Figuring out what comes after high school or even finishing high school can be stressful for all parents. When your child has a mental health challenge, it can feel especially lonely. In the video below, I talk with Duane Emery—a former colleague of mine and a parent who has already been through this journey.
Here are some key takeaways from our interview:
➡️ Give yourself grace.
➡️ Listen to your kids.
➡️ Be patient and have hope—it might look different, but that’s okay.
➡️ Find a community to support you—you are special but not unique.
➡️ Remember, this is your child’s journey, not yours.
➡️ How Duane became a better parent by going through this.
Check out the full interview below for valuable insights and tips to support your student's journey to college. 📚✨
As always, I look forward to your conversations with your students, teens, and young adults. Let's make this journey joyful and transformative for them!
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Transcript of the Video:
Anne Johnson: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to EdPath Coach's video channel. Today, I am talking with Duane Emery. He's a previous colleague of mine. But today, we are going to be talking about what it's like to be a parent on this journey, how important it is to have a community, and also, hopefully, to spread the word that you are not alone. If you are a parent at the beginning of this journey, in the middle of this journey, wherever you are, there are others who have been through it, and you are not the only one. So we're going to dive right into it. I'm going to start by asking Duane to provide his background and talk about his family and his children's journeys, and then we'll get into some specific questions after that.
Duane Emery: Yeah, sounds great. So yeah. Duane Emery. I have 2 children who are now young adults. I have a son, Ethan, who is 23, and I have a daughter, Zoe, who is 21. I am married, but I'm not married to their mother, and I think that's a key factor in this. Their mother and I divorced when they were pretty young. Ethan was just over 5 years old when our divorce was finalized. And Zoe was 3 and a half, basically when that divorce was finalized. And I think that, like, you know, that played a role in some of their development and some of the things that we might talk about. I have been remarried, you know, for 16 years now, so most of their lives. They've known, you know, my wife as their stepmother and have been actively involved, and you know, we split custody for a long time. But now both kids live with us, and that kind of plays into all this as well, quite frankly, and we may come back around to that. They attended public schools. Actually, they started out at a private school here in town. And then, because of us living in different communities, and it being downtown, that kind of didn't work over the long term. So then they ended up in public schools in Zionsville based upon their mom's address, and then eventually ended up in Hamilton Southeastern schools through Junior High. But then I worked at Cathedral High School, and they both started at Cathedral, and interestingly, neither of them finished at Cathedral, and that was interesting because, at that time, I was the admissions director at Cathedral, so I notified the school of my own children withdrawing, which was unique and quite frankly, you know they've both had interesting journeys. My son is actually technically a high school dropout. I don't know if I even use the word. Technically, he has not gotten his high school diploma either traditionally or a GED, and my daughter, who we will talk about a lot more, you know, is a kiddo who probably could have gone to an Ivy League caliber university or certainly schools like that, and who ended up getting a high school GED and has started her college journey very recently at Ivy Tech here locally, with aspirations of transferring to IU Indianapolis and hopefully for her the Kelley School. So, you know, it's just been an interesting journey, one that has all kinds of twists and turns. And so yeah, we'll talk about that. But that's a little background about my kiddos and me.
Anne Johnson: Yeah. And I think 1 point is that it didn't look anything like what you thought, right? When they started out at Cathedral, there was no part of you that thought, this is where we're going to end up.
Duane Emery: No, not at all, and you know I'm a 1st generation college graduate, and you know I come from a family that, quite frankly, is a pretty poor family historically, and you know, even working in education, I made a lot more money than most people in my family had ever made, and you know, so I just always assumed that - You know I went to college and kind of broke that cycle of not going to college. And you know you think about upward mobility, socioeconomic status, and others in other ways, right? And I just assumed, like my kids would do the same thing, and they clearly have the intelligence to do so. And you know, their levels of intelligence are different. You know. Zoe was pretty early on and clearly more innately gifted academically. But Ethan was a very capable student and had an IQ that was in the 95th percentile of intelligence, I mean. So there's not a lack of aptitude or ability there, it's, but they had very different, you know, tastes for school and stuff, Ethan, you know, I knew probably his freshman year of high school probably wasn't gonna go to college. He just said he was not gonna be a college-bound kiddo, and I had to come to grips with that. And then, you know Zoe's journey is different than mine. I had envisioned it, but I always tried not to put pressure on the kids relative to what they would do. I still tell them to this day like it, have I? I don't care what you do for a living. But I want you to utilize your potential. And I want you to be able to support yourselves, and you know. But you know Zoe and I had conversations when she was young about going to Stanford. I mean, she talked to me, I think, in 3rd or 4th grade. I didn't even know she knew Stanford existed. I mean, I worked in college admissions. I was a college counselor. I know a lot about the college process, and I probably don't know as much as I used to. But you know, I was fairly expert in that. And I wasn't talking to my kids about specific schools at at that age, and the fact that she was talking about them. And then to see, you know, like in your mind, you think, okay, she's gonna either she's gonna be one of these kids that we're gonna go into a lot of debt to go to a really big-name school, or she's going to get a lot of scholarship dollars at a school that's really very good but is not quite at that level of selectivity. And you know she was on her way to that. And then, all of a sudden, she wasn't. And you know, navigating that has been quite interesting. And it's really forced me to think differently about what's important to me but also to really focus on what's most important for her and for Ethan, too.
Anne Johnson: I think that leads well into our next question, which was how you balanced allowing your children their independence in this process of making their educational choices while also providing the necessary guidance and support to help them.
Duane Emery: Yeah, I'd say at times, not well, you know that that's the key, like, give yourself some grace and sometimes listen to your kids, too. I probably thought I was doing it better than I was, and in retrospect, I've had conversations, especially with Zoe, as she's navigated a pretty significant mental health journey, right? You know, it was diagnosed more fully than Ethan's. Ethan's had his own mental health journey, but Zoe's has been more diagnosed and more clinically treated, and all that, and you know, and she's said things to me that have caused me to go. Whoa! My perception of that conversation, or my perception of how we just addressed that topic over time, is obviously very different from her perspective. But I also think her perspective is starting to change as she's gotten to a better spot in terms of her own mental health. So you know, you kind of have to understand, like, the perceptions of those conversations can be so different. And I do think I did a good job, though, as a parent of not saying to my kids, you have to go to this kind of school. I mean, I've worked in schools all my adult life, and so I've been around parents, and they've all been in private schools, so I've been around parents who, like, you know, you have to do this. And this is the path. And I'm you're going to be a pre-something. You're a pre-med, a pre-law, pre-whatever you know. I've been around that, and I tried not to do that with my kids. I never would have told them what they could major in or where they could go to school unless it was just unattainable financially, and I never told Zoe you have to get straight A's. But she felt like I said that even though I never said it. I can assure you I'd never said that, and Ethan would say that like he felt like I said he should get straight A's, and I think most of that for him was because his sister was, you know, taking classes that were beyond him, even though they were a grade level apart. And so, I think I navigated it fairly well. But I learned a lot. I mean, I am. I am such a better parent today than I was then, and I'm still. I mean, there's no such thing as a perfect parent, and I am far from whatever that ideal or, you know, that ideal image of a perfect parent might be. My kids wouldn't know that I had a bias towards them going to college, right? Because, you know, I do think that while I don't think the same way about college that I did. You know, 10 years ago, you know, 20 years ago. Whatever I do, I still think that it is a great way to go because I think it. I think it just increases your options; I think I like the idea of my kids and any kids having as many choices in life as possible. And I think college does expand the number of choices. But also, I'm smart enough to know that, like, I started having conversations with my son about trade schools, even when he didn't want to listen to me about trade schools or anything else in his life. And now, what's he doing? He's a plumber who just finished his second year of plumbing school, which is paid for by his employer. I mean, he'll have no cost for his training. And yet he'll make more money than a lot of people who have 4-year degrees, and some who have, you know, advanced degrees, and so, and he enjoys what he's doing. So I think differently about the trades now than I did, you know, back when I worked in college counseling and college admissions. But my kids did always know that, like getting advanced, education was important, and going to college was kind of the presumed path. And some of that is just because it opened my own world, too. You know, it opened my world to not only make more money but also, I mean, travel a lot more, and I have. You have a much more diverse array of friends, and you know that just there are so many other benefits to that experience, but you also know that it's not for everyone, and especially not always in the traditional, like straight from high school to a 4-year residential university, etc. And you know that that's taken some adjusting on my part, but I've always kind of known it theoretically, and then I started living. It.
Anne Johnson: Yeah. And I think that it's so important to normalize that that's not always going to be the space; I think, in media and society, we talk so much about how you go to high school, and then you move right on. You go to have that college experience, right? The 4-year residential. You come out with a major, and then you start your career. You go to grad school, and sometimes that's all parents and students see, and they think that's the only way that it goes. And it's so often not. I think now might be a helpful time if you could give an overview of Zoe's kind of journey. Whatever you feel comfortable sharing about her path through her various educational experiences.
Duane Emery: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I talked to her before this, too, just to make sure she was comfortable. And she really was pretty comfortable with me, sharing about as much as I wanted and needed to share. So, Zoe, you know, Zoe was always pretty introverted. You know, incredibly intelligent. School was easy for her academically, but it became increasingly apparent, especially in junior high school, that school was not easy for her, socially or emotionally. But it kind of happened all of a sudden, like we knew she was shy, and then in the middle of 7th grade, like February of 7th grade for her. She just had a meltdown during the weekend at a bridal shower for my niece. My wife calls me like something's wrong with Zoe. She's had a meltdown. I can't get her out of the bathroom, I mean, and also, that just quickly escalated to her not wanting to or being able to go to school. And I did not handle that well at all, and you know, some of my worst parenting moments were, you know, trying to literally, physically get her out of bed to go to school, and that's probably not the right approach. And you know. So she missed a lot of school time. At the end of 7th grade. She did much better in 8th grade and started out well enough in high school, and then, midway through her freshman year, things started to unravel. We started to miss a lot of school, and that continued, and I finally, in the middle of her freshman year, I guess. In February of her freshman year, I allowed her to enroll in online school. And she did that for about a month and a half, and she came to me and said I need to go back to Cathedral - I'm bored. This isn't a good enough school setting, etc, and I kind of knew it wouldn't be, but I was like, she needs to go to school, and so she went back to Cathedral, finished her freshman year, did some catch up work there during summer, did great got started her sophomore year, and it just started unraveling again ended up. She ended up enrolling. She ended up unenrolling during her sophomore year. Mental health challenges, and then she started her junior year at Fisher's, and that didn't last long, either.
Anne Johnson: Just for people, not from Indiana. A large public high school, big.
Duane Emery: And but a but a really good school, too, like a very good school, and so
you know she I, but I had concerns, but she had a great counselor, and they did a lot of things, really. Well, I mean, I'm not this anti-public school guy. I'm a public school grad. I just happen to work in private schools. She had issues that weren't the school's fault, so to speak. It was not that it was anybody's fault, but her issues were much bigger than where she was going to school, and the big issue was that she was going to school and how miserable that experience was for her and you know. And again. By this time, she had been seeing a licensed mental health counselor, and this and that, and then, you know, and I knew she was really struggling, but then I did not know, and in full disclosure, you know, in September of what was her junior year of high school, she attempted suicide, and fortunately, she was not successful in that attempt, and it was a big eye opener, she was pretty immediately grateful that she wasn't successful. She, to my knowledge, has not had a repeat attempt, or you know, but you know we've spent thousands of dollars and many hours. And you know, we've spent a lot. We've invested a lot in different ways in her mental health, and like we were on the verge of having her go to a wilderness program in Utah, that would have required me to drain a lot of my retirement. And you know, it's gonna be a big amount of money. I mean, we're talking, you know, a $50-$60,000 expense. But you know, at this point in time. I'm trying to keep my kid alive, you know. So all of a sudden, my focus has shifted from, you know. Where's my kid going to go to college and this and that? And you know, okay, is my kid gonna survive teenage years? And then is my kid gonna be able to to to be a functioning adult? You know, supporting herself, etc., as an adult and, then literally less than a week before she was gonna go, my father-in-law, who was, who has been hugely beneficial, and we should talk about that at some point. He pulled me aside and said, I don't think you need to do that, and here's why. And then we talked to her mental health counselor, and that counselor put together her own intensive outpatient therapy program. That was multiple times a week for an hour and a half each time for multiple weeks, right? And then that came with a very different medication regimen. Really, over the next year and a half, she started to change. And she's a she's a vastly different human being now than she was. You know this is coming up on, you know, 5 years, and if you had told me. If you had said she could be like this in 5 years, I would have said, Well, what's it take, you know? How much does it cost, or what does it take to get her to this point? Because we are now to a point where I kind of somewhat envision she could hopefully get to, and I don't mean to ramble, but that's kind of the journey with Zoe, and you know now she's, you know, she ended up getting her high school GED cause we tried different online high school. That was her last attempt at school in the traditional sense, and it just never worked. And you know, she ended up in cosmetology school, and that didn't work, you know, for different reasons. And then, she finally got to the point where she was ready to go to college. And that's when we said, well, we're gonna start with Ivy tech, and that was she was very good with that, and she will never be that traditional like she's not gonna go somewhere and live in a residence hall, and you know, if she goes, you know she's when she goes beyond Ivy Tech, I'm sure she's gonna go either to IU Indianapolis or Ball State. We live on the northeast side, so she could get to either in about the same amount of time. But she'll probably live at home, and she doesn't, you know. She might get an apartment, but you know. But it's been a journey, I guess, and it is the right way for me to put it, and I don't mean to ramble. But again, there's a lot to it.
Anne Johnson: Yeah, no. I think that was a good context for how long this process has taken and that it's not been a straight line longer than you thought, and oftentimes, that is the case. As parents, we have to keep hope that they're going, that they keep doing the things that we know are the right things and keep moving forward, and that they will get to that space and be healthy. But it's going to look a lot different than what we thought.
Duane Emery: Yeah, I mean, you know. Yeah, I went from, you know, thinking at 1 point in time, hey, this is my potential Ivy League kind of kid or big-time scholarships and blah blah, right? And you know, at 1 point time, she talked about anesthesiology, and you know, and that's a pretty lucrative career. You know all that stuff, and you know. And now it's like, Hey, I want you to be able to, you know, support yourself as an adult. I'm not gonna support you forever. And I want you to be happy with what you're doing. And you know, I'd love for you to be able to do some optional things, some of which you know are their needs and wants in life, right? I want you to be able to meet your needs, but I also want you not to have to worry as much financially as I've seen my family before me and my younger years have to do. And you know, I just, you know, want you to be in a better position than I have been in, and you know, it's interesting because as she was thinking about starting at Iv Tech, she became very worried about that. You know I'm gonna be behind everybody else my age. And I'm like Zoe, especially at Iv Tech. You're gonna be younger than most of your classmates. But I said it doesn't matter like you're gonna get there. And so what if you're, you know, 23 or 24, when you graduate versus 21 or 22, you probably will handle it in a more mature fashion than those younger students. And you know, you'll be actually a little bit better prepared for the real world in some ways. And so, you know again. It's just a different mindset. And you know, when you're, you know, when you literally worry that your child is not gonna live, you know, from one day to the next. It helps you quickly refocus your priorities, you know, because then you, you know, your child becomes much more important than what your child is doing, and and and that I hope that other people don't have to go through that experience to get to that point. But if you live that journey. You know your priorities simply change out of necessity. And then you kind of realize, like, look, what's what's most important is not where my kid goes to college, and what they do for a living. But I want them to be happy and be able to support themselves and contribute to society.
Anne Johnson: Yeah. And I think, as parents, that's what we say a lot, right? We just want our kids to be happy. But when something like this happens with your child, it has a way of really making those priorities crystal clear in a way that they sometimes aren't, even though we think that's the way, the direct framework or mindset that we're operating from.
Duane Emery: Well, and then it's also the peer pressure that, as parents, you feel like the imagine, I was still working at Cathedral at the time. That my kids, you know, should have been graduating from high school and going to college, you know, should have been right. And again. It's not a knock on those parents, but the assumption is your kids leave high school going to college. So you know it, it became very painful, like I won't say it was embarrassing. You know that it was awkward. But it was, you know, here I am, you know, working in education, having been in college admissions, you know. I clearly have been very involved in this. And then to basically say, But my own kid, like my own son, is not even in high school right now and isn't going to college, let alone graduating from high school, or my daughter who, you might have known was this really strong student like, she's not in school, and she's not going to school right now. And you know, you get asked the question like, well, where are they going to college? Well, they're actually not. And
you know, people, you know, it's like everything from like shock and disbelief to, to quite frankly what is pretty clearly judgment, and at times I was like, I'm just perceiving this, and at times like no, that they're pretty much saying it, and you know you have to deal with that, and you know you kind of you deal with that within your family and outside of your family and yeah, and at some point in time, you know what I just had to get the point. I don't really care what you think, and I'm happy for you and your child. But I want you to be happy for my child because my kid will get there like I used to say when I was in counseling. You know they, they all grow up, they, you know. Unfortunately, some don't like it. If my daughter had been successful in her attempt, she wouldn't have grown up, and I think about that a lot, but they grow up, and they get to where they're gonna be as adults. And you know, again, my desire for their path isn't necessarily what their path is going to be and lead to. And it is the pressure, especially when you're in that environment. Working under peer pressure is intense, and it created some real mental health challenges for me that I just hadn't had to work through as an adult myself.
Anne Johnson: Yeah, I think that's a good point for folks: this is a lot for parents, and you should make sure you're taking care of yourself. Taking care of your own mental health, giving yourself grace, that you're not always going to do everything right, and that it is going to be a lot. It's a lot for one to have to take care of your child and worry about if they're going to be okay. But then, at the same time, you have to deal with external pressure. What do other people think about what you're doing or what your child is doing?
Duane Emery: Yup, and then also taking care of your spouse and your relationship with your spouse. If you have a spouse, right? You know it was a very stressful, trying time in my marriage. And you know, is there time still for my wife and I to step back and look at each other and like, Oh, my gosh! I'm so glad we're not dealing with that anymore. You know, we deal with different stuff. But you know parenting has different phases, and you deal with different things in each of those phases. But, you know, we're so glad we're not dealing with some of that stuff anymore.
Anne Johnson: Yeah. I talk about that in my work with folks. This is a season of parenting, and I think sometimes we lose that in this process because it can feel all-consuming. But just like our kids don't wear diapers anymore. At some point, they're not going to be dealing with the college admissions process anymore, or they're going to be 25 or 30 and on their own and out doing it, and to remind ourselves that everything ends for better or worse. Right, like every season of parenting, does eventually end. That helps me right now with my younger children, and I try to remind folks with older children, too, that it does end.
Duane Emery: Yeah. And then you get old people like me who look at you and say, cherish those moments. At some point in time, you're going to miss those, right? And Hey, the problem you're dealing with now, they're probably gonna get a little bit bigger, right?
Anne Johnson: Yeah.
Duane Emery: I hope it'll get too big, but they will. They certainly change.
Anne Johnson: Yeah, yeah, I think about my daughter as a teenager. She's 7 now, but I just know.
Duane Emery: Yeah, yeah.
Anne Johnson: I want to circle back around something you said about support systems. It sounds like you've had a lot of different people as your support system. You mentioned your father-in-law and a mental health counselor. Could you speak to the importance of that, or how you would help folks who are kind of in this process by identifying who those people are and how that helped you?
Duane Emery: Yeah, I'll focus on the support for Zoe first, and you know, like, obviously, when things 1st start happening. The school personnel, a school counselor, etc. And we've had varying degrees of quality in that. And most of it's been good to excellent. I wouldn't say we had anybody who was bad or anything. But you know, there have been some counselors who have been phenomenal. You know a couple in particular at the school in the school setting, right? And it happened, you know I was. I was at a school and had access to friends who were counselors, and I had been a counselor myself, you know. So that actually helped some; it helped me more than it helped her because she didn't want those people that I knew cause she didn't want me to know everything, which is fine. It should be right. And but you know then, you know, she had a 1 licensed mental health counselor from really, you know, the spring of 7th grade through, like her well, until really, you know, probably about the time a little before she had her suicide attempt. So, really, about 3 and a half years. I guess she had one mental health counselor who was really good, but I think they reached a point of kind of they. They got to the point where they needed to probably change right. And I just don't think it was working as well at no fault of anyone's. I think it's just that the relationship ran its course. And so we needed something different. She also ended up getting prescribed medication, and quite frankly, that was one of the really poor people who prescribed medication to my daughter that she should never have been taking. I didn't know any better, and I would say if medications involved, make sure you, like, make sure you're talking to multiple physicians about that medication because she was taking a medication that she should not have been taking, and if I were litigious person, I would maybe have pursued legal action against that person, although I signed off on. I just didn't know any better. And you know that that was a shame. So, we switched to a different psychiatrist who worked with the new mental health counselor. They worked much closer; even though the 1st worked somewhat, I found out they really didn't. And so she ended up with, she has, and still has, a relationship with the new, or, I'm gonna say, mental health counselor who's been phenomenal. Then she has an ongoing relationship with the psychiatrist. Obviously, because medication is still a part of her life and probably always will be, and so that's been helpful. But then also, you know, we just, I got really lucky. My father-in-law. You know, who is not her biological grandfather, he has been remarkable with her, and you know, in ways that I don't think he was with any of his own children and ways. My parents weren't with me anyway. I'm not with her. You know. You know, she wouldn't drive a vehicle, and he finally was the one that just took her to a lot of her appointments with the mental health counselor when I had to be at work. And that resulted in conversations, and I, I think, quite frankly, I think my father-in-law saved my daughter's life. I think, had he not been involved in her life the way he was, I think she would have been a repeat attempter, and I think she would eventually repeat it until she was successful. I truly believe that as much credit as I give the medication and the mental health counselor. I think he, I think he saved my daughter's life, and I will get a little emotional about that because I do think that, and I've told him that. And I've told my wife that. And that was important. But it was also important. It gave my wife and me somebody. He wouldn't tell me everything they talked about, but he would give us good feedback and parental advice based on it. He would just kind of keep us grounded. And so that was important. So those are the supports in her life. And also, I give her credit. She was smart enough to get herself out of a situation. You know. She was living with her mother half the time, and she came to us. This was before her attempt. This was almost 9 months before her attempt, but she knew she needed to get out of that environment because it was toxic because of her mother and because of my son, who at that time was only living with his mother, so she was smart enough to know that I can't continue to do what I have to do at that household because that's part of the reason I have the issues I have. And so you know, but my father-in-law was hugely important, and I think, you know, each person in this relationship needs to try to find a support person or support system. I have 2 or 3 very close friends that I could talk to about this. I didn't talk to the world about it, but I talked to 2 or 3 really close friends other than my wife, right? My wife had 2 or 3 people, and that kind of helped us. As parents get through that, you have to. You know you have to be vulnerable to some people, but not to too many people, as not everyone needs to take this on.
Anne Johnson: Yeah, I think that it's important to identify people who can be support systems. Don't try to keep it all to yourself. And try to manage it all on your own for fear of what other people might think. Know your people are right, but be discerning, and then therapists can be great. Sometimes, the switch is needed. And that's okay. Relationships can run their course, and different techniques might be a good option. And so that is okay, too, and make sure you double-check things.
Duane Emery: And while I didn't, and while I didn't get a therapist of my own, there were times I really came close, and probably could have or should have, I didn't. But don't be afraid as a parent to get some professional help for yourself cause you might very well need it. I'm sure there were times when I definitely needed it, and I just didn't do it because I had kind of people who were in that field who were part of that 2 or 3-person group of myself; I mean, most of the people had a counseling background that I was talking with but you know, get some professional help for yourself if you need it to.
Anne Johnson: Yeah, and also, I think it's helpful for us to remind ourselves that our kids need to talk to other adults who aren't us. The need to have their own other adults in their lives, who they can talk to and who can be a support system and also clue you in about what's going on, can be immensely helpful for everybody.
Duane Emery: Yeah. My father-in-law navigated that beautifully like he. He would tell us enough to keep us from totally bungling it. Yeah, you know. But he would not. He would not violate the most sacred of things. You know that she was sharing it with him now. Obviously, you know, he's not a trained counselor, but if she had said she was gonna hurt herself, he would have let us know that, right? But he did. He did a fabulous job of navigating that for us and for her.
Anne Johnson: Yeah, it's wonderful. Are they? I assume they're still close now.
Duane Emery: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Anne Johnson: I think that hearing your story has been so helpful, and I hope that parents watching this have learned so many different tidbits and just feel seen in somebody else's space on this journey. They know that this isn't just me going through this process. What other advice tips would you give to parents who are maybe just at the beginning of this process? Maybe they have an 8th grader, and they're staring down navigating high school, or they have a junior rising junior, and they're just staring down the college admissions process. What suggestions or tips would you give those parents?
Duane Emery: I think, 1st of all, understand that it's your child's journey, not yours, right now. Don't try to live a life through your child; that is not your child's life, and you know, and you know, don't put so much pressure on your kids and be cognizant of the fact that you might be putting pressure on them when you don't think you are right, because I'm sure I was, and I'm probably still am a little bit of denial. I still don't think I put a lot of pressure, but they would probably say I did, although now that they're getting a little older. They say that I probably wasn't pressuring them as much as they thought I was. We just wanted to do what we wanted to do right. But I think you should know who your partners are in your school setting. Like the counselor, you get to know the teachers right. The teachers see your kiddos more than you see your kiddos. And so you know. Get to know those people and be transparent with them like they're not going to judge your kid. They wanna help your kiddo if they don't wanna help your kid, or they should be in a different profession. Right? You can figure out who those people are pretty quickly. But nearly all teachers want to help kids. And so by you partnering with them, you know they're gonna be able to give you information and help support your kiddo in ways that your kiddo won't let you support them. And so, know who the network is at school. Find out who your resources are in the community, like, for instance, Anne, if I had known, like, I don't know if anybody like you existed, and if they did, I didn't know that they existed. You know, and certainly not who they were, and you know it would have been great, you know, 5 years ago, 6 years ago, 7 years ago to have a conversation with someone like you. And this isn't a gratuitous plug, right? You know. Obviously, you and I know each other. But you know that was I, you know, having somebody who could help navigate and or connect to other people who had lived it, etc, because, you know you, there's not a club for parents who have a kid who's a suicide attempt survivor, or the kid who doesn't go to high school for a year and a half leading up to and during and following that time, like, you know, my daughter hadn't been in school for quite sometime before that attempt. And you know, like, understanding. There are people who can help you navigate it, and you should also understand that there are all kinds of good options for kids to become productive citizens in this world, and they don't always include traditional colleges. They don't always include trade school right away. They might mean going, you know, getting a job for a few years, and then, you know, just be flexible. And you know, I guess I figured it out, and I knew it all along, right? But it's harder to live it. I figured out like my children being alive and being healthy, and you know that is so much more important than what they do for a living, and how much money they make, and where they go to school, and what I can tell my friends about where they go to school. All that stuff, I mean. You know, I always said like, okay, if you discontinue your education, you know you get 6 months to live with me because I'm not supporting you as an adult. You know, if you decide to discontinue education, you've decided to become an adult, and that means you live independently. Well, I've kind of broken that rule a little bit. And I don't know that I would fully break it. But, like, you know, my son is still in school, but he's pretty much a full-time employee who goes to school one day a week. Well, you know what? I don't care if he lives with me for another 2 or 3 years, even a little bit beyond him being in school, because I can't give him a big bunch of money. You know. I'm not that kind of wealthy, but I can let him live with me, and he's starting to stockpile money that lets him move straight to maybe home ownership instead of rental, you know, being a renter. And I'm like, Okay, so if he lives with me till he's 25 or 26, who cares like it's a few more groceries. It's a little more electricity and water. Even my mindset around some of those things has had to shift. And I think. Just don't be so. Don't be so rigid in trying to plan what your child's going to do and or become. I know it's easier for me to say, and I have a bunch of grey hair. I earned it right and was flexible. I guess those are some of the things I'd say, and I really know that you're not alone. And with, you know, there are some exceptions. Right? I mean, unfortunately, suicide is a reality, and successful suicide is a reality. You know, I came dangerously close to realizing that in my own home, but for the vast majority. They're gonna get there like like they are gonna be okay. They may have ongoing mental health challenges, whatever. But they're gonna get there. It's just that they may not get there in the same time frame that you thought they would. And and that's okay. It really is okay. So be patient. Have some hope. Know that you're not alone; there are people who live this way every day while you think. Oh, my gosh, nobody I know or nobody else has to deal with this. The reality is that people do, unfortunately. And so you're you're special, but you're not totally unique. And and and you know, you know, and I'm sure you can help connect people who, you know, have shared experiences or similar experiences.
Anne Johnson: Yeah, no. I think that's so important that it's not unique. You're special, but what did you say? You're special but not unique.
Duane Emery: Yeah, like, you're, you're not one of one.
Anne Johnson: Right, that brings me so much peace with my own struggles that I've had with various things like this, which is not. I'm not the only one going through this. And when I realize this is part of the human experience or the human condition, it is so comforting. And you said, Have hope.
Anne Johnson: Be patient. You're not alone, and I think those are. We can all stay in that space. That'd be a great place for us to end.
Duane Emery: Continue to fight for your kid, not for what others want for your kid. Right?
Anne Johnson: Yes.
Duane Emery: You know, fight for your kid, be there for your kid as best you can, and that's going to look different, you know, from what you might have thought it was going to look like. And that's okay. It really is okay.
Anne Johnson: Yeah. And I think one other point: I want to circle back around because I've been in schools as well, most of my career, is that the school staff really want to support you, and they can't support you if they don't know what's going on. So use the people in the schools. And to your point, we're all there, 95% of us, because we want to help kids, and we can't help them if we don't know what's going on, and no one in the school is going to be judging you, or at least the ones that are gonna be helpful.
Duane Emery: Think of this. I mean, my kids have both said to me, and now they understand that this wasn't the way it was, but my kid's mental state was such that they legitimately thought that when I worked at Cathedral, people were being nice to them and supportive of them only because they were Duane Emery's kids. And I kept saying them, no, like this is the way these people are wired, like, they're really good people. And yeah, it doesn't hurt that. I'm there, but they're they're not doing like like again. You're not unique like them. I've seen these people do this for years. My kids never got to that realization while they were at the cathedral, and that's not the Cathedral's fault. It's nobody's fault. But you know, I go back to the notion of being divorced. And you think about all the risk factors that come with divorce. And when that happened, I knew my kids were all of a sudden in a different risk category. Some of those worst-case risks became a reality for my children. Now, some didn't, but some did. And you know my kids, lack of trust in adults has been shaped radically by the divorce. But then some other things that have happened, you know. Along the way, and not to bash my ex-wife. But most of that's been in that dynamic, and it's created some real trust issues for my kids. And they're just now starting to get to the point where they trust that people are doing things because they want to. For a long time, they literally thought that it was. You know, that it was because of who I was and how I was connected. I'm like, no, like. You see these people over here at this school. They don't even know me, and they're doing this, and you know, so I don't know what the moral story is there, but you know it. It's interesting when you know these networks exist, and you know the reality is schools and parents most often want the same thing. They want these kids to be happy, healthy, and successful, and so you know that that partnership is incredibly important.
Anne Johnson: Yes, yes, and I want to make sure we hit that home at the end here
because I forgot about that - you brought it up. Every time I have an interview with somebody, it always helps. I always learn things, and there's always things that I'm like, oh, yes, like these. These are such important, such important information.
Thank you so much. Is there anything that you have any closing words or last thoughts before we sign off?
Duane Emery: No, I don't think so. I mean, I think you and I have talked about this before this conversation. But it's still a little bit uncertain, like what all the exact pathways are for my daughter's college process. I think we're figuring it out. You know, and just understand. You're gonna have questions you can't answer. And I have questions still that I can't answer. And it's, you know, not as easy as the traditional application during the fall of your senior year to get admitted. And you know it's a different journey. And so it's, you know, something I didn't have a lot of background in, so I don't feel as expert in, you know. That's still a little bit, you know. It's not as smooth as I'd love it to be, but at the same time, it's not. It's not insurmountable, but I'd say, you know if I were to give some advice like helping people who are. Now that point where? Okay, what does all this transfer stuff look like? When you start looking at a place like Ivy Tech Community College to go to a 4-year program, you know? You know we're living that now. So again, in 2 or 3 years I'll probably be able to give some advice relative to our experience in that. But you know right now, that's the uncertainty. I'm I, you know, that's the point of uncertainty, and you know. But again, I've been through so much that I know that it's gonna work itself out. I just don't know exactly how it's gonna happen.
Anne Johnson: We'll do a follow-up interview.
Duane Emery: Here you go!
Anne Johnson: A couple of years from now, and we'll talk about the transfer process because it is. It is no joke that it is easier than it is, and unfortunately, it can often be kind of a maze of figuring out what classes are gonna work, what your major it is, and how all of that goes. So. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it, and I know that your story will help other folks not feel so alone in this process.
Duane Emery: Well, I hope so. If I can help one person, that's always been my goal in counseling, and that's still kind of a goal. So if it helps one person, I'm very, very happy about that.
Anne Johnson: No, I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Duane Emery: Alright. See ya.
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