Submission: “What Happened?” by Joan

In this submission, Joan tells her story of hearing voices, seeing visions, and “having a foot in both worlds” as she navigates her experience of multiple realities. She discusses working as a nurse and an artist, struggling with grief and family conflict, and the importance of finding supportive people in our lives. Joan also highlights how having the chance to share our experiences, without facing stigma or judgment, can help us to feel more connected to others.

I decided I needed to be vulnerable and share a piece of my journey […] I need help and I hope that I can help others also.

“What Happened?” by Joan

(Content note: This submission discusses grief and loss. If you are currently struggling with mental/emotional distress, a list of resources and supports is available here.)

What Happened?

By Joan

1974 – Head injury. Then a second head injury. Both at 14 years old.

14 years old – First voice, outside of my head. “Joan”. A forewarning.

First vision 14 years old – An old man and old woman pointing their finger, “no” at me as I cut through a yard. Communication with me.

1982 – Graduated RN (22 years old).

1984 – Voices coming through the heat registers, fridge, walls, visions of aliens in dark armor following me, good evil beliefs, sensory confusion and these were all signaling me. At one point I went to the neighbor because I believed he was telepathically communicating with me. I lived in the bright purple realm when I tried to sleep. I was pulled into spaces that did nothing but create incredible paranoia and fear. The years from 1984 to 1986 are fragments.

My sister and brother in 1984 came to my apartment. I had to show my sister how I signed my name and I did not know why she was asking me. She then signed a paper which was my resignation from the hospital that I was working in at that time. My sister’s words I’ll never forget she said “You are no longer working as a nurse because you are going to kill someone”. My brother and sister left and did not return, no one in my family spoke to me about me being unwell. I was left on my own without care, without concern.

In 1984 a friend went to my mom and dad’s after I had visited her. The only recollection I have of me visiting her was explaining to her that she was the leader of some planet and I had picked up a phone that wasn’t ringing because the messages were coming to me through her phone. My friend came to my mom and dad’s home crying and told my mom that I needed to go to the hospital because I was really really sick. I remember I have a flash of myself standing in the backyard at that time and my mom coming and saying nothing so I continued on my own. I would come from my little place that I was living in and sit on my mom and dad’s porch with paper upon paper which I had nothing but numbers listed. I was trying to figure out how to crack the 649 code, the lottery code. I sat with pages of these numbers, my mom and my dad, brothers, sisters no one saying anything to me about my behavior being unusual.  I remember once going to my mom and dad’s at 2:00 in the morning because I needed to use their piano. I was wanting to learn how to play the piano and figure it all out because all of the patterns were now forming through the piano. I was 25 years old at that time. I’m playing away on the piano and my mom is screaming and running around in the kitchen that I was crazy over and over again. She was screaming this but nothing was ever said to me in person to sit me down and to talk with me about my behavior or if I was feeling OK over this two year span, never happened. My unemployment insurance ran out and I was able to get a job as a camp nurse but I didn’t last the whole summer. I was still in this state of voices, visions. I had these fixed beliefs of what was going on around me. I was sensing everything different than I had ever before but I was actually working as a nurse. I also started working casual after the camp job so I’d be casually going into the hospital or a nursing home or into someone’s home and again at this time I’m trying to figure out what the visions mean surrounding the patient. Are they going to die, what’s their diagnosis.

26 years old I was lucky enough to find a job at a behavioral unit which was a really small well staffed unit run by a psychologist. I stayed in that position for 10 years. We’d only have at first there one to two patients and the most we ever had was 9 and it was a new project so it was really super well staffed. At 35 years old I entered the 12 Step program and so 1997 I was sober. So I was sober for two years but still voices, visions. My whole experience that I had had from 1984 I had now learned how to integrate it into the world so it was kind of like one foot in both worlds, able to function as a nurse and I did well, but in 1999 I thought I’ve been sober for two years, I’m doing the 12 Steps, I’m working this program, I’ve had this spiritual awakening, why am I still in this world of voices and visions… and I started to think like a nurse and decided that maybe I was sick and then maybe they could give me some kind of a medication to help me to sleep or to just settle down some of these experiences that I was having. I decided to go to the hospital for help because again I had one foot in both worlds but it wasn’t easy to function sometimes. I asked for help and explained what was happening to me in the hopes of being able to sleep better and I talked openly about my experience because I’d had this experience since 1984 and I was doing much better now than I was in 1984. Well I was admitted for two weeks, diagnosed with schizophrenia. I actually thought that was a good thing at the time. Outpatient basis, I met once a week with a psychiatrist. I was sleeping and I thought things would be OK. I didn’t balk at the diagnosis I talked about it openly. I thought it was fine but then I would go in for my weekly visits and explain about the guides and how they help me. I’d explain different experiences that I was having and each week my meds were increased.

I wound up on risperidone 5 milligrams, Seroquel 600 milligrams, Nozinan I can’t remember how many milligrams, clonazepam and one more med. I began to drool, have hand tremors, my walk was slowed, it was like I was in water up to my neck. My jaw felt frozen, I was a zombie, I couldn’t think. My world was still voices and visions, feeling stuff sensory but it was now really really scary because I didn’t understand it any longer. I no longer was able to paint and I no longer played the piano. So in 1999 an RN friend in the 12 Step program decided to introduce me to Clarence. I didn’t want to go out on a blind date with him but finally after her asking me three times I decided I’ll go. He was in the 12 Steps just over a year and I was at three years. Clarence had lots of mental health history in his family and he himself had been diagnosed with bipolar type 2. He always fought for the rights of people that had mental health issues. He came to one of my appointments with me in Winnipeg to see this psychiatrist and he was trying to explain to the psychiatrist my experiences because he recognized that there were a lot of clairvoyance pieces to what I was describing. The psychiatrist increased my meds and basically ignored him and me. He was pretty angry at that point. The next appointment I went by myself, same thing. Medications increased again and I’m now in a room with a nurse who has long term disability papers for me to fill out so that I would no longer work as an RN. I had been working still but now I was at a really great nursing home actually that was new, really really well staffed and I was doing fine even on all these medications, I was functioning. So I called Clare and explained to him what they were trying to do to me and I never went back to that psychiatrist in 1999.

2000 April – I moved to Kenora ON to Clarence’s home. In 2002 I decided to go to the ACT team in Kenora to get help from thinking that this was a much better psychiatric approach and it was a new thinking. End result of that, Clarence was an ironworker, now my husband, he would come to all the appointments with me. I was getting the diagnosis schizophrenia, I had weaned off most of my meds and was explaining my world but again increase increase increase. Now it was olanzapine. I was 130 pounds and now I was 182 pounds after a matter of months. I became a zombie again and then I went to the one appointment alone. Clarence was away working and I brought a book which was by Dr. Abram Hoffer related to schizophrenia and vitamin B3 therapy and orthomolecular approach. I discussed my findings and I wanted to wean off the meds. The doctor threw the book off his desk. He glared at me inches from my face yelling “You have schizophrenia” “If you do not take your medication I will number one remove your nursing license, number two I will remove your driver’s license, number three I will contact the Government of Canada”. I remained calm and decided to stroke the ego of this psychiatrist and play dumb asking appropriate questions about dopamine, serotonin etc. He bought it and started doing drawings of the brain. I was able to get out of that office and make it down the stairs. When I got outside my knees were shaking so badly I fell to the ground then my shoulders began to shake anxiety just completely off the map. I called Clare. He left the job site, said he’d be home in a few hours, said for me to go home, have a bath, be safe, it will be OK. I never went back to psychiatry.

2004 – I had ended up with a job in a nursing station in Minaki ON and that’s where we lived. The nursing station gave us a trailer to live in beside so that I could be on call 24/7. I was the only nurse there independently with the secretary. I ran the nursing station independently. There was a helicopter pad beside the nursing station. I set up chronic care clinics, I set up many many things in that community over the years. I was there for 8 1/2 years and only evaluations of my work were very good. In 2005 I started exhibiting art and fusing my piano work with my art. I spoke openly with Clarence about my visions since the day I had met him, spoke openly about “future guide”. My one ally. Clare was a Métis man. In 2006 he became a sweat lodge drum carrier. I went to the sweat lodges with Clare. I was given the name “turtle woman” by an elder because I traveled between the worlds. I had visions of prophecy. Diagnosis: one lodge carrier said “Joan, you know if you talk to your people about what you see they will say that you are crazy”.

2004 to 2012 – I worked in the nursing station and having a support system again where people supported and believed in me. I was given a sacred fire also. 2014 I started a small silk scarf design business with my husband and did really well with this business. Also I was selling art and silk scarves and wound up in the Winnipeg art gallery with some of these scarves. I was able to get an Ontario arts grant for art research that I was doing so I was thriving aside from my diagnosis. Aside from being labeled, abused, threatened by psychiatry, aside from having this heavy heavy handle of diagnosis such as schizophrenia which the stigma is incredible, something I do not talk about because at this time in my life I’m alone and the last thing I need are people boxing me into any kind of labeled world.

2018 October – 1st my husband was tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident. I shattered completely, my family made insane decisions for me shattering me more. And more to the point, leaving me again alone with no one around me. Again on my own but now 57 years old unable to work as an RN because of grief, needing to move and change locations because of danger from my husband’s family, my family scatters and I’m left completely alone unable to do anything. Going into a grocery shop to get food I would begin to cry and come up with nothing. I was completely lost, more lost than I’ve ever been in my entire life I think, because I knew what it was like not to be lost I think, because I knew what it was like to have somebody by your side who understood you and accepted you and believed in you and loved you. I’d never experienced that before until I met my husband, so when he was tragically removed instantaneously I was done. To this day I’m incredibly surprised I’m still alive and that I didn’t take my own life ’cause every day I wanted to. The shattering of my world, the shattering of my mind completely changed the dynamics of my belief system. My visions, my voices, psychic ability completely changed and I couldn’t function in it any longer and I still don’t really function well in it to this day. I truly don’t and I don’t think I ever will but I have to accept this as it is. I’m in Comox BC with my cat and dog I did go through some counseling and EMDR. I couldn’t drive at first so I’m driving again. Really difficult for me to be around people, but I am because I’m a member so I have sponsoring people but I don’t talk to anyone about my history like I’m saying now. I have no one to share this with and I live in fear that people will know this about me and again I would just be ostracized.

In 2020 I needed help mentally and I knew I would not be going to a hospital for help ever again in my life so I started looking for again the Hearing Voices Network on Zoom ’cause everybody was on zoom with the pandemic and I ended up with the United States Vancouver. Vancouver WA was the group I went to because I thought it was British Columbia Canada but it was Washington. I went to the groups daily and felt supported and not alone. I hooked back in with a Tibetan Buddhist monk from years back that I really really loved and we my husband and I would go on retreats with or one to one discussions with him so I was able to hook in with him online in his monastery in Philadelphia. Vajrayana meditation and all the teachings from him were essential to keep me stable. So the Buddhist groups, the Hearing Voices Network groups, my contact with my world and also a higher power that I understand. One day I heard Clare pleading for me to start painting again. I clearly heard his voice, so I did. I started painting and playing the piano in 2021.

Hearing Voices Network 2021 – I tried Vancouver BC. It was still on Zoom. I was watching all I could related to Hearing Voices Network and Intervoice etc. Ted talks.

Now 2023 – I feel somewhat integrated more or less. I spoke my truth from 1984 to the present day to my sister just recently in a phone call. She lives in Australia and after that phone call that’s when I wrote this. I decided I needed to be vulnerable and share a piece of my journey so this week I’ll start back with the HVN Voices and Visions. I need help and I hope that I can help others also.