Full disclosure: I am not an animated Disney Movie fan.  I loved the Lion King and regularly  have Hakuna Matata on my iPod, but other than that, cartoons just aren’t my thing.  Having said that, I had occasion to see Finding Dory recently when I was a parent chaperone on a school field trip.

I spent the first part of the movie only partly paying attention, still trying to recover from the ear-splitting amazingness that is excited elementary school children on a bus to the cinema during the last week of school.  Lord have mercy.  Gradually, though, I began to tune in this endearing little blue Fish and her plight, afflicted with short-term memory issues and lost at sea, trying to find her parents.

Along the way, Dory struggles with social and personal difficulties connected to her memory problems.  Others get annoyed with her, and she gets down on herself.  Her limitations make the task ahead of her, finding her parents all the way across the ocean, seem almost impossible.

But somehow, she gets the job done.  Through a combination of good luck, good friends, and good problem-solving, she manages to get reunited with her family.  She also does the right thing by the friends she brings along for her adventure, including Nemo, and the ones she meets along the way.  In the end, the good girl wins.

She wins because she pushes through her doubts about herself, and learns to work with herself and her very limited short-term memory.  She accepts the challenges that she is given, always working towards a solution, always believing there is one.  She’s afraid sometimes, but she moves through her fears and she keeps going forward, in her life and towards her ultimate goal of finding her family.

I think we can learn a lot from this charming little fish who reminds herself and others to “just keep swimming”.  Mental Illness does give us some limitations, but that doesn’t mean we are incapable, or disabled.  It just means we have to find creative ways to access our own strengths, and to make the best of ourselves.  There is good in all of us, capability in all of us, resourcefulness and strength in all of us.  Half the battle is accepting who we are, ALL of who we are.  There is so much more to any of us than the mental illness we are challenged by, just as there is so much more than a short-term memory problem to this brave and warm-hearted little fish who eventually manages to find her way home.

We all have oceans to cross, but we can do it.  If we accept ourselves, love ourselves, and like Dory, just keep swimming.