Shackles Lost – Bryant breaks the silence on his family’s struggle with mental health

BY LA SHAWNA GRIFFITH

“God spoke to me from the hospital room and put me on this journey to be a mental health advocate,” he said when I asked him about the inspiration behind the book Shackles Lost.

Who was speaking to me in an interview that lasted over an hour?

It was no other than Ralph Bryant, a poet who currently resides in Canada who released his book Shackles Lost in 2020 to raving reviews.

The book which focuses on mental health dived into him finding out about this family’s shackles around the topic of mental health, and the stigma associated with it growing up in black society.

“It is a book that is probably 150 years in the book in the making. Shackles Lost is an attempt for me to reconcile my thirty-seven years of my family’s struggle with mental health that goes back at least three generations,” Ralph shares with me.

Bryant explained the first time he realized both his mother and maternal grandmother had mental health problems was when he was the tender age of thirteen-years-old.

“My mom had been hospitalized for the third time, and we were doing family therapy for children of families with mental health challenges. It was at that point that it was explained to me that I could also have those same challenges. I did everything to try to mitigate my triggers, and I still had a panic attack and ended up in the hospital.”

From his hospital bed, Bryant made the choice that he would no longer be silent about mental health, but that he would become an advocate for the cause. This would allow people in the black community to understand that having a mental illness is ok.

“God came and spoke to me when I was in the hospital and put me on this journey. I used to say that I am being a mental health advocate reluctantly, because I know that I will face some blowback being as open as I have. But I feel like I do not have any other choice. I feel like until we start talking about mental health openly and honestly, we are never going to have the healing that we want. I want to be better and I want my community to be better. I am telling my story so that somewhere, someone who has a story to tell now has a safe space to tell it.  Someone has to take a stand for mental illness, and I am trying to take a stand for mental illness and healing in the black community.”

Bryant holds nothing back with his pen. He paints a picture of his childhood. A male family member assaulted him at a young age and he shared how that impacted him into adulthood.

“My mother was a teen mom at 16.  My father left when I was two years old. At the age of thirteen, I was sexually assaulted by two strangers in broad daylight. I sought therapy for almost 15 years off and on, and I realized I never got what I needed. I got so good at telling the psychologist what they wanted to hear that I never truly was able to get to the root of my problems.”

The self-published author knows that black communities still have a long way to go in erasing the stigma associated with mental health. However he noted that changes are being done. One of his goals is to bring his book to every person in the country starting with a series of poetry readings throughout the length and breadth of Canada.

 “In Canada, the one thing I would say is that black people are fortunate. We have access to mental health support. I want to begin this journey in Canada. I want to travel from coast to coast, sharing my story of poetry and mental health with the whole country. Starting in May I will begin that journey and bring Shackles Lost to every major city in the country.”

People interested in purchasing the book can order it on Amazon at Shackles Lost: The Poetry Mixtape (The Poetry Mixtape Series Book 1).  You can learn more about his podcast, Black Fathers Matter, on apple podcasts.