Former Second Wind director joins NAMI
For two years, Sandra Sorensen was the executive director of Second Wind Cottages in Newfield (tinyurl.com/2pcby42n). On Sept. 12, she began her new role as executive director for the National Alliance on Mental Illness Finger Lakes, better known as NAMI Finger Lakes.
Sorensen said that mental illness and being unhoused are linked. After taking a year and a half off from being the executive director of Second Wind Cottages, she was happy to return to a place where she could fulfill her mission
“It’s exciting, humbling and daunting,” she said in an email. “It is amazing to be reentering the workforce with an organization run by a hard-working board of directors, which fuels my passions and allows me to empathize and share my personal experiences with people.”
Sorensen has personal experience with mental illness care. Her husband of 25 years died by suicide in 2021 after a long battle with bipolar disorder.
She said that while difficult times have come, she and her five children remain hopeful that help and support will be given to mental health patients who need it.
Eight years ago, Sorensen took a family-to-family class offered by NAMI about managing being married to someone with bipolar disorder. It introduced her to a community that she felt comfortable with — and one she would end up working for.
“I felt not alone,” she said. “The class was very informative, and it was reassuring to be in the presence of others who were living with people that had some of the same struggles. I did not come out of that class with solutions but came out of that class with friends. It was years later that I learned through my work as a teen youth coordinator at Bethel Grove, the executive director of Second Wind and now executive director of NAMI Finger Lakes that relationships are the key to success in all areas of life. If anyone is living with someone that has mental illness, they should take this class.”
Anyone affected by mental illness can sign up for a class at namifingerlakes.org.
Second Wind has served an important role in Sorensen’s understanding of mental health and people being unhoused.
Second Wind Cottages is located on Route 13 and consists of 18 cottages for unhoused men to use as a temporary home as they move toward employment and a comfortable living situation.
The Newfield location is currently only for men, but Second Wind has indicated that the Newfield location could expand and house women at some point. Second Wind also inherited a house damaged by fire in 2019 in Dryden and is transforming it into Dryden House (tinyurl.com/2ztma55l).
Dryden House will be a multi-use facility dedicated to housing and walking with unhoused and at-risk adult women and their families.
Sorensen said she is proud of what the cottages are able to do for people without a home.
“Second Wind’s mission is to house and walk with people towards restored lives,” Sorensen said. “I could go on about donor-base increases, new fundraisers and grants received, but the projects that made the campus more homey and provided opportunities for the men to ‘hobby and play’ were the things that I am most proud of.”
Sorensen said that while she was executive director of Second Wind, improvements were made to the lives she touched while in Newfield.
“During my time there, raised garden beds were installed, a chicken coop was added (there are five chickens and two ducks living on site), a basketball hoop was acquired and installed, a horseshoe pit and numerous flower gardens,” she said. “I still visit, and it warms my heart to see the red glow of the chicken coop at night and the sunflowers by the mailboxes in the late summer, especially knowing personally that these were things provided by my efforts for my friends to enjoy.”
With her new role at NAMI, Sorensen will be tackling mental illness. It’s a topic she knows well and one she doesn’t think is talked about enough in Tompkins County.
She has worked with people without homes, and now people with mental illness. In Sorensen’s mind, there is a common link between the two problems.
“When considering how rich Tompkins County is in resources, it is astonishing how serious these problems are and how statistically both problems are increasing instead of decreasing,” she said. “The solution is not complex, but it is not what people want to hear. People need people and people need love. Homelessness, substance abuse and mental illness all have in common — isolation.”
She said that putting the unhoused into homes without support has a tendency to fail. Offering therapy to unhoused or mentally ill people might not work as well because there is often a lack of trust between patient and doctor.
She said the only solution is to configure relationships with unhoused people in Tompkins County, which she hopes to do.
Sorensen said that process started in Newfield with her time at Second Wind.
“Building long-term relationships with people who are homeless and/or have mental illness is very fruitful,” she said. “It is not something that organizations can offer very easily; it is not a 9 a.m.-5 p.m. job. Big change is needed to reverse the escalation in homelessness and mental illness. ”
Sorensen continued.
“If this change is to happen, it will be when each of us embraces and loves people that may seem unlovable,” she said. “At Second Wind, the mission itself is to do just that. At NAMI Finger Lakes, people who are already in these difficult relationships are educated and supported to make these relationships successful. Both missions are making a small dent in a problem that is multiplying faster than what these organizations alone can do. We all need to step up.”
Newfield Notes appears every Wednesday in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@VizellaMedia.com.
