Remembering Jennifer Kinzie (1979-2021)
Editor’s note: Michael Gilbert contributed to this remembrance of Jennifer Kinzie, who died on February 22.
Jennifer Kinzie was a woman full of hope. I say that delicately, reverently, and, even in the light of her recent death, I say it as defiantly as Ms. Kinzie might say it herself, were she able to do so.
But alas, she is not. Jennifer Lynn Kinzie passed away suddenly last week in Virginia.
Streetwise and sincere, Kinzie was a licensed mental health counselor who truly was a person of lived experience. She was diagnosed as “bipolar” as a teenager, and like so many from her generation, she was medicated. After suffering the debilitating effects of diagnosis and drugs, Jennifer used this personal experience in order to guide her work not only as a counselor and therapist, but also as a volunteer with numerous psychiatric survivor groups.