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Member Stories
Vince Giannetti
Amina Hines
Gormandee Maximin
Chris McQuirk
Mike Yaggi
Vince Giannetti
Then: An avid biker, Vince cycled an average of 12 miles a day on his Rockrimmer down gravel paths in a suburban hamlet. Weekday mornings, Vince drove his Lexus SUV to the train station, and commuted down to Wall Street, where he worked with investment bankers and research analysts as an independent software consultant. Amicably divorced, he shared custody of his only son, teaching him photography and to drive.
Next: On 9/11 Vince made it out of the first World Trade Center building just as the elevator doors blew open. Bodies flew out of windows and shook the ground as he fled. He exhaled, went to Europe, fell in love. She lost a four-year battle with breast cancer in 2005. As he scattered his fiancées’ ashes in New Mexico, the multiple losses caught up with him. He stopped eating, lost 40 pounds and got to know his apartment walls well. Institutionalized with severe depression, unable to work, he lay awake nights worrying about how to support himself and his son.
Now: Vince became a member of Laurel House. To socialize. To eat. To develop routine. Vince and his son are close, celebrating his son’s win in a national photography exhibition and his son’s acceptance to college. Vince is undergoing treatment for congestive heart failure—the result of airborne pollutants lodging in his heart on 9/11. He’s taking IT consulting jobs in White Plains, Stamford and Greenwich of shorter duration. Vince updates his resume on Laurel House computers, confers with the employment unit, and continues, optimistically, to look for work.
Quote: “I lost 700 clients and friends on 9/11, found myself out of work, severely depressed, with no way to support myself or my son. Laurel House enabled me to take baby steps. It gave me a place to go, a routine, a healthy meal, a way back into actually living. I began working with the employment area and used Laurel House computers to plug back into the mainstream. It was a godsend. I still stop by. I will always stop by.”
Amina Hines
Then: Amina went to Yale on scholarship, graduating with a Sociology degree in 1994. She and her husband were both working. Life was fun, though hectic, raising a daughter, 9, and two sons, 3 and 1. And all about saving for a house and future.
Next: Amina was unable to read. People on the TV were talking to her. She lost her job. She found herself on a locked ward, feeling hopeless. She heard the diagnosis of schizophrenia and thought “death sentence.” She lost her children. Her marriage fell apart. She thought she’d never work again or have a “normal” life.
Now: Amina became a member of Laurel House. “This pushed my recovery along much faster than with just medication and therapy. They recognized me as a person.” She worked on the Laurel House newsletter, typed mailings, photo copied. Laurel House helped her get a job with the state of Connecticut, working in mental health as a peer engagement specialist. Then she became a PRO (Peers Reaching Out) on an inpatient unit. Now she’s a Recovery Educator for the state and teaches peer counseling at Housatonic College. Laurel House found a ‘Home of Your Own’ grant program that reduced the down payment on a house from $150,000 to $50,000. Then helped with loans so she could not only buy a home but keep it. She has custody of her daughter, now 16; Najah’s on the track team and filling in college applications. Her boys are weekenders. “Laurel House helped me to become a homeowner and helped me to restore my family.”
Quote: “Motivation. Comfort. Hope. These are the words that come to mind after 7 years as a Laurel House member. Before Laurel House, the only word to describe my life was despair.”
Gormandee Maximin, 49
Then: Happily married, working as a dancer performing tap, ballet, and modern jazz as a member of the Eugene Joseph Dance Troupe and as a sales rep for a chemical company to pay the bills. Went to opera at The Forum with her aunt, whenever they liked what was on the program, frequented local jazz clubs, listened to Prince CDs en route everywhere and played tennis with girlfriends.
Next: Her husband fell ill with AIDS and forbid her talking to anyone, including him, about it. Her hands were beet red, burning, chafed and sore from an unconscious, compelling habit to continually wash them. “There was a lot of bleeding in the house and I had to change the bloody linens on his bed and dressings on his body. I just kept washing my hands.” When he died, memories of child abuse surfaced. As young as 9 she was molested by a cousin and an uncle during weekly family get togethers at her grandmother’s house. Co-workers at the chemical company didn’t know how to talk to her or how to behave around her. Gormandee would ‘awaken’ as if frozen at the sound of her name, with hands hovering in mid-air over the keyboard. “I thought I was working, using the keyboard, doing things as I normally did.” She asked her aunt to find someone to adopt her. “I had difficulty going to work and difficulty even getting up on time just to telephone to tell them I wasn’t coming in.” Gourmandee hid at home. She ordered in pizza and Chinese, racked up debt and stopped exercising. She got lost in Stamford Hospital trying to find the pulmonary specialist she had an appointment with and another doctor took her to the Tully Center. “I always say I wasn’t lost trying to find a pulmonologist, it was god’s way of getting me where I needed to be.” She was diagnosed with OCD, Clinical Depression, Anxiety Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. “I went out only at night, so no one would see the weight I’d gained or that I wasn’t keeping myself up.” She had trouble getting on a bus if there was more than one or two people aboard.
Then: She was referred to Laurel House and stopped being ‘house bound.’ She worked in the kitchen and decorated the bistro. Laurel House arranged a temporary employment position for her at Chuck’s Steakhouse. “I’m anemic and suffer from Reynard’s Syndrome—so my body temperature doesn’t react well to change—so going into the walk-in freezer and packing the salad bar with ice is hard. My fingers still burn and itch when they get wet—a holdover from washing my hands a lot. And it’s pretty strenuous carrying eight buckets of ice up and down the stairs in a lunch hour. At Chuck’s, I change gloves often so my hands don’t stay wet. If I have to make an extra trip and make more, lighter loads with ice, no one minds. For the first time in 10 years I feel lonely. That’s a good thing—it means I’m finally allowing myself to open up and feel things. For the first time in 10 years I’ve told my aunt, ‘OK, fix me up.’ “ Gormandee stopped by The Forum and picked up a program. And bought a bucket of pink tennis balls from Target.
Quote: “People talk about seeing a light at the end of a road. I never even saw a road. I didn’t want there to be a road. After losing my husband, I just wanted to feel sad. I never thought I’d be able to work again. Laurel House found me a job, and gives me the support I need to keep it.”
Chris McGuirk, 25
Then: In Middle School, 10/11/12 ish in age, his parents got him a tutor. He was having difficulty with homework and school. His favorite pastime was drawing. He would work for 15 hours straight on a drawing, outlining it first in pencil. Using two or three different shades of color pencil, he would layer and layer an anime or manga comic-book style image until he was content or until he had trouble imagining where else he wanted to go with it. Then he might stop, and wait more than a year before working on that same page in his sketchbook. By 19 he was diagnosed with ADD and was experiencing anxiety. No longer eligible for medical benefits under his parents’ policy, “I tried to find alternative ways to deal with everything.” Acupuncture. Homeopathy. Denial. He struggled. Keeping jobs, even menial jobs, became much more difficult.
Next: Friends suggested he try the websites of pharmaceutical manufacturers to try to find medication. And jobs that offered benefits. A stab at having his own apartment led to him moving back in with his parents, bankrupt and dissolute. By 25, he hadn’t completed a single college course or kept a job longer than a few months. “Every day my father would come home and say ‘Did you look for a job today? Why not try to be a fireman, a policeman?” What little money he earned went to buy cigarettes, magic markers and gas. Desperate, Chris called the Connecticut Mental Health hotline, which got him to the DuBois Center, which referred him to Laurel House.
Now: Chris arrived at Laurel House with his trademark wire-rim glasses and his manga carrier bag, carrying his sketchbook, colored pencils and markers. He joined the Wellness Program at Laurel House, participating in microwave cooking and healthy eating courses offered by the nutritionist and joined the Smoking Cessation Program. He quit May 11th. “In your life, you’re on a chain. You’re chain is only going to go so far and with every cigarette I smoked, every packet of smokes I bought, it was a link removed from my chain.” Chris drew place mats for the Education Unit’s Monday night dinner, eventually asking for help applying to one of the few locksmith college’s in the country. “When I was younger, a neighbor had a garage and all the kids on the block would crawl through a hole in one panel to get in. At the time, I didn’t know we were looking at key cutting machines, buffers and key blanks. He had piles of aluminum keys--red, blue, gold, silver and green—and I took one home and used a file to make it unlock my house. Being a locksmith was a child’s fantasy.” Getting in was problem one. “After I was accepted, I didn’t know how I was going to buy books, pay rent, buy food. Laurel House—its wonderful staff—helped me.” Chris has his own apartment, in Cambridge, MA, and commutes to college. He painted his bedroom Hawaiian blue, his living room yellow green and his kitchen, soft white. “I got in the habit of going to the store and fully stocking my fridge. I make black bean salad with ground cumin and hot pepper flakes, and put sliced avocado on top—a healthy fat. It’s nice on cold days. I make it hot and it opens up your nostrils. Between that and hot pockets and bruchetta I’m eating as nutritionally balanced as I can for the first time in my life.” And doing the dishes, caulking windows, and taking out the garbage. “Making friends is not as easy as it is at Laurel House. Buoyant conversation is not something I’m good at and I think I’m still trying too hard, which does the opposite of my intent. But my apartment is nice, and I’m managing casual conversation with people in my classes. And I have a destiny.”
Quote: “Knowing you have a mental illness affects the ego. Mental illness is so insidious. To think there is something wrong with you mentally—it’s very very hard to take. A lot of people look down on you and become negative and malicious to you. It’s not something physical that they can see. It was a big struggle within myself to say ‘you need medication to get by.’ Laurel House helped me to come to terms with the fact that I have a mental illness. That changed everything. It doesn’t make you a less valuable person. I didn’t know how to go to college. I had never gone through an application process. Laurel House staff took me through it. I didn’t know how to find the money to go to college. Laurel House helped me find resources, even an apartment. Now, I look at locksmithing and going to school as a destiny. Now I have a destiny.“
Mike Yaggi, 42
Then: Losing his father at 10 years old was tough. By Middle School, he and his family knew something was wrong. He stopped doing well, acted up, and got progressively worse, visiting the principal’s office with increasing frequency. He wanted to be alone. Disliked talking to people. “Back in the late 70s there wasn’t really a diagnosis. I was just labeled a problem kid, and shuttled through school until at 16 they could boot me out.” He spent a decade doing odd jobs, mostly tree work. Pruning. Climbing higher and higher, working with pole saws and blades. Taking them down. Lonely work with no one to ask too many questions. He had a son with a girlfriend, then another one six years later with his wife. Racing thoughts—of not wanting to be alive, wishing he wasn’t born—became inescapable. He ended up in the emergency room. Divorced.
Next: “With Depression, you always feel pain on the inside and don’t know where it’s coming from.” Mike got 9 tattoos, including a large tiger on his forearm. “I used to cut myself. With tattoos, you can feel the pain and you know where it’s coming from.” Also diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Mike continued to work. “People would expect a lot of me, because there were long periods that you wouldn’t know I had an illness. That brought on anxiety, and it would get to the point where I would stay up nights worrying about tomorrow, worry about routine, daily tasks that an ordinary person at work wouldn’t give a second thought would become my nightmares.”
Now: Mike built up confidence and self-esteem working in the Laurel House kitchens; his specialty has become fresh, home made chocolate chip cookies. A year on, he’s branching out to working on The Weekly. “Just to have time on the computer is a huge help. Practice is enabling me to develop basic skills.” After spending most of his life working in manual labor, he wants to move on to a career that uses his creative side. He’s back in touch with his youngest son, now 13. “He sees me now as someone who isn’t staying home, just staying in bed.” And making an appointment with the Employment Program, to take his next step.
Quote: “Laurel House gives me a chance to see myself and see where I can possibly go. I’ve had endurance, but now I have creativity and computer skills. For the first time in my life I feel like I can move on, move forward.”
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