Donald Gunther

Emotionally Scarred

To Be ….

To be silently told you are not worthy, invaluable, exclusively excluded, ostracized, neglected, and psychologically ABUSED as a child was beyond cruel. It infiltrated my thought process and influenced my beliefs and values that I would have for myself. The manifestation from such toxicity birthed my trauma. My abject poverty was the residency of all my pain and suffering as a boy, man, husband, and dad. Living underneath the poverty was the fear of me never being treated fair. So, I secretly learned how to survive by wearing many masks. Since my birth I had to cover up my humble beginnings. My parents’ pain I wear with pride because without them I would never have survived!

Or

“Not to be”

I will no longer continue living out my silent experiences. Therefore, I will remove the shackles of the oppressed spirit that created the displaced trauma within my being. My emotions and my mental health have been in recovery for five decades. The inequities of not having opportunities to address what I was born into generationally has oppressed many like me. So, now I want to empathetically express my emotional intelligence. As I address the mental illness conditions (mic) that my grandfather, father, and I navigated through without us being educated or having any resources to support us. I will advocate for the generations of voiceless and undiagnosed recipients that do not recognize the undetected and silent abusers still exist.

To be Underserved Stigmatized and Abused and coming from where I come from has provided an opportunity for me to recover from being Emotionally Scarred, motivated me from becoming Emotionally Dead and is allowing my son to write his story instead of repeating history.

Donald Gunther
CPS-MH, CPS-WH, RCP