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www.thechildrenscenter.org
The worst thing about growing up with severe mental illness in the family wasn’t the suicide attempts or ambulances or blood or other insanity, rock singer Storm Large told an audience at the Hilton Vancouver Washington on Thursday night.
Worst of all was the silence, she said. “Nobody was talking about it,” she said. Nobody explained to her and her brothers that their mother’s illness wasn’t their fault, she said, and nobody asked them to talk through their own pain and trauma.
So the very loud Large delighted in pointing out that her own ascent to the stage to sing out and speak up — to have a voice, to tell her story — “is pretty miraculous.” Equally miraculous, she said, is the fact that Vancouver’s own Children’s Center, a mental health clinic, is working to help children like the one she used to be.
Large is 45 years old now and certain the danger has passed, she said. She’s famous locally and across the nation for belting it out with her own rock band, the Balls, and with “little orchestra” Pink Martini, as well as on stage and television. In 2012 her fame ballooned with the publication of a memoir, “Crazy Enough.”
The book reviews a childhood spent visiting Large’s severely mentally ill mother in mental institutions — and reacting against what Large was assured would be her own hereditary descent into madness. She was all of 9 years old when a low-key doctor informed her that this was “absolutely” inevitable, she said.
That bad — and false — news lead to years of risky behaviors. “Crazy Enough” was widely acclaimed for its unflinching honesty as it tells that story. It won the 2013 Oregon Book Award for creative nonfiction.
Large performed several relevant songs with guitar and piano accompaniment — including her own composition “Call Me Crazy” and “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies — during the benefit dinner for Children’s Center, a homegrown — and rapidly growing — mental health clinic for uninsured and underinsured young people and their families.
When it was founded in 1989 in downtown Vancouver, the Children’s Center saw around 200 clients per year; it now serves 1,600 per year — while still squeezing into the same tight building on West 11th Street, plus leasing additional office space nearby.
But not for much longer. After years of building support in the state Legislature and among private donors, the agency broke ground last year on a $6.3 million, 15,525-square-foot, single-story building on 1.85 vacant acres at 13500 S.E. Seventh St. Construction has proceeded on schedule even as the agency has raised additional funds for the project; the building should be ready to open its doors in June.
Ninety-five percent of Children’s Center’s clients live in poverty, according to the agency, and nearly one-quarter are victims of crimes like domestic violence and sexual abuse.
