Savanah’s Story
My name is Savanah, and I’m here today because I wanted to share with you the story of how The Sashbear Foundation has changed my family and life.
In order to help you understand why I’m so grateful for Sashbear, I want to start off by telling you a bit about myself and my history with borderline personality disorder.
I’ve been showing signs of emotional dysregulation since childhood. And although mood swings and angst are typically expected from teenagers, once I hit high school it went so much further for me. My emotions literally controlled me, and they were so extreme that I couldn’t bear to even just exist in the same body with them.
Long story short, I eventually started missing school, losing friends, and overall, I began to self-destruct. Everything was so painful, and at my worst, I was hospitalized approximately 9 times over the course of one school year. During the height of this, I was diagnosed with BPD, and I’ve been attempting to manage it ever since.
Things have changed a lot since then though, and Sashbear played a huge role in helping me recover.
Here’s how:
As I’m sure a lot of you know, no matter how much water and sunlight you give to a flower, it will never be able to thrive if it’s planted in the wrong type of soil. Before my mom took the family connections program with Sashbear back in 2019, that’s what it felt like being in my household. I was a struggling little plant, and everyone was so focused on giving me enough sunlight and water that my soil went completely overlooked.
Sashbear is the organization that finally changed this.
By the time my mom found the family connections program, I had already seen countless professionals, tried dozens of medications, and learned 1000 different coping mechanisms, none of which could keep me out of the hospital for very long.
Especially being so young at the time, I wasn’t in a place where I could navigate my overwhelming emotions on my own. I needed constant support, and the only person who would even consider providing that was my mom.
The problem was that despite her best efforts, at the time she wasn’t equipped with the right skills and tools needed to help me effectively. That’s not to say she didn’t try her absolute best (not that I was able to acknowledge her efforts back then), but a lot of the
time she was unintentionally adding fuel to the fire, and like I mentioned, I had no ability to cope with those flames.
To reference my previous metaphor, she was my acidic soil. It was never her fault—and—at the same time the state of our relationship and the environment in our household was detrimental to my recovery.
Family connections was the first step in breaking down this cycle, and it did this in more ways than one.
The most obvious change was that it taught her more about my disorder, and provided her with some of the core skills needed to de-escalate our confrontations. She began understanding that she might never truly “get” my seemingly random outbursts, and she also learned how to validate that they were still very real to me.
I also think it’s really important to note that the impact of family connections didn’t stop there though. Under the surface, one of the best things it did was give me undeniable proof that my mom was in my corner and trying everything she could to help me, even if she hadn’t quite mastered some of the skills yet.
Now, don’t get me wrong, our problems definitely didn’t all magically disappear overnight, but no number of irrational emotions could tell me she didn’t care about me, and that was always a major protective factor when I was consumed by my emotion mind.
It also laid down the foundation for the relationship that we have today – which by the way is so much better than I could have ever imagined back then. In fact, during school, I call her pretty much every day on my 40-minute drive home and we chat about everything under the sun.
Anyways, another benefit was that family connections gave my mom a strong sense of community, which by extension made me feel so much less alone in my struggles. By providing my mom with a direct chance to immerse herself in my world, it gave us something to bond over, and the Sashbear Foundation became my community as well through these experiences.
Knowing that she was being supported by a group of individuals facing similar challenges also relieved some of the guilt and shame I felt for being such a huge burden at the time. It gave me the knowledge that I wasn’t just isolating her under the weight of my illness, but rather she now had a safe space to go where she would feel heard, understood, and validated. I’m sure most of you have also heard the phrase ‘you can’t pour from an empty cup’, and I think having that space to go that was just for her gave her the opportunity to refill, which strengthened both of our appreciations for Sashbear.
In the end though, I think that the most significant thing that the Sashbear Foundation provided us with was hope. When she entered into the Family Connections program, our supply of hope had been depleted for quite some time. FC might not have been able to change the fact that my world and emotions are often chaotic and unpredictable, but it did give us hope for a better relationship and hope for a better future.
The Sashbear Foundation and the Family connections program helped to balance out the soil I was planted in, and without that shift I’m sure I would still be wilting to this day. My relationship with my mom ended up being an integral part of my own healing journey, and although it’s still not perfect, I love my mom and she’s my number 1 supporter. Essentially, Sashbear gave my mom and I a chance to start rebuilding, and for that I quite literally owe them my life.
Also, in case any of you are curious, as of today, I’ve been hospital free for just over 2 years. I’m currently in university, I attend ALL of my lectures, and I’ve finally begun to find that sense of purpose that was always lacking for me.
I also don’t need constant supervision to simply survive anymore (which is great considering that there was a point where my parents were instructed to essentially toddler-proof my house). And in fact, I’ve actually been able to live on my own for the past year and a half. And although I still face a lot of challenges, I’m still here, and I’m extremely grateful for that.
I don’t want to give you the wrong impression, this change didn’t happen overnight and I’ve done a lot of work on my own to be able to finally get here, but Sashbear helped stabilize the foundation that I’ve since built on. Without that, I genuinely don’t think it would be possible for me to be where I am today.
To end this off, I wanted to let all of the struggling individuals and families know that a life worth living truly is possible. If you told me that 7 years ago, I would probably nod to get you to stop talking, but I never would have believed it – nothing ever felt like it would be able to balance out the pain I was in. And I know there’s nothing I can say to make this journey any easier for you, but I can tell you that I am so glad that I’ve made it this far. Change is possible, and it is 100% worth fighting for.
Thank you everyone for listening to my story, and also for being here today to support the foundation that’s actively changing thousands of lives just like mine.
