and patients over the years and the heartbreak was mounting. It was at Geoff’s wake that Smith’s friend, the late Honourable Paul Joseph French, expressed his anger and frustration towards the lack of understanding and recognition of mental health. Dr. Smith and French promised to start working towards educating the public on mental health care. Each year, Stigma Enigma hosts an event, Mingle for Mental Health, to bring the community together for an evening of educating and fundraising. Past speakers have included Silken Laumann, Margaret Trudeau, Dave Bing, Eric Hipple, Michael Landsberg, Ginger Zee Aisha Alfa, Jordan Smith, Eddie Murray, and Ted Ball.
in her early twenties. Her mom urged her to do in-patient treatments, wanting her daughter to learn skills so that she wouldn’t hurt herself. But Zee consistently told her ‘no.’ She wasn’t ready for help.
my serious struggles, I’ve been two people.” She’s the passionate meteorologist, smiling and informing the public, “covering the storm, the Hurricane Katrinas and the Sandys.” But then she’s the person who has “these internal storms” she continues She was finishing college when she to fight. tried to commit suicide. She describes it “And even though mine’s more public, as feeling “vacant.” Nothing mattered, a lot of people do this, a lot of people including herself. It was “like blacking out.” have two sides of themselves and it’s their The next morning, she looked at herself in responsibility to put on a face and then the mirror and she couldn’t believe “the they compare themselves to the next face. same person did that. I was like ‘what?! And that weighs on you. Especially on What was that?’ young people.”
This year, Ginger Zee, Good Morning America’s chief meteorologist, will make her way to Windsor to speak about her own struggles with depression. When I first saw the poster for the event, I couldn’t believe the woman I watched growing up, telling me and the rest of the world about hurricanes, torrential downpours, or days filled sunshine, struggled with her mental health. Dr. Smith mirrors my sentiment, saying, “Ginger has a combination of beauty and brains. She’s the whole package, yet how can she struggle from mental illness? When she comes forward, other people can come forward with their problems too. They won’t be as embarrassed.” I spoke to Ginger Zee on September 10: World Suicide Prevention Day. I told her I’ve watched her since she started at Good Morning America. “We get in trouble with ourselves, She’s a woman who lives in New York, who especially with depression. For me the has a fantastic job. I thought her life was low point was when I shut down, turned perfect because why wouldn’t it be? internal, and didn’t share what was going But Zee, 37, says she is the antithesis on. Saying ‘I have a problem, I need help’— of who she was at 17. She was so nice to that gets you 50% there. You’ve said it out everyone “that it was impossible for me not loud. Now, it can’t sit in there and fester.” to be homecoming queen because I needed Zee released her first memoir, Natural everybody to love me. So as an adult I was Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One, last year. like, listen, your homecoming queen tried It’s within the honest pages of this book to kill herself.” that she reveals there is no perfect when it Zee struggled with anorexia in her comes to her life. teens and her depression was at its highest “I think most of my career and through 46
In addition to understanding our own mental health, Zee wants us to be able to understand “the mental health of others around you and the responsibilities of what our actions and words do.” It’s in open conversations, where we silence our judgment, in which people can begin to share their stories and nurture human connection. Since writing her book, people she’s worked with for years have confided in her. “This type of opening up has actually opened me up in ways I couldn’t have imagined and it’s allowed me to have really frank conversations with people that I had no idea had the same experience I did.” So what techniques does she use? Every morning during her drive to work (she gets picked up), she meditates for about 10 minutes to get focused for the day. When there’s a moment where she starts to feel overwhelmed, she asks herself, “is this going to matter tomorrow?” If the answer is yes, she asks if it’s going to matter a week from now. If it’s still yes, she’s asks if it’s going to matter a year from now. “If it’s yes at the end of the third question, I’m allowed to put emotion towards it and allowed to feel all the frustration and anger. If it’s not going to matter tomorrow, I let it go.” Before therapy, she also absorbed people’s negative emotions around her and then she would spiral down. “I’ve created this fence, an actual
