Reading about other’s journeys from mental illness to mental health brought to mind my journey from depression that became chronic and verged on suicidal in the late 70’s, though now I know it was massive repression taught to us descendants of Nebraska homesteaders.  What a shock when my marriage failed, for I’d excelled in all the courses about homemaking and was a good wife by farm standards, though I had no emotional life and knew nothing about how to live with an alcoholic who had psychotic breaks.

My hard-working stock would say: just move on, put it behind you and keep going, a fine recipe for repression.  I plunged myself into my work of helping open new community residential alternatives for the mentally challenged.  As long as I was achieving, I knew I was ok.

I was haunted, however, in my personal life by the shadow of multiple molestations from my toddler days to puberty (totally out of my awareness for another 15 years).  My first...