NONPROFITS AROUND TOWN: AspenPointe Heroes; Urban Peak, Arthritis Foundation

Best-selling author Mary Karr has decided there is “a God with a horrible sense of humor.”

After all, she said, “after a life of paying mental health professionals, now they’re paying me!”

Karr, who traced her dysfunctional, alcoholic life in the memoirs “The Liars’ Club,” “Cherry” and “Lit,” had a compassionate audience of almost 400 as the keynote speaker at the AspenPointe “Heroes of Mental Health” luncheon Oct. 12 at Cheyenne Mountain Resort.

Leading up to her warmly received, touching presentation, AspenPointe President/CEO Morris Roth had shared that “the stigma of mental health/behavioral health is alive,” one reason his organization is now a collaboration of 12 agencies and groups into one system without the words “mental health” in the name (see: aspenpointe.org).

Karr sprinkled her talk with self-deprecating one-liners.

Her dysfunctional-family description: “Any family with more than one person.” Her seven-times-married mother: “She didn’t date, she married.”

Her mom wasn’t interested in spending time with her grandkids, saying “I don’t do kids.” “But, Mom,” Karr and her siblings questioned, “you had four kids. What did you do as a mom?” Said Mom, “I was fun.”

Her binge-drinking mother introduced her children to suicide threats by getting “loaded” and locking herself in the bathroom with a loaded pistol and threatening to kill herself, sending the kids scattering to neighbors for help, Karr said.

Bullet holes in the wall showed where a drunken mom had taken aim at various husbands. Karr’s father, whom her mother married twice, “drank himself to death.”

Karr, who first attempted suicide by baby aspirin before she was 10, became a heavy-duty alcoholic and a substance abuser.

“I had a black hole in the middle of me into which I’d pour alcohol and drugs,” she said.
The day her Ivy League (now ex-) husband said “you smell like a bum,” she had her last drink. It was 21 years ago.

Karr checked into a facility, “a mental Marriott,” found people who loved her for herself and concentrated on raising her son, now 24. “Even when I couldn’t love myself, I could love my son.”
Her “spiritual adviser” told her to write a “gratitude list” and pray every single day. Day 1: “Keep me sober. I want money. Amen.”

Three weeks later, the same prayer. A telephone call. A man was giving her $35,000 for a writing grant she had never applied for.

The self-described “cracker from Texas pretending to be a white girl who wore headbands and rode horses that jumped” unloaded herself in her best-selling poetry and writings. And she is convinced that God has a convoluted sense of humor. “No one ever called again and said they were going to give me $35,000.”

Honored during the luncheon was Hero of Mental Health Barry Koch, who has spent the past year revamping the region’s suicide-prevention hot line to serve people 24/7 with trained volunteers.

“This hero stuff, I’m just not buying it,” said Koch, who then acknowledged with a chuckle that “the one thing about awards is I get to have a public forum. We need to get the word out about how severe this issue (suicide) is and to find one compassionate funder.”

Koch said 172 people killed themselves last year in Colorado Springs, and the state recorded 940 suicides.

“Is that something the Mile High State wants to be known for? NO,” said Board Chairwoman Bonnie Martinez.

She called on the community for help.

Urban Peak “Building Futures. Building Lives”

Linda Weise, founder and executive director of the Colorado Springs Conservatory, was named the Pathmaker Award winner by Urban Peak Colorado Springs, which serves homeless youths.

At the nonprofit’s 10th annual fundraiser Sept. 23, Urban Peak’s Executive Director, John McIlwee, saluted Weise’s “huge impact on the youth of all walks of life. She and her husband, Keith Wells, have had a longtime commitment to improving the lives of youth in Colorado Springs.”

Weise looked out over the crowd of several hundred at Mr. Biggs Event Center.

“The reality is that if I look around this room, there isn’t one person I didn’t call upon saying, ‘I need help.’ Every person responded,” she said. “Our job is to leave this place better than we found it. Thank you for carving paths with me.”

Three young honorees shared their stories.

Michael called himself “a troubled little kid” when he first went to Urban Peak. Since then he has gone to college, reunited with his mother and he volunteers throughout the community.
He was touched “to be appreciated for everything I’ve done.”

Monique said she and her siblings were “treated badly” at home. But what pushed her over the edge was when she went to a party with her birth mother and the mother’s boyfriend.

Her baby sister was left on a bed. She slipped down between the bed and the wall and suffocated.

Monique was adopted out but couldn’t attach.

Then came suicide attempts, drinking, living with a boyfriend and pregnancy.

Today she’s working on her GED diploma, has a job to support her son and is “working on my driver’s license.”

Adison wasn’t welcome at home when sexual orientation conflicted with the parents’ religious beliefs.

Adison went to college for an associate’s degree and, through TransCampus “for queer and transgendered students,” got a scholarship to Colorado College and plans to go on to law school.

Adison’s thesis is on transgender politics. The transgendered “want to take responsibility for our own lives and to give back,” Adison said.