Denis Asselin
Adversity: Lost Son, Nathaniel, who battled severe Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Advocacy: Walked more than 500 miles, raising awareness about BDD
“I felt as if walking was a way of pushing out the energy in a positive way – using the power of Nathaniel’s story to get the word out, to get brain disorders out of the shadows and break the code of secrecy.”
As a way of making “some sense of the senseless,” Denis began putting one foot in front of the other, figuratively and literally. He set out to walk from Philadelphia to Boston to share his son’s story and to raise awareness of BDD. His 552-mile trek included stops at places where Nathaniel was treated. “I just wanted to stop by and talk about Nathaniel and talk about his illness – what have we learned about the loss of his life, what are we going to learn?” Denis also vowed to share the story of Nathaniel and BDD with five strangers a day along his route. And supporters were able to follow his walk at http://walkingwithnathaniel.org. “I feel like I’m breaking the boundaries of Nathaniel’s limited life. I tell his story so that others don’t feel alone. You never know how you’re going to touch somebody,” Denis says. The response, he says, has been overwhelming, and included donations of about $29,000 to the International OCD Foundation. “We’ve been getting messages from sufferers, mostly their moms, and their stories eerily mirror our own: usually the sufferer is a young man, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old and the parent is very, very desperate, asking, ‘What can we do?’ … When you lose a child, it’s not the right order of things. I want to do something concrete to make a difference. Most parents who lose kids don’t talk about it. I’m not saying it’s easy, but if it helps get our story out, I’m willing to do it.”