Back to Concord
Back to Concord
I returned to Concord in my adult years, almost to the same place I lived with my mother. I felt a closeness to her there. The streets remembered me. The air did.
In 2009 after being hospitalized at Herrick Hospital in Berkeley, my life changed. My father came up from Oregon but he really did not know me because an old friend connected me to my father in Oregon. I think it was time to get to know my father.
My father did not know the state of my apartment. It was a mess because I was organizing and throwing things away. The landlord said I did not pay my rent, which I did. I later found my money orders. That apartment was shady though and I can see why it was converted to condos.
I went to Concord Adult Mental Health and my life again changed. I had hit rock bottom.
I did get another apartment and I stayed close to Donna. Donna was kinda like my mother figure. She taught me to drive at night because driving is the best at night. The friendship with Donna was not the greatest. At that lowest point I was assigned Dr. Ziba Rahimzadeh. She was Persian and beautiful. I connected to her and gravitated to her. I thought of her as a mother figure but she just worked for the county.
We worked for 3 years. She put me in a beautiful board and care home and I was there for three years. This is the time I was diagnosed with bipolar. The problem with this: she told me that she was fabricating my illness to get benefits.
I was at my lowest point of being reborn again. I went to day programs and it was at this time I met people that today I can’t be friends with, because when you are in this stage it’s best to never befriend people in treatment.
As I got better I applied for the SPIRIT program in Concord that gave people with diagnoses the opportunity to get some college credit and become peer support. But I remember my case manager told me to go to college, not the SPIRIT program. I kinda regret that program. I absolutely don’t believe that peers with lived experience should be a part of mental health. But I did it and did my intern at Mental Health Consumer Concerns, which got closed because of not being run correctly.
There were people I met that today it’s best to never really let know my future.
At this time I started going to the Vineyard. I really think that church is wrong and I did not see God in that church. I saw cattiness and people that were two-faced. I think my father met one of the leaders when he drove down from Oregon. I did not like the pastor and it was not the right place to know God. But it served its purpose. There was one family I loved and there was a woman that I was allowed to clean her home frequently.
Concord was my return and my reckoning. I went back to the same streets where I rode in my mother’s yellow Volkswagen to Goodwill and Taco Bell. Back to the same zip code where I first heard Obama’s name in a church that called him the Antichrist.
I came back broken. I left with a diagnosis, a board and care address, a case manager who lied for benefits, and a church that showed me what God isn’t.
But I also left with this: I survived it. I outlived the day programs. I outlived the peer support experiment. I outlived the Vineyard.
Donna taught me to drive at night. And that’s what I did. I drove through the dark until I got to Salem.
Cathryn M. Murray
From Ashes | Concord Was a Classroom | Still Driving
Salem, Oregon | August 4, 2026
