In what is surely the most bittersweet form of vindication, Lewis now educates psychiatrists about the disorders they are called on to diagnose and treat. The day before I interviewed her she had addressed an auditorium full of physicians at a psychiatric Grand Rounds.
She told them about her hospitalization. She talked about the other kids. She is not without humor. She remembered how they were an intellectually curious and hormonal bunch who spent a disproportionate amount of time doing what kids on the outside were doing--feeling each other up when their guardians were looking the other way. She also told the doctors that most of the other kids had died somewhere along the way, by their own hand.
Mindy Lewis was determined to be a survivor. Mostly on her own, she developed enviable resources of body, mind and spirit. She had the courage to look inside and love herself. She is the very personification of resilience. It should come as no surprise, then, to learn that she did one more extraordinary thing. She found the strength to forgive her mother for having her locked up during those very vital years.
