Photo by Graham Cullen Shannon Petersen, left, Peer-to-Peer support program coordinator, is shown with Charisa Billigmeier, amentor with the Peer-to-Peer support program, aimed at helping people with serious mental illness.

One step toward that goal was to become a mentor in the Peer-to-Peer program, a nine-week education and recovery course for people with serious mental illness who want to establish and maintain their wellness and recovery. It's a program of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. In Frederick , the NAMI program is held at Way Station, which helps individuals with serious mental illness, developmental disabilities and other barriers, seeking to live independently.

Billigmeier, who is bipolar, lives in Way Station housing in Frederick . Participating in the Peer-to-Peer program helped her get comfortable with telling her story. "It was a good starting point for me," she said.

The program gives participants the opportunity to talk about their illness during meetings. "Telling our stories gives us a commonality," Billigmeier said. And a realization that "I'm not the only person in the world who has had these experiences.

"Talking about how mental illness has affected my life, education, housing ... that was good. In a sense, it's something you don't see, like a broken arm or leg," she said of mental illness. "In NAMI we understand (mental illness) is a traumatic event that's ongoing."

Billigmeier's own journey with mental illness began as a teen with what she believed was a religious experience. It was actually a manic episode. "I was losing sleep and the crazy things that go with it, like not eating, feeling euphoric, on top of the world and racing thoughts."

She was treated for bipolar disorder, but because of the belief that what she was experiencing was spiritual, stopped taking her medication. Nine months later she had a relapse, and asked to live at Way Station and get medical treatment instead of returning home.

Billigmeier said she's had several relapses, the most recent was last year on a business trip in Kentucky. "I landed in the hospital for two weeks and that was probably the two worst weeks of my life," she said.

While a participant in the Peer-to-Peer program, she wrote a poem about that time -- how empty and hopeless she felt then, her thoughts of suicide and the vision she had of finding a diamond ring among a pile of black ashes and how that restored her hope and a knowing that "everything will be OK, if I just hold on."

Billigmeier said though she still has dark days her illness is stable now. She plays the piano, is learning to play guitar and is embarking on a new career. She writes poetry for others, but mostly for herself. "It's my way of telling myself I'm OK."

Her goal is to live independently again and to give back to the Way Station community by reaching out to her peers. That's why she trained to become a mentor in the Peer-to-Peer program.

"The journey of recovery is a lifelong thing and eventually you can get to the point where you are maintaining," said Shannon Petersen, NAMI's Peer-to-Peer coordinator and supportive volunteer coordinator for Way Station. Currently there are 11 mentors for the NAMI program in Frederick County.

"It can be powerful," Petersen said of the program. Topics include the language and emotions of mental illness, spirituality, relapse prevention, how to be a self-advocate in the recovery process and identify the symptoms of and/or triggers of relapse.