The 30%

I've been ruminating on life's statistics: the 99% vs the 1%, the  80-20 rule...then I remembered a blog my daughter wrote a couple of months ago about a lesser known statistic: schizophrenia is 70% hereditary and 30% evironmental.She is writing a novel that explores the legacy of mental illness. I asked her to be a guest blogger on Riddles on the Harp.  Reprinted with permission from My Wilderness Years.

April Trabucco

The Writer Magazine’s email newsletter this week was titled “Why we need pain to write.” I’m all over that, but not by choice. If that’s the key, I should be churning out chapters by the hour. There is the requisite time necessary for licking one’s wounds though and that turns out to be an involved process. There’s also work and children and house and said source of pain that require ample tending. So chapters are not churning as fast as I would like. Is it to my creative detriment that I'm an optimist and cherish the happy times that come when hope prevails?


It’s true that some of my best writing has come from deep pain. Does this need to be the case? It echoes my spiritual journey. I am often closest to God when I am in pain. I am very willing to let that pain go. I’ve opened the cage and encouraged it to fly away, but I’m more bound to it than I’d like to admit and it keeps coming back. I recognize the growth that has come from it, not the bumpy unsightly kind of growth you scramble to hide, but a growth born of resilience that propels me forward despite the odds and I’d like to think there is beauty in that.
 

I was reminded this morning of why I started writing the novel I’m very slowly working on. I opened my inspiration box for the first time in over a year and found an article my husband had given me years ago. “Haunted By My Family's Madness.” It was an account of a young woman forced to question the practicality of having children. She had been in a serious relationship with a man who ended things because he decided that she was too much of a genetic risk. Both of her siblings were schizophrenic and though she exhibited no symptoms and was seemingly healthy and grounded, statistics show that schizophrenia is hereditary. Children with a schizophrenic aunt or uncle can be at risk. Statistics also show that schizophrenia is 70% hereditary and 30% environmental.

I’ve followed a lot of rabbit trails into the land of speculative fiction trying to wrap my head around the legacy I’ve stepped into. I’ve used this process to search for purpose and redemption and the key to breaking the ties that bind. I will admit, though it may sound crazy, that I feel a huge sense of responsibility to change the legacy. If all I have to work with is 30%, then I want that 30% to be solid. My children are beautiful and healthy and surrounded by healthy influences, but I'm not naive enough to claim there is nothing to worry about. I grapple with my own obstacles and they don’t always cast me as the strongest candidate to lead the charge, but day by day, prayer by prayer, I am trying to raise a healthy family.

So, I think I need to get back to the nitty gritty theme of why we make the choices we make and how they affect us and future generations and steer away from the temptation to court angels and demons and end of times prophecies (in the book, I’m not suggesting I do this in real life). Spiritual warfare is gripping whether or not the veil is lifted.