I want to be that person. I want FAME to be that organization. Those words stuck to me like two sided duct tape when I first heard them in the opening address at the NAMI 2015 Conference last week in San Francisco. They resonated through my brain like an echo chamber.
The messages were loud and clear. For four days we listened, learned, shared, talked, networked and snatched up programming ideas. All of it done with a view to being the organization that could care more. To be the organization that would find better ways to support families, to look for new, fresh and innovative ideas that would families would embrace with hope and understanding.
Looking back over those days spent in San Francisco I think what I came to realize while listening to Keynote Speaker and Mental Health Advocate, Hakeem Rahim, was that for us to truly be able to succeed in recovery, we must first enter in to the journey of acceptance. Until we have that we will never truly begin to be able to stamp out the stigma that is associated to mental health, mental illness or mental wellness. At the end of his address he asked conference participants to use the hash tag #IAmAcceptance. I looked over at my associate, board co-chair, Cindy Woodcock and said "that is FAME....except for us it will be #WeAreAcceptance"
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