I Am the Daughter of God: My Route Into and Out of Mental Illness (And Other Writings)

By J. E. Clay

This book follows my life from infancy through adulthood and details the significant people in my life. It also captures, I believe, what it is like to experience psychosis. Some of the symptoms include hallucinations, faulty judgment, and an extreme sensitivity to the environment, to name only a few. But it is also about hope and empathy. I survived the emotional instability, lung cancer, and a divorce.

Through it all, I had over twenty years of teaching. I founded a children's theater, and I had my writing as a part-time job. I taught in excellent public schools and one private school for severely emotionally challenged youngsters. I taught all levels from Head Start through adult. My last assignment, I worked with special needs students and supervised two aides in the same excellent system for over ten years.

I have included samples of some of my writings so the reader would get to understand me even better.

Today I am experiencing a well-deserved retirement. I do not consider writing "work" but rather something I enjoy, and I look back on my life and feel the strength that comes from survival!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639618675

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I Am the Daughter of God

My Route Into and Out of Mental Illness (And Other Writings)

J. E. Clay

ISBN 978-1-63961-805-7 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63961-868-2 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-63961-867-5 (digital)

Copyright © 2022 by J. E. Clay

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

The contents of this work, including, but not limited to, the accuracy of events, people, and places depicted; opinions expressed; permission to use previously published materials included; and any advice given or actions advocated are solely the responsibility of the author, who assumes all liability for said work and indemnifies the publisher against any claims stemming from publication of the work.

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Think Positively, and Beat the Odds against Cancer

Born to Serve

Preface

This book follows my life from infancy through adulthood and details the significant people in my life. It also captures, I believe, what it is like to experience psychosis. Some of the symptoms include hallucinations, faulty judgment, and an extreme sensitivity to the environment, to name only a few.

But it is also about hope and empathy. I survived the emotional instability, lung cancer, and a divorce.

Through it all, I had over twenty years of teaching. I founded a children’s theater, and I had my writing as a part-time job. I taught in excellent public schools and one private school for severely emotionally challenged youngsters. I taught all levels from Head Start through adult. My last assignment—I worked with special-needs students and supervised two aides in the same excellent system for over ten years.

I have included samples of some of my writing so the reader would get to understand me even better.

Today I am experiencing a well-deserved retirement. I do not consider writing work but rather something I enjoy, and I look back on my life and feel the strength that comes from survival!

Chapter 1

My Mother

Small minds talk about people, mediocre minds talk about things, and great minds talk about ideas.

My mother dedicated most of her life to being a parent and a fastidious housekeeper. She was very thin as a young woman and athletic. She had brown hair, a flawless complexion, and was slim until her thirties. She proudly proclaimed that when she was a child, she was a tomboy. Once she climbed a flagpole on school grounds while wearing a dress and mortified her parents. She was strong-willed and stubborn.

But when I was a teenager, I thought of her as very old-fashioned. She selected all my clothes until I left for college. She insisted that I wear outfits one size larger, and she made some of my clothes. She sewed blouses and skirts I remember as being very unstylish. Once there was a school dance, and she was insistent on my wearing a very out-of-fashion skirt. I told her that I didn’t want to go to the dance.

My teenage years were fraught with disagreements, but her being strict and overprotective was often a good thing. When it came to parties where liquor flowed, she admonished me to call her, and I did. She would come and drive me home. Somehow, I thought she had magic powers as a mom and would know anyway, so I best notify her! I knew I would be grounded if I didn’t.

I was dating a senior when I was a junior in high school, and his parents invited me to visit them a state away in their summer home. My mother did not believe I should go. We discussed, it and she agreed to let Ann Landers decide. The columnist responded to Mom’s letter, saying yes, I could go.

While I was away at college, she became a foster mother to several children. Eric, a curly-haired brunette with a handsome face, was a hyperactive five-year-old. Robby, a mischievous nine-year-old towhead, presented quite a challenge to house rules. Little Sheila was a ten-month-old who had experienced all types of physical abuse including having been thrown down a flight of stairs, and she had no speech at all and had questionable hearing. Lastly, Bob was a five-year-old with a moon face and blond hair. Bob was a withdrawn youngster, very quiet and compliant. Long after my parents stopped taking in foster children, they were left to wonder whatever happened to these children, and they regretted not having adopted Sheila.

My mother was fascinated with the royal family and the Dionne quintuplets. She loved Jimmy Carter, in part because she had visited the town where he lived in Georgia. I grew up in the shadow of the quintuplets. Mom collected every shred of information she could find about them. All my years growing up as an only child, I knew that my mother had miscarriage after miscarriage, a stillbirth of twins, and had lost Sonny at ten months old, right before I was born, to an unknown physical problem. He died in the hospital, and to this day I don’t know why. I do know that my mother lost her belief in God along the way.

In her fifties, she took a manpower accounting course. She was offered a job at a local IRS office but realized that made it impossible for the family to travel. She declined the job.

In her sixties, she worked in a hospital gift shop. She had always wanted to be a nurse. Therefore, she was very comfortable in that environment. She volunteered there for ten years.

During this time, she indulged herself by buying a sports car. Several times she went flying by the police, and they were so taken aback to see a red sports car being driven by a gray-haired lady that she never received a ticket—just a gentle reminder to slow down!

In her seventies, she searched for and found a lake house. Dad at that time had a more flexible work schedule. She enjoyed interior decorating and gardening. There were many family dinners at their retreat. Dad’s several boats were nicknamed his Navy.

In her family, she grew up with two siblings, a boy and a girl. She would often recount that her brother sat during dinner with one hand on the milk pitcher. He grew up to be the first millionaire in the family. My mother’s parents were middle class. My grandfather ran a leased Conoco gas station in Missouri. When he moved east, he bought his own business. During the Depression, they took in a young couple who slept in their living room. My grandparents hired a nanny.

My mother said that her mother was very thin and had periods where she and her sister had to hold her down at night by lying down on either side of a blanket that served to restrain her. My grandmother died young. She fell downstairs, and my grandfather eventually remarried.

When my mother was a teenager, they moved to the suburbs, and that was where my parents met. They were neighbors. Her parents disapproved of the match, but as soon as my mother turned eighteen, they were married!

Were my grandparents right to disapprove of their marriage?

Chapter 2

My Father

No man will ever love you as much as I do.

When he was eight years old, my father began his career selling magazines. Small for his age, he had to talk the distributor into letting him work. He sold Liberty, Woman’s Home Companion, and Saturday Evening Post for five cents each.

When he was ten, his dad left to start a sports equipment store. My mother would often say that as a result of this, Dad did not know how to be a father. Prior to this, my grandfather had been an accountant for a large department store. Sadly, he drowned in New York City harbor. His boat capsized, and ironically, he was a strong swimmer.

At age twelve, Dad was cleaning out traps and raking the greens on the golf course; and at age sixteen, he was