Jennifer's story of recovery

Jennifer starts her story by telling me about her 3 sons, The eldest teaching English in Vietnam, another working in Dubai and travelling the world, the youngest completing his masters at UCT in social development. She has smart sons who are good men she says. She even became a granny recently and has a 6 month old grandchild. Jennifer lives close by in a shared flat where she leads a quiet simple life. As a volunteer at The Friends of Valkenberg she travels in by train to work in the Friendly Shop where she’s responsible for processing donations. She loves it, loves going in to work and seeing her colleagues who are kind and supportive of her. She’s come a long way, and with grace and humour has recovered from what she calls years of hell. Born on the 7th June 1962 in a rural village of Zimbabwe, Jennifer was part of a large family of 6 daughters, raised by what she calls an “old-fashioned and hardworking” mother. She left home at a young age to attend school at Kwe Kwe, and later at the age of 20 trained to become a police officer, serving for 10 years while gradually growing within the ranks. This is where she met and later married her husband and after a few years they left Zimbabwe in the early 1990’s, with their children, for Cape Town, where he was offered a job in security at SA Breweries in Newlands and a cozy company cottage for the family to live in. Her growing sons were doing well in school, two of them in SACS while she was working as a bank teller supporting them mostly on her humble salary. After some time, Jennifer found herself becoming the primary caretaker of the three children and of the home, experiencing her husband becoming less and less available and more and more distant. As a young mother in a new country and unfamiliar environment, she felt like she had little emotional, financial and physical support during this time, no aunties, no sisters or mother, nobody familiar from her homeland to turn to for assistance or kindness or help. She describes how she felt ever more isolated and helpless the more she and her husband grew apart. Cut off from any kind of support structure or family, her panic and fear of how she’d cope and manage everything completely overwhelmed her. During this time she and her husband separated and through the kindness of a friend Jennifer found a new cottage to live in and raise her kids there. They changed schools, she found a new job and then her husband subsequently died in a car accident. With her outer structure collapsed, she felt her inner structure slowly collapsing in on her too. Depression sank deep into her soul as she struggled her way through each day, not sleeping at night with the insomniac wolf at the door for 2 years, she says “I felt myself going mad. I felt people were following me…I saw and felt things other people didn’t…” Her 1995 diagnosis at Valkenberg Hospital of delusional disorder, then later schizophrenia with depression, lead to her spending a few years medicated and in recovery. A later relapse in 1999 saw her returning and spending further time recovering with a supportive structure. She felt ostracised at work, “the stigma is so bad” she remembers, eventually leaving her job after colleagues found out she’d been in Valkenberg. “Here, I felt taken care of” she said, “it was such a relief. Everyone was kind and supportive. They told me I was sick, not mad, and helped me to get better”. These days, as an outpatient and active participant at Friends of Valkenberg Jennifer has found a way, through working in a close supportive environment, of managing in the world which once felt so threatening to her. Perhaps it's because her soul feels cared for.