Getting Well and Giving Back
Overcoming adversities, Chelsea is admired both inside and outside the statewide online wellness center
By Beth Wade
Resilience, science, karma. Whatever magical combination collided in 2023, it brought Chelsea Kowal an exceptional year. The highlight reel: a reunion with a nephew after 13 years, an engagement, a job as an algebra tutor (her first paid position in a decade), and a rewarding volunteer post through United By Wellness. She’s particularly touched by one additional, unexpected milestone, her story is among a collection that will appear in Awakenings, a soon-to-be-released book about survivors of schizophrenia.
For all these reasons and her varied and remarkable life experiences (keep reading to find out!), United By Wellness leadership has felt fortunate to have had her on the team. Staff celebrate her successes, and, at the same time, with heavy hearts, say goodbye and “thank you” to a motivated, gifted young woman who contributed so much during her year as a facilitator of four different groups, two of which she developed to expand the weekend lineup.
Looking back on her time volunteering with UBW, she said the biggest highlights are related to the gratitude that’s been expressed to her and about the groups. “Everyone is very thankful for their peers, and the camaraderie is so heartwarming,” she said. “That’s what will stay with me the most. I’ll remember the kind words people said to me.” Her dedication to a long list of groups – at first, Depression Support Group, Coping With Chaos – then to two more she created, Reducing Relapses, and Healing Connections is remarkable. She’s been active with the online wellness center since August 2022 when she was connected as part of her discharge plan from case management in Sussex County. Chelsea has many years of lived experience with her mental health struggles, most troubling were delusions and voices. There was a time during her illness, she said, that she believed she worked for the FBI, CIA, and FDA. Since age 16, she’s been hospitalized 25 times. She said a new medication has reduced the voices she hears to less than 5 percent of her day. In addition to her schizoaffective bipolar type diagnosis, she lives with autism and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. To her credit, she studied biomedical engineering and earned a master’s degree. Her brilliance in school and in the wellness center groups impresses those who have had the pleasure to know her. Chelsea’s passion and interest in mental health grew in recent years, so she decided to pursue a couple of peer certifications which require 500 hours of experience in the field. United By Wellness and a second agency gave her the opportunities she needed to accomplish that goal.
