Welcome!
Dance in the Rain
Whole Person Informed Care


 A Platform of Recovery 
"When the person recovers the family heals
 and the community grows stronger."
Mary E Munsell 
Created by:
 Mary E Munsell a person with mental illness  to help her peers find: hope, passion, and a desire to take the necessary steps to build a life of wholeness, purpose and meaning.


What is Dance in the Rain?

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Dance in the Rain has been evolving since November of 2010. 
 
Late September of  2010 I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Massachusetts feeling as though I existed and nothing more.  By the end of November my family was brought in to hear the news that the doctors had given up on me.  They were to be told the only thing left for me was long term hospitalization.  I was to be transferred to a State Mental Hospital as soon as a bed became available.  The doctor felt there was nothing more he could do for me.  I just wasn't responding to any treatment he was offering.

My mother stood with tears in her eyes and shouted "HOW CAN YOU WANT TO DIE!"

I didn't know it then but that was the beginning of my long journey back to what I call 'a life of wholeness' and 'becoming what you were created to be'.


                     Dance in the Rain has evolved from my first draft 
                       of a  Recovery Program called Dance in the Rain 
                                    to many revisions and a copyright.                                    
                                                     
                                                        now called:
                        Building Wholeness - Healing Fractured Lives
                                           A Program of Recovery
                                                      copyright 2013
                               
                                               Dance in the Rain
                                                   has become a
                                             Platform of Recovery
                                                     now called:
                                             Dance in the Rain
                                Whole Person Informed Care

                      consisting of many programs developed by me
                                                       such as:
                       Building Wholeness - Healing Fractured Lives
                       Faces of Stigma - Breaking Restraints
                       Tapestry - Coloring the Threads
                       Children's Book: Let's Dance in the Rain, Josh
                       Groups
                       Speaking Engagements
                       Advocacy
                       plus more ...

UPCOMING EVENT

Tapestry: Whole Person Informed Care
"through our eyes"
A Community Stone Soup Event
At the Doubletree by Hilton - Hyannis
287 Iyannough Road
Hyannis, MA 02601 
Tuesday 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm
June 18, 2013

Whole Person Informed Care

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The Mental Health System has become a system of 'symptom management'. Mental illness affects our whole being. Every aspect of our lives . Managing our symptoms is not the solution.
That is me in June of 2008 just after my release from Torrance State Hospital in Western Pennsylvania.  I had spent over 2 1/2 years there away from my children  trying to make sense of my life.  As you can see in this photo there is no life in my face, especially my eyes.

I would spend the next five years still living in hell trying to make sense of my existence while navigating the mental health system.  Somewhere in life I had lost my purpose and passion.

 I say to the mental health community and crisis first responders: " if there is to be true healing and recovery it's those life stories or 'tapestry's' that must be acknowledged and tended to during every encounter with a psychiatric patient.  Managing the symptoms doesn't make them go away it only softens the effect for a short time.  These are our lives and sometimes we don't agree with your solutions."

Whole Person Informed Care

“The people with mental illness are unique and always have  been.  When the community begins to understand the individual only then can they initiate an understanding of the illness.  When they understand the  illness, then they can give rise to individualized treatment.   As they work with the wholeness of the individual, everyone learns how to sculpt and create an individual’s unique recovery.” 
                                                                                                                  Mary E Munsell       
 
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For me "getting in motion" was rekindling my creative spirit through art.