Almost Heaven West Virginia

The second Alternatives Conference was held in West Virginia in 1987. Four of us from the Portland Coalition for the Psychiatrically Labeled, and two consumers from Waterville, piled into the Coalition van to travel from Maine to Marshall University in Huntington.

None of us had been to West Virginia, and our heavily laden, 4-cylinder van groaned and sputtered when we reached the Appalachian landscape in Pennsylvania. The scenery was breathtaking, and our anticipation was growing. It was an exciting time for the consumer movement.

Darkness fell, and we became unsure of the directions. Somewhere in the wilds of the countryside, we made a wrong turn and found ourselves on a dirt road that led to a dead-end at the side of a big barn. The smell alone alerted us that we had arrived at a pig farm.

But Lo! Just in front of us, nailed to the barn, was a big sign. We inched the van closer to read it, hoping for some indication of where we were. The message read, in big black letters:

Eternity - Where?

Evidently the painter of the sign was as lost as we were! Spooked, we turned the van around and drove back the country road as fast as we dared. Once back on the highway, we found our way again, and arrived at Huntington in the wee hours of the morning.

It was a good conference. I gave my slide show on Stigma in a joint workshop with Don Culwell of Texas, and Dianne Cote gave a presentation in another classroom. The plenary sessions featured past leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement trying to pull together a cohesive consumer movement with dubious attention and little participation from the vast majority of attendees.

The conference served its best purpose, however, which was getting to know other consumer/survivors from all over the country. All of us took home some measure of encouragement and enlightenment for reaching personal recovery at home and pulling together our local programs.

In the van on the way back to Maine, we joked and laughed about the metaphysical sign that had frightened us so much on the way down. We decided to commemorate the event with a group poem, an activity we often did in poetry groups at the Coalition. Annie Roy wrote the first line, and each of us took turns adding another line until we all agreed that the poem was done.

It was a poem about ambiguous eternity. But with our happy memory of Alternatives '87, and the joy and new friendships that we shared, it was almost heaven, West Virginia!

From Where to Eternity

In the beginning there was a group of people,
And two of them were strangers,
Taking a long journey to West Virginia.
Partway through Pennsylvania, night fell,
And the six turned down a dark road,

Only to discover some black pregnant cicadas
Coming towards them.
We found "eternity - where?" on the side of a barn
In the land of the Pennsylvania Dutch;
But the smell came straight from hell!

Earth air became warmer with the strange tiny creatures
Telling us we are getting closer to our destiny,
To be greeted by curious humans.
Curiouser and curiouser, the strangers among us became friends
And ate cake on floor six: "Eternity here -- happy birthday!"

Pink and blue clouds in the earlyening sky
Shaped like boomerangs stretch out over the horizon.
Some of the curious humans
Became friends of cheer and laughter.

Annie Roy
Sally Clay
Pam Stewart
Jane Tidd
August 11, 1987

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