YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Paul just keeps getting better and better... Ryan was/is a fucking CHAMP and his story was amazing.

A key part of his story to me was the whole "forgiveness" aspect. I don't think Ryan was the first person on the show to try to forgive his mother and then later regret it. We do that because it sounds good, religion and therapists try to push it on us... But it's important to point out that if you try to forgive someone who doesn't realize they want or need it, you just end up feeling even worse.

But yeah, I loved this episode. Thank you Paul and Ryan.

That really was a beautiful and moving episode of the show. Ryan is the man! Particularly taken by his perspective on spirituality & seemingly coincidental but profoundly life-affirming events. Take a bow.

This episode dropkicked me right in the feels. I related to so much of this; especially having a mother who favored the youngest child. I feel inclined to go get my heart checked out now though.

When the interview started I thought, oh, this guy and I have so little in common. Then he started talking about the week his dad died and everything surrounding it and it was like a punch in the face. His description of seeing his dad with the tubes and machines matched my experience exactly as a five year old in 1978 when I was driving alone with my dad when he had a heart attack. The last time I saw him alive, while I was waiting for my mom and brother to show up at the ER. I was sitting with a man who had been following us, a man I barely knew and my dad insisted on seeing me, to make sure I was okay. He died on the way to surgery. Ah the stories I could tell of seeing someone who is, in your five year old eyes, a superhero looking so fragile.

Thought I made it through that section and then Ryan told about the last time he saw his dad alive and he hit me with the right hook. This time, the description of his dad on the love seat matched up exactly to the last time my mother was home before she died (at least I was 22 this time) of pancreatic cancer. She looked so small sitting there after all the treatments and being eaten away by the cancer. Strangely the same brother who picked me up from the hospital in 1978 was there with us that night. He and I were watching the Beatles Anthology documentary on TV, but I think we were both watching her more as she dozed, trying to stay engaged with us. I think we were terrified that she would just disappear right there.

That was a lot of unnecessary information to say I really appreciated Ryan's episode. I've felt like suck a dumbfuck for some of my lingering grief over those days and Ryan somehow made me feel better about it.