By Bartholemew Hugh Campbell, Certified WRAP ALF
Bart receiving his recertification in Ottawa in July.
Hello, I would like to introduce myself by sharing why I am a WRAP Facilitator.
First, let me tell you why I believe in wellness and recovery. After almost 40 years of struggling with mental illness, suffering in silence, and nearly losing my life due to lack of self-care, WRAP showed up. It gave me hope and a plan that not just saved my life but allowed me to live a better quality of life.
For the past 14 years, I have been living successfully with major depression, severe anxiety, frequent panic attacks, and hearing voices—five voices to be exact: four very negative and one positive, which I was able to identify as my maternal grandmother after taking Kevin Healey’s hearing voices workshop.
I am living proof that you can get well and stay well for extended periods. You can work toward your goals, and you can live a happy and productive life despite the effects of mental illness.
However, this was not an easy achievement for me because mental health challenges have been part of my family for many generations. Recognizing the dysfunctions in my family at a very young age, I decided to work hard, get a good education, secure a well-paying job, and remain focused on staying mentally healthy.
Sadly, shortly after creating that plan, I began to experience abuse and abandonment, followed by several traumatic incidents over the years.
It was a blessing when I got the opportunity to move to Canada from Jamaica in my later teenage years. Then, I was able to be active, achieve my plan, and become a role model to others from a professional perspective.
However, I was still not practicing self-care, so marriage, hard work, education, the ideal job, fancy cars, and houses were not enough to prevent things from breaking down and my life falling apart.
In 2009, I experienced the worst mental health crisis in my adult life. After a short hospital stay, I began to participate in a few outpatient programs and learned about WRAP.
I registered for a WRAP Seminar I, and based on my experience, I literally fell in love with WRAP. Why? Because WRAP gave me a framework that helped me manage the ebb and flow of my mental health challenges.
Starting with the Five Key Concepts as my foundation, I now had hope for today and not tomorrow (which never came). I was able to take personal responsibility for my own actions instead of blaming others, using my past traumas or my mood as an excuse for not taking care of myself. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that educating myself about myself was a thing to do, and it had nothing to do with academics. Advocating for myself at first was challenging because I had grown accustomed to being all things to all people and never putting myself first. But I learned, thanks to my supporters who modeled advocating and what it meant to act with courage.
Drawing from my Wellness Toolbox, I was able to build and maintain my WRAP, which allowed me to take early retirement from corporate life and become the CEO of my own life.
Each year I assess my WRAP to ensure I achieve my personal strategic goals; this contributes to me continuously feeling well and functioning well.
I consider myself a role model who also lives very well, and it gives me great joy to support others on their own wellness journeys as a WRAP Facilitator. This work has resulted in me facilitating multiple WRAP Seminar I and II workshops, Family WRAPs, WRAP for volunteers, Holiday WRAPs, Youth WRAPs, WRAPs for Team Building, Introductory WRAP, etc.
Finally, as a WRAP Advanced Level Facilitator, I just completed my fifth recertification in Ottawa, the capital city of my home country, Canada.
My challenge now as global WRAP Ambassador is to continue holding and modeling the WRAP Values and Ethics, as well as using effective language to tell my stories in ways that will inspire people to unleash the power within themselves and achieve whatever goals they choose to work on.
Bartholemew Hugh Campbell, Certified WRAP ALF
