Lori Schneider

GOAL-$3,000

Lori is 59 years old, the Executive Director of NAMI Sullivan County, NY for 33 years and is an ardent mental health advocate. She has also been involved with Community Theatre since 1983 as both an Actor and Director.

Starting in 2019, she combined her passions for advocacy and theatre with a touring production of Duncan MacMillan and Jonny Donahoe's "Every Brilliant Thing". The powerful, one person play navigates difficult topics like Depression and Suicide with warmth and even humor and is both heartwarming and heartbreaking. It incorporates audience involvement as pieces of the List of "Brilliant Things" worth living for is shared. Lori has performed Statewide as a fundraiser/awareness raiser for NAMI Sullivan, other NAMI affiliates and related organizations. COVID put the kibosh on several performances scheduled in 2020, but it is her hope that the show will once again, soon be "on the road!"

Lori is "Mama" to canine, feline and equine babies including Smokey, the NAMI donkey!

When Lori started with NAMI Sullivan in 1988, and would go to conferences, being in her mid 20s, she remembers so many people asking "Are you a Family Member?" The Adult Child and Sibling Network was just taking off and she remembers feeling funny when she would say "No." She recalls someone answering her, "Not YET" and she thought, "What, are they wishing a mental illness on my family?"

Little did she know then that several years later she would find out that yes, she was a family member. Unfortunately, it was only after her first cousin, Billy's death by Suicide that her Aunt shared with her, "I knew he was Depressed, but not THAT Depressed" -- no one ever mentioned Billy's Depression (what Lori has come to learn was a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder) No one spoke of it. Even to her, knowing she was with NAMI. Billy left five children, ages 8-22. He has beautiful grandchildren now, that will never know their Grandfather.

Shame has no place when it comes to mental illness. Stigma, leading to silence is the true Shame.