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Romans 15:4
Call it “Kennedy Public Service 2.0”
For decades, the Kennedys were branded “America’s First Family of Public Service”: one U.S. president; four U.S. Senate and House members; three U.S. ambassadors; one lieutenant governor; three state legislators; one mayor, and . . .
. . . Now and in response to publicized bouts of mental illness and related drug addictions, a new Kennedy generation has given voice to a new brand of public service and ego-holism recovering step #6: the healing’s in the revealing.
“She died too soon, . . . but . . .”
On
August 1 Saoirce Kennedy Hill, granddaughter of the late senator Robert and Ethel Kennedy, died from a suspected drug overdose.
In
his August 9 USA Today
op-ed, “My cousin was brave about mental illness” Patrick J. Kennedy, the
late senator Ted and Joan Kennedy’s youngest child, applauded
his 22-year old cousin who “was open about her struggles with mental illness even as a teenager – imploring the faculty and students at her school to learn how to tell the truth about these illnesses and the impact on their lives, because silence ‘leaves people
feeling even more alone.’”
. . . And Patrick would know.
On Sunday,
October 4, 2015, CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes” began its 48th season with Patrick breaking the Kennedy family code of silence by exposing his alcohol/drug addictions and mental health problems from his memoir, “A Common Struggle: A Personal Journey through the Past
and Future of Mental Illness and Addiction”.
Dubbed by interviewer Lesley Stahl as “the poster child for addictions,” the 48-year old recovering addict illustrated egoholism recovering’s TOP model:
– Target the problem – “It’s a conspiracy of silence, not only for the person who is suffering but for everyone else who’s forced to interact with that person. That’s why they call this a family disease”;
– Own the problem “I am an addict. I’ll always be an addict. But I’m an addict in recovery. I count my days. It’s one day at a time.”; and then
– Proceed to get professional help.
Q: From whose near-identical addiction pain and consequences can you and I learn, to avoid such pain and death?
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