David

Content note: This story discusses recovery from mental illness and homelessness. 

I have a PhD in computer science from Stanford and was a researcher in Palo Alto when I started experiencing mental health challenges. For a long time, I was in denial that there was anything the matter with me. In 2007, I was hospitalized for the first time. I wasn’t able to return home, and I ended up cycling between mental institutions and the street.

I was on the street for quite some time. At the end of my final time on the street, I was picked up by police. My dad contacted them from the East Coast and convinced them to bring me to an acute psychiatric facility instead of arresting me. That was the beginning of my final journey through the mental health system.

From there, I moved incrementally through levels of care — a longer-term locked facility, residential care, a licensed board and care, then independent living. As of New Year’s Day, 2026, I am finally living in my own apartment. It took me almost 19 years from my initial commitment.

A part-time job at Safeway was hugely important for me as proof I could still show up and contribute and be competent. But through it all, I carried a lot of shame and stigma. About five years ago, two things helped change that: I joined Recovery Cafe and a writing group at my local JCC, and I started writing about my experiences with mental illness. I shared my first writing with a long-time and beloved volunteer at Recovery Cafe, and then with a group of older women writers over Zoom. Finding my voice first in writing, then in community, became part of my recovery.

What sets Recovery Cafe apart is the deep respect it shows its members — those in recovery from homelessness, mental illness, addiction, and incarceration. Respect was something I didn’t really experience in the mental health system, which felt more authority-driven. It was through the Cafe — one of ISP’s local partners — that I learned about ISP. The Cafe’s pastor first brought ISP to her church next door, until it became part of Recovery Cafe.

I’m a logical, rational person; my computer science research was in automating logical and mathematical reasoning. Spirituality has always been complicated for me. My Judaism was part of my descent into my struggles because I was reading things as signs from God. Later, going back to my synagogue became part of my recovery. ISP fits in the same way. The poems we read every week are meaningful to me, and hearing people reflect on them still gets to me. I get a lot out of the meetings — I look forward to them, and I appreciate seeing other people respond authentically to what we’re reading. I use the ISP app, and sometimes I volunteer to read at Reflecting Our Light — ISP’s weekly reflection circle — when a facilitator can’t show up.

The retreats humbled me. I heard stories even more harrowing than mine, and while my own tradition leads me to wrestle with God rather than surrender to him, I deeply respected how surrendering to Jesus had been so important to the recovery of so many I met. It was important for me to be at a place where I could hear and respect different paths to recovery as well as share my own.

A poem I wrote became one of the weekly readings, and I was honored to read it at one of our gatherings. Not long after I joined ISP, I was invited to join the ISP Bay Area Advisory Council. I was happy to say yes. For me, the purpose is straightforward: to get more people involved, and to get more money — because both translate into more connections, more retreats, more groups. But also more chances for someone who’s barely hanging on to hear, “You belong here.”

I’m familiar with the services people need on the way out of hospitals and jail, and I’ve seen the gap up close: they very often end up on the street. I remember being discharged and basically being told, “Here’s some money for a bus, you’re on your own.” Homelessness taught me what it feels like to be invisible; recovery taught me how powerful it is to be seen. ISP is one of the places where people respond authentically and let their guard down, and where I can listen in a non-judgmental way and take someone seriously.

Today, I am going back to school to become a psychotherapist. I live in my own apartment. I am dating. I am a valued member of my synagogue. And I am a member of the ISP Bay Area Advisory Council. All that grew out of a long road that started with losing everything. Being on the Advisory Council is one way of making sure the road is a little less lonely for the next person.

David, Bay Area