I grew up in a family of 4 kids which was a good round number for board games, a favorite of which was Life. I always enjoyed picking out my piece and then moving it along the board…except that my older brother tended to win.  Little did I know that there were a number of metaphors for “real life” in the game.  Wrong turns could wind up the player in jail. A slight digression in a wrong direction could cause forward progress to be set back.  Quitting the game…well, forward progress stops there.

When we made the choice to send my youngest son to 9 weeks of Wilderness Therapy, we knew it was a risk. A senior in high school, he was completely unengaged in school, he looked depressed and we were worried.  Sending him away could be life changing or it could do nothing in which case we paid a large sum of money out of our business profits for nothing. We decided that we were better off taking the risk than living with regret if he harmed himself.

We brought our son back home in early January, a few days before his 18th birthday. We agreed to let him choose to either test out for his GED or attend high school his last semester. He chose the GED option which was the opposite of what we wanted but we let him do that.

Then for 3 months, nothing…sitting down in the road of life…forward progress was zero. The thought of “what if I don’t pass my GED” gave him enough anxiety that he was paralyzed. This is where I see what the Wilderness program saw…if besides ADHD he is at the minor end of the Broad Spectrum Autism continuum, it is manifesting in anxiety and difficulty with problem solving (i.e. he could study if he is worried about passing the GED).

It is a challenge as a parent to encourage without nagging, to support without doing the work, to take a deep breath and let a young adult find his way. After 3 months…joy…he started moving again. A little puppy love helped here as he has a first girlfriend whose gentle encouragement and belief in him was more beneficial than anything we said.

There were 4 parts to the test so I signed him up for math first which has been a strength of his. When he passed with honors it gave him the confidence to move ahead with the other parts and ended passing all, 3 parts with honors. In the meantime he asked for help with dealing with depression/anxiety which we have done. Just recognizing and accepting that he wants to get help is a huge step for him.

It appears that it took some time for him to process all that he was exposed to at Wilderness, both the therapeutic diagnosis as well as a general challenge to look at life differently. While in the program, he read and was profoundly impacted by Victor Frankel’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. What he took from the book was that regardless of the circumstances of life he finds himself in, he alone is responsible for how he views them. He was so struck by the realization that he could choose to view life as “full” or “empty” that he had tattooed some symbols representing those concepts onto the inside of his arms. I would have preferred a metaphorical tattoo in his mind alone however that was his choice and I support his desire for change.

He decided to apply to a state university…that in itself is huge as for several years he had lost sight of his vision of filmmaking and had been telling us he was not going to conform to societal expectations of going to college after high school. Because it was so late in the application process, he submitted a letter explaining the past year and what he learned from it. He also listed his comedic YouTube channel which I think shows his talent in that area. I know I’m biased but think he is quite talented. Anyway, he was accepted, even got a tiny scholarship which was good for his self-confidence.

I support anything that he wants to move forward to do. To see him revive his dream again of being a filmmaker is so heartening to see that I feel emotional even typing it. It’s wonderful to see him dream again…