Open Field Authors Discuss Mental Health, Trauma, and the Healing Power of Nature
Steven Petrow
At least once a year, I post a meme that says, “You never know what other people are going through. Be kind.” It gets a lot of likes because it speaks the truth. Sometimes, underneath the superficiality, there is deep hurt.
That is certainly Ban Lyon.
Looking at his Instagram posts, which are chock-full of photos of his wife and young daughter, it’s hard to imagine the hardships he’s endured. At 15, the self-described skateboard fanatic’s life changed when a guidance counselor at his Dallas high school suspected he might be suicidal after he gave his board to a friend (and couldn’t believe he said he was going to buy a new one). At the counselor’s urging, his parents committed him to a psychiatric hospital for two weeks, but he ended up staying there for 353 days.
In his new memoir, The Chair and the Valley: A Memoir of Trauma, Healing, and the OutdoorsIn 2013, Lyon, now 52, opened up about the abuse he endured. The “chair” in the title refers to “chair therapy,” which was meant to help him think through his problems, but actually involved him sitting in a chair facing a wall for 11 months, sometimes for 12 hours a day. By the time Banning left the hospital, “I was a wreck of a teenager,” he writes. He was filled with rage and fantasized about hanging himself.
Lyon takes readers on a heartbreaking story of trauma and healing, including a lawsuit against the facility owners who defrauded the insurance companies (which also employed his father). Now with a family of his own, Lyon finds solace in nature and within himself, but to look at him you’d never understand the world of suffering he’s endured. He’s a middle-aged father with a hairstyle he describes as “rebellious,” and now works as a backpacking guide in Yosemite National Park.
Q: This beautiful book is so honest and raw. What made you decide to write this story after so much time?
A: This book came out of working with a therapist. My therapist told me to “free write,” but I didn’t. I was just tired of it all, but eventually I decided to start writing. I wrote about 200 pages in four weeks and that was it. I was done. It was just a cathartic surge of emotion, without really a cohesive narrative.
Q: How did that series of pages become a book? Kirkus Review Explained As a “heartfelt memoir and an urgent call for higher standards in juvenile mental health care”?
A: When I was working as a backpacking guide, something happened that made me feel a moral obligation to write a book and that not doing so would be a kind of sin. After spending days with my clients in the backcountry, I realized that they were no different from me. They were no better or more normal than me. Some were alcoholics, some self-harmed, some had lost brothers or spouses to cancer or suicide. I realized then that I had a place in the world and that I needed to face my past. Without the serenity of nature and the help of my clients, I would never have found the courage. So I decided to write a book, and it was a long, difficult, painful process.
Q: What are your hopes for this book?
A: I hope that people who read this book will understand that the terrible things that have been done to us, regardless of what hardships or traumas we have experienced, do not have to define our whole existence. We all have our mountain, Everest, that is the most difficult moment of our lives, but we are not alone. I am not someone who was locked in a psychiatric hospital, sitting in a chair facing the wall. For most of my life, I felt trapped in that place, like a moth in a display case. It took a long time and a lot of effort to re-center myself in a new identity. I am not what happened to me. I want others to understand that they are not responsible for what happened to them, and that those events do not have to be central to their identity forever.
Q: What did you learn about yourself while writing this book?
A: What have I learned about myself? First, I think that I am very strong and resilient. I also learned that I have a lot of empathy for other people, and that many of them have a lot of empathy for other people. It’s hard to separate yourself from other people’s experiences, and that’s a good thing. In fact, witnessing abuse, injustice, violence and suffering is often worse than experiencing it yourself.
For a long time, I thought my stay in the hospital had broken me. Then I began to feel like a piece of green wood that had been shredded, but not necessarily snapped in half.
Q: How were you eventually released?
A: Every day I would wake up and think, “I can’t stay stuck here forever. My insurance is going to expire.” Finally it happened. My dad’s insurance was paying for my hospital stay when he was flying for Western. When Delta bought Western, they sent a case worker to visit me, and the case worker called my dad. “We’re getting your son out of here. This isn’t serving him. He doesn’t need him.” If Western hadn’t merged with Delta, I probably would have been there longer. Some kids were stuck there for two, three, four years.
Q: You write so movingly about the power of nature. What is it about nature that is so healing?
A: After months of being cooped up at home, I was finally allowed to go outside to see a doctor. I remember going outside. It was so bright outside, and I felt the summer heat on my face. I closed my eyes and saw the red sun through the gaps in my eyelids. In that moment, I felt like I was immersed in a world full of beauty. I trapped that moment inside me, sealed it away, and let nothing taint it. Now, every time I go outside, I take that moment and hold it in front of me. The world I live in seems so beautiful to me.
People from all over the world visit Yosemite, it’s a place of indescribable beauty. Yosemite can’t be photographed or even described in words. It just has to be seen. Nature doesn’t judge us. It doesn’t see us as damaged. It’s indifferent to our existence. It’s that feeling of being so small and insignificant that makes the world so beautiful. When I take people backpacking, I get to see them see Yosemite for the first time, and it’s always a new experience for me.
I had finally found my place in the world, and that meant coming to terms with my past. Without the serenity of nature, I would never have found the courage.
Q: Any final thoughts about this experience?
A: Unless we start having open and honest conversations about each other’s struggles, conversations about mental health will never become the norm. It’s not a competition to see who has suffered more, but just being witness to what other people have gone through. I think that’s absolutely critical to making a big difference in mental health. We need more safeguards and oversight in adolescent mental health care. Not just for adolescents, but for people who can’t advocate for themselves.
Steven Petrow is a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. The joy you create Her new book, due to be published in September by Maria Shriver’s publishing company, The Open Field, has also written three books on modern etiquette and her TED Talk on etiquette has been viewed nearly two million times.
