A Tapestry of Love and Legacy: Honoring Steven with Reflections on Mental Health and Resilience
•S.J. Mendelson•Season 5•Episode 7
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As we gather to celebrate what would have been my brother Stevens 75th birthday, I find myself enveloped in reflections of love, life, and the indelible mark he left on our world. With candor and emotion, I open up about the journey through mental health struggles, resilience, and the echoes of Stevens legacy. This episode is a testament to those battles, drawing an intimate parallel with Ben Chida’s story, Governor Gavin Newsom's top education advisor. Ben’s candid account of his own mental health challenges and how they infused his mission to reshape California's education landscape illustrates the unspoken courage found in vulnerability and the relentless pursuit of reform.
In paying homage to Steven Charles Mendelson, I share the raw complexities of navigating mental health treatments and their sometimes-debilitating side effects, while also honoring his memory with heartfelt remembrance. We explore the intricacies of medication management, the perseverance required in the face of mental illness, and the indispensable practice of self-care for those grappling with depression. It's a conversation that interweaves personal narrative with a broader societal dialogue, aiming to kindle understanding and compassion for those on their mental health journeys, and to celebrate the lives of those we hold close to our hearts. Join us for this profound exploration of the human spirit, its trials, its triumphs, and the everlasting bonds of love that connect us all.
Morning bitches and dolls, and no one told you they love you today. Then I love you because you're you. Well, everything's all right in the world. We've got Rainier and La La Land. I've got my cat, petey, laying next to me, lula bells on her condo sleeping away. What else could you want? Of course, right. So in two days my brother, stephen, would have been 75 years old. Yes, he was born on Washington's birthday, february 22nd. Of course, he passed in. I believe it was 2010 or 15, maybe I forget which one. I think he was 60, yeah, 2010. He was 61 years old. I want to talk about what's going on with him because he had mental health issues.
Speaker 1:
There was an article today in the Times by Teresa Waddenabi. A key Newsom advisor bears his struggle with mental health. Ben Chida, governor Gavin Newsom's top education advisor. His dark past has become his roadmap. Listen to my asthma. I'm wheezing. Listen to that to diagnose problems in the traditional education system.
Speaker 1:
The boy hated himself. Six months into his first year in high school, he dropped out. For more than a year he isolated himself in his Huntington Beach bedroom where he became addicted to video games. An anonymously vented his anger online with racist and misogynistic screeds haunted by suicidal thoughts and fantasies about hurting others. His health deteriorated as he binged on pepperoni pizza, grew obese and developed terrible rashes. Then Ben Chida ventured out of his room.
Speaker 1:
Today, chida's 38, is Governor Gavin Newsom's Chief Deputy Cabinet Secretary, a key member of the team building an ambitious plan to reshape public education through a $50 billion continuum of service to create a healthy foundation for children and a path to meaningful jobs. At the end, chida was or Chida I don't know how to pronounce your name, I'm sorry Chida or Chida was the chief architect of five-year compacts with the University of California and California State University, pledging financial stability in exchange for gains in graduate rates, access and affordability. He guided a statewide data system set to debut the theater, to follow students through the educational pipeline into careers, to assess what works and what doesn't. His driving Newsom's master plan for career education set for release this fall. That would help high school students explore. Let's see. Did I write explore? I got it turned to the page number eight. Okay, now where are we? Do you think I would have this ready? No, here we go, oopsy, oopsy, daisy. My computer's lit. Okay, all right. Potential careers build jobs, heals while earning academic certification, and greater state financial and counseling support.
Speaker 1:
Yet Chida still struggles with his mental health. He has thought about suicide every day since he was 14, including now, although he doesn't take steps to act on it. Okay good, on some days he lies on his office floor seething at his inadequacies and then projecting his bitterness towards colleagues with impatience and verbal lashings. He is known to be condescending and disrespectful. At times, chida recalls that he once unloaded a profanity-filled tie-rated at educationals nonprofit board members who had invited him to dinner a few years ago. A really lame thing for me to do. That wasn't my best self. Michelle Sigueros, president of the Campaign for College Opportunities, said the outburst was inappropriate and challenging, but it didn't stop us from moving on and working together. Get her, including work supporting students by largely eliminating remedial classes and community college and streamlining the transfer process to universities.
Speaker 1:
Another person who experienced Chaita Zanga was startled by behavior, but found candor in his heated words and a willingness to move forward. Disagreements look for solutions. I wanna be a good, kind, authentic person to everyone, chaita said. But I get stressed and over-anxious and the way I manifest that is I lecture somebody or I get in a fight. I'm not proud of it. I'm just gonna stop it there, because I really this is to honor my brother and his mental health deterioration.
Speaker 1:
He was the younger of the two of us we were, but they used to call Jewish twins I don't know why they called us that. We were very close in age and we were best friends and in 1967, he decided that there's no money really for him to go to college. So he forged his birth certificate and he joined the army during the Vietnam as we all know what that's all about Vietnam fair Phony war, if I ever saw one and while he was overseas he became in the quartermaster corps. I think that's where you give things to soldiers. I don't know what that is. Maybe somebody could answer it for me and let me know. I would appreciate that. Anyway, unfortunately, because he was the supply sergeant, whatever different men who were in there wanted him to, like take part in the black market stuff.
Speaker 1:
My brother was not that kind of a person. He was honest, he was trustworthy, he was. That's who he was. He would never take part in anything like that. And then, from what I understand, some soldiers put some sort of a drug in his drink because of that and he was never the same and for a year or two he was out of his mind maybe it was LSD, I don't know what it was, and so but he survived and came back home. He came back home with all the medals that he had gotten. He was a great soldier and he served our country. And then, within the couple of years, he met the love of his life, his wife, and they got married and had three kids. So, on or above, they had a great life.
Speaker 1:
He was an architect, he worked for the city, and something happened in 1980, I'm not sure what set him off, but that was the beginning of the end for him in terms of the mental illness coming back, when he was like 40 years old and I went to see him in New York and the doctor said the brother, that doctor brings me in the shrink. He was in the hospital for veterans hospital in Brooklyn. I go in there and the doctor says well, your brother will never be the same. I mean, what do you mean? The brother you knew will never be the same, and that was the beginning of the end for him, and that is true. So for 20 more years he lived with a disease of paranoia, schizophrenia, depression, bipolar human name and he lived in it. He was a great husband and father. That's all I'm going to say and to this day, I am very proud of him and I always will be. He's my best friend, my brother, and in two more days will be his 75th birthday. He would have been 75. So I am honoring my brother and I'm briefly talked about the article about mental health and reading some of the things about this young man who works for governor Newsom.
Speaker 1:
Stick in there, don't give up. Don't take your own life. My brother tried many a time to do that because of his mental illness, and one time he jumped in front of a car. Maybe they hit him, maybe he jumped and almost lost his leg. So I came to see him in New York again and as time went along, he developed an intense hatred of my mother. She moved out here. Then he lived in her apartment. Eventually he went into a rehab or a rest home that they call it, and passed away there in 2010.
Speaker 1:
I'll never forget the call from I forget who it was from somebody it may have been one of my nephew's wives called me and of course, I've never been the same since. So make sure and I know you would stop taking his medications at different times. You know, sometimes I guess he felt like it doesn't work for me I don't want it. And then he would take it again and we'd get very lethargic. We used to call it the Thorazine shuffle. I don't know what they gave him, but I'm honoring him and I'm going to honor him every day on TikTok, on Facebook, because he was my best friend and he was a great father.
Speaker 1:
So, stephen Mendelssohn, stephen Charles Mendelssohn, nobody better than you, a great father or a great husband, a great brother, and I'm honoring you today and I love you and everybody. If you're going through trials and tribulations with mental illness I suffer from depression Take care of yourself. Take your medication. It will help you in the long run. Sometimes you may be tired from the meds and other things, but don't give up on it and don't give up on yourself. Tiktok, bobby loves you and remember, if no one told you they love you today, then I love you because you're you. Be good to yourself, stevie. I miss you and I love you.
