements in cancer treatment, heart disease and other illnesses. The National Violent Death Reporting System will help us to get that data for suicide deaths. 
• Re-authorization of the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act which provides funding for much of the community-based and school-based suicide prevention programming in our country.

Research

AFSP is supporting promising research that will lead to advancements in suicide prevention. I encourage you to explore the AFSP website to learn about the studies that AFSP is supporting.

It's time for me to ask for your support of Team Emma once again this year, but I do so knowing that, together, we are truly making a difference. Let's create a world without suicide!

Click here to donate

Click here to join or donate to Team Emma

My Dearest Emma by Lindsey Elizabeth Sullivan

This letter was written to Emma by her good friend from high school, Lindsey, and was read at the dedication ceremony for the butterfly garden by another friend, Rachel. It touched my heart and I asked if I could share it.

My dearest Emma. I am so sorry that I cannot be here tonight, but I do know that you are with me always (especially in New York City where fedoras are the bomb. You’re a trendsetter among the clouds. Anna Wintour needs to watch out. Seriously.) You are with all of us gathered here this evening and have been for the past five years. I can’t believe that it has been five years since the butterfly became TRULY significant to all of us that June. They were always pretty I suppose, but once they became a means of remembering you – vibrant, constantly fluttering on to the next great adventure, and of course, fabulous – seeing butterflies became crucial to brightening our darkest days. Cherishing the small details – like a white pair of wings fluttering at the end of the driveway – was something we all had to learn how to do at that time and in each and every day following. You have been instrumental to teaching us that and a number of other lessons for the past five years. We’ve learned that normal is, indeed, simply a setting on a washer/dryer. We’ve learned that it’s okay to ask for help on the sad days and to celebrate the good ones. We’ve learned that we should sing anyway. We’ve learned to tell the people we love that we love them and to MEAN it too, even and especially if we see them everyday or if we are scared to say those words out loud. We have learned to advocate for ourselves and for our friends. We have learned to be kinder to those we meet. We have learned that every exchange, every conversation, every gesture, every word, every day, every moment counts. I’m sure that we have all changed significantly over the past five years; the caterpillars ain’t got nothin’ on us. And I know, at least for me, your presence has given me the strength, inspiration, courage, and good vibes to face my metamorphosis head on. Change is inevitable, and it is scary and often even sad. However, change does not always have to mean saying good-bye to something or someone. Rather, change can encourage us to beat our wings onward. Change can encourage us to notice the seemingly small stuff. But most importantly, change helps us to better appreciate the things that stay the same. The family and friends we can’t live without. Our favorite foods and places. Our love for you. A lot has certainly changed in the past five years, but not a day, nor butterfly, goes by when we do not think of you.

Five Long Years by Betty Anderson Dworschak

This poem was sent to us yesterday by our dear college friend, Betty. Thank you, Betty.

Five Long Years

It’s been five long years since that fateful day

When your darkest fears met the black void of grief and loss

Five years of stark reality that stretch out and contract

Suddenly.  impulsively.  painfully.

You feel the sharp sting of the endless rubber band

Around your heart and stare unseeing, uncomprehending

At the rosary you now carry with you always.

And yet

You grapple to come to terms

You clutch and convey your memories

You snatch moments of joy

You seize chances to connect, to bond, to love

You risk your heart to change the unwritten future of strangers

You speak for those who have become your furtive family

Struggling in a silent sadness you know all too well.

It’s been five long years since that fateful day

When the gauntlet was ripped from your flesh

And thrown down, unbidden and unwanted

Your existence made raw, a gaping abyss before you

With no way back to the safe past.

Forward, with footsteps unsure but resolute,

You defy the emptiness and deify the love.

There is no higher purpose.

We

We who did not hear the shriek rise from our own throats

We who did not discover that the awful terror was coming from within us

We who did not stagger from that shock

Can never know, or presume to touch your loss,

A wound healing but never healed.

But

We can bear witness and stand by you

We can let in and soak up the memories you share

Unafraid of your immeasurable grief, never measuring,

Poised to tender what small solace surfaces and survives.

It’s been five long years since that fateful day.

Far away and in all ways, so far, and so far removed

Distant, but with arms wide open, I have but one small gift to give,

An ephemeral embodiment of the spirit that lives on in you.

The horrible moment has not destroyed you.

Emma Jane von Euler Memorial Scholarship presentation - 2014

Last night, on the 5th anniversary of Emma's death, we made the 4th annual presentation of the scholarship we established in her name. The anniversary is always a tough day, and we're never quite sure how to negotiate it. The scholarship presentation gave us some direction and purpose for the day. We were privileged to honor our daughter and to recognize the two remarkable young men who were selected for the scholarship. Here are our remarks:

Peter:

Hello, my name is Peter von Euler, and this is my wife, Nancy.  

The Emma Jane von Euler Music Scholarship is awarded each year to a student who demonstrates not only a talent and love for music, but also a kind and generous spirit and a desire to help and inspire others.  We make this presentation as a memorial to our daughter, who had a passion for music in many forms and who had a soft spot for anyone who appeared to need a friend.  In that same spirit, we also use this occasion to put forth a plea to all of you, to look out for your classmates and to take care of yourself.

It was on this day, June 17, five years ago, that our daughter Emma ended her life.  She was five days short of her 17th birthday.

My wife, our younger daughter, Sarah, and I  became survivors of suicide that day.  We are determined not only to survive, but also to keep Emma’s memory alive.  We also hope to keep more young people alive. We, (particularly my wife),  have set out to learn what we can and to share.  So, here’s a public service announcement:   Suicide is now the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-34. Suicide claims nearly as many lives each year as breast cancer; and as of 2010, more people in the United States died by suicide than died in car accidents.

Nancy:

Most of you who took driver’s ed. have a healthy appreciation for the risks of driving.  If you are a woman, I’d be willing to bet that you are well aware of the risk factors for breast cancer, but I suspect that you know less about the risk factors for suicide.  Most people think of suicide as an extreme reaction to a failed relationship, a lost job, or a family crisis.  The truth is, in 90% of deaths by suicide, the underlying cause is a diagnosable, although sometimes undiagnosed, mental illness.  

The good news is mental illness is treatable. But to be treated, you need to seek help. You have to take your mental health as seriously as you take your physical health.   So, here is what I want all of you to do. When you step onto the campus of your new school next fall, find out where the health center and the counseling center are. Chances are they were not a stop on your campus tour. If you are an overachiever, go in; find out what the hours are and what services they offer; introduce yourself to the staff; get comfortable and familiar. That way, should you ever not feel well, physically OR mentally, you'll know where to go, and who to ask for.  And please, never ever be ashamed or afraid to ask for all help. We ALL need help sometime.

This year we are awarded the scholarship to two young men who are gifted scholars, athletes AND musicians and who have also contributed in a meaningful way to his school and the community at large.

Congratulations to Jack Ullman - Fairfield Warde High School and Erik Stahle - Fairfield Ludlowe High School.

Sarah Graduates

I think that graduations are always a little bittersweet - the closing of one door and the opening of another. That is certainly true for our celebration of Sarah's recent graduation from Lauralton Hall.

We had anticipated spring 2014 ever since Emma entered high school and we realized that 2014 was the year we would celebrate two graduates in the class of 2014 - Emma from college, and Sarah from high school. We imagined the big bash we would throw to celebrate this great time for our family. So there was an extra layer of bittersweet as we celebrated Sarah's graduation from Lauralton on Sunday. The absence of our Emma who never made that high school milestone, never mind the college milestone we had anticipated celebrating this spring; but also the spectacular presence and accomplishment of Sarah whose graduation from Lauralton marks so much more than the earning of a simple diploma.

Thank you to all of you who have walked a stretch of the rocky road with us over these past years. You share in this celebration which is still sweet, despite the absence of one so very missed. Below are the tributes/toasts Peter and I gave to Sarah at her party, and a video of memories. I'm sure we embarrassed her, but she took it very well.

One final note. I was also missing my parents on graduation day and was remembering how much my father liked the name we chose for Sarah. "I can hear it on graduation day," he said. "Sarah Lillian von Euler. Classy!"


Nancy's Tribute:

I suppose at this stage of a child’s life, most parents would look back and reflect proudly on the important lessons they had taught their child; but as I reflected, I couldn’t help but note the important things that Sarah had taught me. I’d like to share some of the most valuable lessons with all of you.

One of the things Sarah did not teach me was how to put together a toast or a roast, or whatever this is, without shamelessly borrowing from overused formats, so I’m going to offer up my list of valued lessons a la Letterman in a top 10 list.

Number 10! – Popular Music. I’m showing my age by calling it popular music, but so be it. Whenever Sarah gets into my car she turns off NPR, plugs in her phone and treats me to the music in her iTunes library, while patiently answering my questions about who I’m listening to and what else they’ve done. Without Sarah, I might have missed an entire decade of music while in the NPR zone. Instead, I am a well-rounded adult who recognizes the voices of both Ofeibia Quist-Arcton and Ariana Grande.

Number 9! – Ordering Coffee. Having not grown up in the coffee-obsessed culture we live in now, I have trouble negotiating the complex array of sizes, flavorings and other options on the typical coffee house menu. Sarah, on the other hand, is a pro. In a Starbucks, Sarah can impress by ordering a grande mocha polka latte-chino while I, on the other hand, have people snickering because I have asked for a tall blonde. Apparently, you should include the word roast, a tall blonde ROAST. That was an important lesson.

Number 8! – The Art of Commuting – I commuted to New York via Metro North for grad school and certainly mastered the science of commuting, but Sarah has taught me the art commuting. Sarah could get up at 6:50 and make a 7:15 train! She would roll out of bed fully-dressed in her uniform. As we know, Lauralton is an all-girls school, so she didn’t need to brush her hair. I think she brushed her teeth. Even with this slim window, we would carve out time to go through the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru and practice our coffee ordering. We would get to the train station with just minutes to spare, but Sarah would spend all of those minutes in the car, texting and finishing up the morning’s lesson in popular music. Not until the train was pulling into the station, would Sarah begin casually tucking away her phone, putting the straw in her iced coffee, pulling on her jacket or sweatshirt, gathering up her backpack, and walking towards the train. The last of the boarding passengers were typically already on the train by the time she reached the top of the ramp to the platform - and this is when it got really exciting – she would walk across the now empty platform and step inside the train just in time to have the doors close immediately behind her! Her timing was impeccable – or the conductors were patient – I’m not really sure which, but it certainly made for a heart-pumping start of the day for me!

Number 7! – What Phones are For! For years I labored under the misconception that phones were for talking, but Sarah has taught me that phones are for texting and surfing the internet and listening to music, etc., etc. Actual calls should apparently only be made when texting and emails have failed. Peter has not completely learned this lesson. He reached Sarah in the car one day (I was driving) and after Sarah got off the phone with him she said, “Oh my God! He calls and he wants to stay on the phone and talk to you!”

Number 6! – A Thing or Not a Thing – This is not a riff on Shakespeare, but rather a new system of classification that does not share the limitations of prior classification systems like the periodic table or Linnaeus’ biological taxonomy. The Thing and Not a Thing system incorporates such esoteric concepts as fashion, taste, and even ethics, and is, therefore, much harder to master. But Sarah is a serious student of classification and is as close to a Thing – Not a Thing scholar, as I believe one can be. Peter and I have tried hard to catch up. We have spent many a dinner conversation discussing whether some action or object should be classified as a Thing or Not a Thing, but we almost always have to defer to Sarah’s better judgment. It’s confusing. Sometimes someone will have done something, which you would think would make it a Thing, but because it was idiotic that they did it, it is Not a Thing. Here’s one that I have mastered – Dunkin Donuts cookie dough flavored iced coffee – On the menu - Not a Thing!

Number 5! – Spray Tans – Not a Thing! – This is a lesson that Sarah taught me just recently. It was the morning of Prom Day and we were sitting in the car at the train station with a full 3 ½ minutes to spare. Sarah was duly ensconced in social media, keeping tabs on the news regarding manicures, make-up, up-dos and who was most likely to be annoyingly late for pictures, when suddenly her head popped up and she started frantically scanning the station parking lot. “Is everything okay?” I said. She turned to me with great seriousness and said, “Someone has a bad spray tan!” I was puzzled. “How do you know that? Did someone text you?” “No! I overheard someone ask her friend if she had showered yet. That can only mean one thing. She has a bad spray tan!” Now see, if I had overheard that conversation, I would have assumed that the friend smelled bad.  But I was unaware of the algorithm – Prom minus shower equals bad spray tan; and this is what worries me. Sarah is heading off to college in just a couple of months, and I clearly still have so much to learn!

Number 4! – Social Media – Let me just put it out there. No adult should venture into the world of social media without teenage supervision. I know that as the parent, I should have set limits and guidelines for Sarah’s use of all things Internet, but the fact of the matter is, she understands it way better than I do. Sarah has gently tried to teach us texting etiquette, but people who learned to type on an IBM Selectrix have trouble adjusting to the new rules. Punctuation and sentences starting with capital letters? Not a Thing! Messages sent in all caps? Not a Thing unless it is a declaration of war. I did not know that, exclamation point!

Just when I was mastering Facebook, Sarah had pretty much abandoned it for Twitter and Instagram. I’m still not sure I get Twitter, but in an effort to keep up with my child, I set up an account and launched my first tweet. I think it was something like “Look at me, I’m tweeting #oldfartstweet.” It might have been really embarrassing to my family, but I didn’t have any followers. Several months later, Sarah and her friends tried to re-launch my Twitter identity by sending out a carefully crafted tweet, sure to garner the attention of adoring teenage fans everywhere. Judging by their hysterics, I gather I was being very funny. I can’t say for sure because I didn’t understand what “I” was saying. Again –nothing. Sarah, always the problem-solver, suggested that what I needed to do to get some followers was to follow more people myself. So, I dutifully began following some of the great thinkers of our day: Andy Cohen, Bethenny Frankel and Nene Leakes. If you don’t watch Bravo TV – well, I feel sorry for you. This sage advice from Sarah led to one of the greatest social media moments of my life.

I was taking the long train ride back from DC by myself after a conference this past February. I was flipping through my twitter timeline, something I had only recently learned to do, when I came across a kvetching tweet, by Andy Cohen. He was complaining about a plane trip west that wasn’t going well. “ Spending 9 hours on a plane only to land in L.A.,” he kveeted. I wittily replied to his tweet, “Don’t complain. I’m spending 5 hours on a train and I’m landing in Bridgeport.” And then something amazing happened – Andy Cohen replied “LOL @nancyvone!”

When I had composed myself I texted Sarah to tell her about the tweet from Andy. She texted right back, “That’s great, Mom. I’ll check out your Twitter feed.”  I found out later that she then turned to Peter and said, “That’s so cute. Mom thinks Andy Cohen tweeted at her.”

Now it’s true, there had been a incident a month earlier when I thought that Tom Colicchio had replied to my tweet and it turned out to only be his restaurant, but when she checked this time she discovered that it was, in fact, THE Andy Cohen! She texted me again. “I saw it Mom. Wow! That’s so cool! I’m going to re-tweet it. BTW, you’re not supposed to use punctuation in your hashtags.”

Not a Thing!

Number 3! – Perseverance – On a more serious note, over the years Sarah has taught me a lot about perseverance and this past year was no exception. Sarah was blessed this year with a new field hockey coach who was so singularly focused on winning the state championship that she didn’t let petty distractions, like humanity, get in her way. She was a tough gal to please and an even tougher gal to talk to. When frustration was running particularly high, I suggested to Sarah that there would be no shame in quitting a team that had ceased to be fun or rewarding. But she would have none of that. “I’m not a quitter, Mom,” she said, and indeed, she is not. Sarah used her humor to rescue the season for herself and for many discouraged teammates. While Coach Kati was holding up signs with plays for the starters on the field, Sarah was behind her holding up signs with plays for the stalwart benchwarmers. My favorite was the picture of the nun with her hands folded in prayer, signifying that they should all start saying their Hail Mary’s. I’m pretty sure that’s what got them to the championship. At the end of the season banquet, Sarah gave a hysterical speech that brought down the house and Coach Kati now follows Sarah on Twitter. Just sayin’

Number 2! – Courage. When I read the description of Sarah’s proposed camp trip to Bolivia I thought it sounded exhilarating - like roller coaster exhilarating, which is to say, scary. But if Sarah was going to be brave enough to go, we needed to be brave enough to let her. I was most scared about the time she would spend in the Andes, battling frigid overnight temperatures and extreme altitude. That part of the trip was, in fact, very hard. There were several mornings when she woke up vomiting and then had to hike the whole day. I breathed a sigh of relief when she emailed us after that stage of the trip and was heading off for what I imagined was the more serene rainforest portion of the trip. Thankfully, I didn’t know anything about the piranha and crocodile-infested rivers, roads blockaded by protesters, and the need to abandon their vehicles and hitchhike to their destination until Sarah had safely arrived back on American soil, feeling great about the challenges she had stared down.

Everybody recognizes and appreciates that kind of courage – courage in the face of obvious danger or hardship; but Sarah has also shown the other kind of courage that people often overlook – the day-to-day courage it takes to stay in the game and play it the best you can even when life has dealt you some really bad cards. No one gets this more than Peter and I do, and we have tremendous respect and admiration for the way she has bravely and honestly played the cards she has been dealt.

Number 1! Wisdom – You can study a lot and get smart, but wisdom is a gift, and Sarah has it. Sarah has the ability to boil down the most complex ideas or situations into simple, clear statements of truth. So many times she has uttered something that has stopped me in my tracks and made me think, “Now those are words to live by” or “True dat!” (Sarah taught me that phrase). Today, Sarah was handed her high school diploma, but the God’s honest truth is she already has a Ph.D. in life.

You may or may not have noticed that your invitation had a picture of an acorn on it. In part, that was an inside joke - a reference to the fact, that on the bus ride to the state field hockey championships, Sarah calmed the nerves and stirred the souls of her teammates with a powerful rendition of the Saugatuck Elementary School song, Mighty Oaks from Tiny Acorns Grow. But we also thought it was very fitting for the occasion. Sarah, you entered the world as a preemie – the tiniest of acorns, and you have indeed grown into a mighty, mighty oak. We love you so much and are so very proud of you. Congratulations!!!

Peter's Toast:

Okay, Sarah, I will keep this brief.  I just have a short song that I want to sing to you.  If you could just come up here so I can sing it to you…no?  Actually, I wanted us to do a dance that you taught me when you were about two…. but that might embarrass you, and I might hurt myself…and that might embarrass you. 

But here’s the problem:  Mom has already taken a lot of the best material.  She was funny parent AND sentimental parent all in one.  That leaves me very little room as a parent.  So, I’m going to do what anyone would do when he is at a loss for words.  I’m going to steal someone else’s.

A few weeks back, your English teacher had the nerve to give you an assignment that was due on the last day of school:  recite a poem.  Perhaps she was unaware that that was not a thing.  However, she did allow you to choose your own poem.  The poem you chose turned out to be one I knew and loved.  I loved it more, though, when I realized that it was really a poem about you, my amazing daughter.  Now the poet is not exactly one who you would call famous, but she has a lot to say about the kind of fame to which we should all aspire.

Famous

Naomi Nye

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence,

Which knew it would inherit the earth

Before anybody said so.

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds

Watching him from the birdhouse.

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek.

The idea you carry close to your bosom

Is famous to your bosom.

The boot is famous to the earth,

More famous than the dress shoe,

Which is famous only to floors.

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it

And not at all famous to the one who is pictured.

I want to be famous to shuffling men

Who smile while crossing streets,

Sticky children in grocery lines,

Famous as the one who smiled back.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,

Or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,

But because it never forgot what it could do.

Personally, Sarah, I think it’s spectacular how you have lived your life, especially these past five years.  And since I agree that someone who really lives that way, never forgetting what she can do, deserves some fame, here is nine and a half minutes of well-deserved fame.  In this, I think everyone will see one of the other great lessons that Sarah has learned:

Whenever, in life, you find it hard to muster that smile, try making a really goofy face.  It’s bound to make other people smile.

Sarah video tribute