“Life will teach you, if you’re willing to learn,” says life and wellness coach Bonnie Church, who has spent nearly two decades helping women live healthier, wealthier and wiser and whose “Healthy Lady” columns have appeared in this magazine nearly since its beginning. Life has been her teacher, Bonnie says. She shares many of those lessons in a life-coaching guide that she coauthored with Lydia Martinez, an internationally respected fitness trainer and success coach: “Coach Lydia’s No-Nonsense Guide to Getting Off Your Butt, Out of Your Rut and On With Your Life.” As her written work implies, Bonnie gets straight to the heart of the matter in every situation. She also hosts a life-coaching podcast featuring conversations with people, called, “Shut up and Listen.” “It’s amazing what you can learn when you shut up and listen,” she says. No one knows that better than Bonnie. She has helped dozens locally and hundreds nationally get on track with their weight management and wellness goals. She recently launched a Free Community Wellness Jumpstart with area health professionals. The goal? “Have fun living well together,” she says.
Life Lessons Not Always Easy
Bonnie Church
“My (late) dad, although charming and intelligent, was also delusional and profoundly bipolar,” she says. Her parents married young and birthed a large family fast. As her father’s mental health deteriorated, the family went into survival mode. “My mother tried valiantly to keep a rhythm in our lives of church, holidays and school activities, but financial stress and emotional tension eroded that rhythm, over time,” she says. Her father suffered from jealous obsessions and paranoid delusions and had trouble keeping a job. “In the ‘60s, (with) the era of easy credit, combined with dad’s episodic grandiose business schemes and desire to keep up with neighbors, our family was entrenched in debt,” she says. “His behavior became dangerous at times and required periodic commitments to the psychiatric ward of the Syracuse veteran’s hospital.
“One of the most difficult aspects of being the child of a mentally ill parent is the inconsistency of the symptoms,” she says. “You live under the threat of emotional terrorism. Dad was not always raging and delusional. Often he was affectionate, charming and very funny. I loved the sane part of him, dearly.” Research “bears out” the silent suffering of children raised by mentally ill parents, Bonnie says. “They become confused because they cannot ‘categorize’ their parents’ problems — and anxious because they never know when the psychotic cycle will begin. They are racked with guilt, feeling that somehow they triggered the psychotic episodes and they suffer quietly under the shadow of the family secret. They feel isolated with no one to help them process what is going on at home.” Research also shows that while some children run from their troubled home as soon as they are able, she says, “others feel the need to take responsibility for the mentally ill parent.” Bonnie took flight. As a young teen, she ran with a rebellious crowd that was experimenting with drugs and sex. She was in an unhealthy relationship at 15. “I was all over the map, academically,” she says. She squandered away a full scholarship to Syracuse University, dropping out to become part of the ‘70s counter culture. “The great thing about being a hippy is it was no longer an embarrassment to be poor,” she says.
A New Chapter Unfolds In 1975, she met Michael, who became her husband. He picked her up hitchhiking on Highway 105. “Not the wisest way to meet a husband,” she says. They married six months later, struggling through their first seven years due to the emotional baggage she carried into the marriage. “What kept us together was our love for two beautiful daughters — and a desire to live a life pleasing to God.” The young couple reached out to a pastor for counsel. “As the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher appears,” Bonnie says. “We were ready and listened to his counsel with a willingness to change.” The pastor imparted one powerful truth that helped them turn a corner, she says. “Love is a decision you
Learning to Shut up and Listen