Mental Health Workshop – Steven D. Brand

Steven D. Brand will be speaking to the men at the “Wrestling with an Angel” event and at the Mental Health Workshop.

Steve was raised in southern Illinois, near St. Louis. In 1977 he was baptized into Christ through the dynamic campus ministry at Eastern Illinois University and soon became a student leader. In 1979 he attended graduate school at the University of South Carolina in Columbia where he continued to lead, eventually becoming the campus minister in 1981. He met his beautiful, dynamic and spiritual wife, Teryl, in 1982. They were married in 1984 and went on to plant the church in St. Louis in 1986, then moved to Boston in 1987. They served in the campus ministry at Boston University and Boston College and then moved into leading a house church until 1989 when they left the full-time ministry.

From 1991 through 1994, Steve attended a dual degree program at Boston University where he graduated with two Master’s degrees, MPH/MSW. After some time in the trenches and foxholes of local psychiatric hospitals and emergency rooms, Steve began his private practice in Cambridge, MA, in 1996.
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Wrestling with an Angel – Dana Hawkins

Dana Hawkins will be speaking to the women about her book “Wrestling with an Angel” and at the Mental Health Workshop.

Dana Hawkins knows what it means to struggle with difficult circumstances: a challenging childhood, an eating disorder, clinical depression, suicidal thoughts, debilitating physical pain, financial struggles, court battles to adopt a needy child—to name a few.

Describing the heavy state of her mind while in depression, she speaks of the hopelessness, the anger, the very real feeling that she is seeing life through a film, that she is somehow separate and removed from those around her.

But in her honesty, she also reaches out for and holds on to faith:

“I don’t ever give myself a back door. There is no alternate escape route. I made up my mind long ago that being a Christian was a lifelong decision. That cinches the deal no matter what lies ahead. That’s not to say I’ve never felt like quitting. I certainly have been tempted when things have been incredibly difficult. But because that has already been ruled out as an option, the only choice I’m left with is making it through to the other side.”

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