In honour of World Mental Health Day, Tellwell author Lisa Bournelis shares her journey as the creator of Louie and the Dictator, a book delivering a powerful message about mental health. Inspired by her own child’s experience with OCD during the pandemic, Lisa crafted this story to support children facing anxiety, reminding them they’re the heroes of their own journeys. Her book offers a hopeful reminder that changing how we think can transform our lives.
Your story is gold. Your vulnerability will help others in ways you may not have realized or imagined.
Lisa Bournelis is a mom, taekwondo black belt, healthcare change consultant, and former humanitarian aid worker. She has served all over the world, from Africa to the Balkans to Afghanistan. Inspired by her child’s experiences with OCD during the pandemic, she wanted to uplift children struggling with anxiety during this extraordinary time, by showing that they are the heroes of their own stories, and by sharing the hopeful message that adjustments to the way we think can transform our circumstances.
What inspired you to write Louie and the Dictator?
Like many parents of children with additional needs, the pandemic presented an additional layer of isolation. As access to resources and supports were cut off for the most vulnerable children, and as anxieties were heightened by the continued uncertainty, I wanted to provide a message of hope and inspiration for other anxious and neurodiverse children based on my son’s experiences.
From this time of darkness, the uplifting middle-grade novella Louie and the Dictator was born. The story is designed to take children on a journey that has them see themselves as heroes of their own story, while incorporating clinical elements within an adventurous narrative.
I also wanted to be purposeful in giving back and supporting the team that helped my son prior to, and following, the pandemic. I donate a minimum of 20% of my royalties to the paediatric OCD research team at BC Children’s Hospital.
For May’s Mental Health Awareness month, we are acknowledging some of our Tellwell authors whose books include themes of anxiety, depression, insecurities, and emotional expression. These books aim to give the reader a better understanding around mental health and how to recognize and communicate various feelings.
Abosede Oderinde
I Don’t Want to Go To School is a book that is intended to help children and families deal with separation anxiety, especially when it’s their first time at school. For some children, every day is like the first day because they are afraid their families will not return to pick them up. I wrote this book to reassure children who are still working on a secure attachment, that school is fun and families always come back because they are loved. Most books that address these issues use animal characters, but I chose real-life illustrations that the children can relate to. Lastly, this book will help teachers present classroom transitions to little children more effectively.
Karli Coulter Gillespie
A story about a young girl who has a worry bully that keeps visiting and making her tummy and her head hurt. Whether it’s when she’s trying to join a game with friends, speak in front of her class or go for a check-up, he keeps showing up. He seems to be EVERYWHERE! But with help from some people who care and a big dose of bravery, she begins to learn just how to send her worry bully away.
“Why don’t you write a book about your life?” asked my ex-wife as she poured herself a cup of earl grey tea one summer afternoon.
We were sitting on the empty patio at Gallagher’s coffee shop in Port Moody, listening to the sounds of birds chirping in the background of our conversation.
“Nobody would want to read about my story,” I chuckled shaking my head. “No one cares about my childhood abuse, or how my anger destroyed so many relationships.”
She grimaced and coyly nodded in agreement about how my anger ripped apart our marriage over 15 years ago. She took a sip of her tea and smacked her lips. “You never know. I think you’re not the only person who’s struggled. And how you’ve turned things around for yourself can be uplifting to so many people and can bring hope.”
I looked up and stared into the bright blue sky. A gentle breeze brushed against my face as I paused for a moment in deep thought.
Later that evening in my apartment, I continued thinking about our conversation. Was she right? Do other people also struggle managing their emotions, namely anger? Does depression and anxiety affect others making them feel helpless and lost, just like how I felt? I picked up a pad and pen and began jotting down notes. Somewhere in there, I scribbled the words, “recovery…anger…abuse…mental health and living with the dragon.”
In light of Bell Let’s Talk and a growing conversation on mental illness, Canadian author and songwriter Colleen Songs offers her perspective as the caregiver and loved one to a partner who was mentally ill.
She shares with readers her escape from a significant other with a narcissistic personality disorder and mental illness, in her memoir INHALE.
Through this book and her signing career, she aspires to ignite the voice of the caregiver – who suffers a great deal of abuse and heartbreak as the person they’ve grown to love disappears so suddenly.
“They can transition in a heartbeat,” says Songs. “The quickest thing could shut him off, and I could see it on his face,” she adds.
But, it’s equally important to the author to use her creative gifts of writing and music, to inspire those who are mentally ill to tap into their talents and passions.
“Witnessing the mentally ill exercise their gifts and talents confirmed their happiness and awakening desire to live,” explains Songs. “They can cope better.”
While this has been an extremely cathartic exercise for Songs, writing, and then publishing and promoting this book has brought forth a plethora of emotions, doubts, fears and hesitations about how the telling of her story will affect her loved ones.
Songs says she’s been especially concerned about her children, and how publishing her story will affect them.
“I was afraid of hurting them to the point of almost not publishing. But inside I kept having this feeling that it would release them too. And sure enough, it did!”
Songs says her son, who was 12 when she left home to care for her late ex-husband, felt the book gave him clarity and filled in the gaps he never understood about the relationship that took such a toll on their family.
Her daughter, who was in her late teens at the time, felt the book relieved her of the guilt she’d been carrying, having seen things in the relationship that at the time she didn’t know what to do about.
Beyond the opportunity to reflect and gain clarity, Songs needed to write to gain closure from the past, and talk about how her family got to where they are today.
“With every word I felt such a release of pressure off of my chest, heart, mind and conscience! I carried so much guilt, so much survival-fear for so long that I wasn’t even really trusting nor enjoying my current state of healthy-love and life,” she says.
And finally, she’s starting to let go. “I thought there was enough closure when I finally left. I thought there was enough closure when I heard he’d died. But I only gained a sense of closure through writing,” says Songs.
