Let's Talk

I have been remiss in blogging lately, but it's been busy, what with the end of the semester, auditions for "For My Name is Will" and report cards coming up, etc.  (Excuses, excuses, my mother would say.  Today would be her 103rd birthday!  )

We talked a bit the other day about the "Let's Talk" day and I read that one in five Canadians suffer from some sort of mental illness, so as we said, most of us (probably all) will be touched by mental illness in our lives.  It is a terrifying thing and the "let's talk" day is a good way to open up the dialogue and possibly make it less terrifying and help us think of things we can do to make it easier for people to find help.

I found this list on the CBC of books about mental illness.  I think I might reread Crime and Punishment after I finish all the stuff I'm reading now (biographies of Shakespeare and Camilla Lackberg mysteries mostly) -- that's a classic novel about mental illness that I read when I was not much older than many of you.

12 Canadian books that explore mental illness
NONFICTION
Fir​ewater by Harold R. Johnson
How Can I Help? A Week in My Life as a Psy​chiatrist by David Goldbloom and Pier Bryden Invisib​le North by Alexandra Shimo
Open Heart, O​pen Mind by Clara Hughes
Waiting for​ First Light by Romeo Dallaire
W​ hite Walls by Judy Batalion
FICTION
13 Ways of Looki​ng at Fat Girl by Mona Awad A​ Secret Music by Susan Doherty Hannaford
​ Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese
Sch​ ool of Velocity by Eric Beck Rubin
The Ever After​ of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan The​ Mercy Journals by Claudia Casper

I would like to take this chance to thank all of you for a great semester.  I enjoyed our work together so much and learned a lot from you.  As I was saying to the 11s and 12s, now that I'm sixty (!), I am thinking more of retirement, but I can't imagine what I would do without the excitement and fun of drama class!  To many of you, it seems chaotic, I think, but art is chaotic sometimes -- creativity is chaotic.  You can't expect everything to fit into a little box.  (And you don't want it to.)  So even though I'm an abstract-sequential person (that surprises a lot of people), I embrace the chaos that is the source of great things and say "bring it on"!  Best of luck in the next semester!  And Grade 12's -- don't be strangers!