Erasing the stigma: Huntington Beach math teacher seeks to help others get through mental illness
It might have been five decades ago, but Dr. Kimberly Powers still remembers her enraged mother coming down the stairs in their home.
She wore no clothes, except for one boot. Powers and her two younger sisters knew what the boot was for.
“It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, run,’” Powers said. “And then she would lay on the ground crying, and we’d go get ice cream.”
Powers’ mother, Bobette, had bipolar disorder, but she never got the help she needed. She committed suicide by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1973.
Kimberly, who following her parents’ divorce was living with her dad, Bob, at the time, was just 12 years old.
The death happened on Good Friday. The Powers sisters went back to school in Cypress the following Monday.
“No one talked to us,” Kimberly Powers said. “There wasn’t a funeral because they thought a funeral was inappropriate for someone who committed suicide. There was this shame around her death. We grew up thinking, ‘We can’t be like our mom.’”
In some ways, she was. Powers and her oldest son, Andrew, were both subsequently diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
But they live productive lives. Powers wants to erase the stigma.
The Huntington Beach resident recently self-published her first book: “Jumping Is Not Genetic,” available on Amazon. It’s a collection of essays on her family history and dealing with mental illness.
Powers, 61, still has episodes sometimes, but she is thriving. She said good diet and exercise, medication and a good support system are all vital pieces to her puzzle.
She has taught math at Marina High since 1999, but this is her final school year as she counts down the days to retirement.
Powers said her therapist — as well as students in her classes who know about her family history — encouraged her to put out the book. She started writing the essays back in 2002, when she was in her master’s program.
“I’ve been a teacher for 36 years, I raised a family, I have a home,” she said. “I hate to say I have a normal life, because normal’s just a setting on the dryer. But it’s a life that’s productive. It’s not a tragic life.”
Powers lives about a mile from Marina High. Most days, she rides her bike to school.
Jill Hardy, former Huntington Beach mayor and longtime City Council member, has been teaching with Powers in the Vikings’ math program for the last 15 years. She said Powers is best known for her consumer math class, where her students learn real-world math skills like buying car insurance or planning a budget.
Powers is open and wants to help others. In fact, Hardy often confides in her when she’s having issues.
“I’ve happened to walk into her classroom on the last day of school, and she’s got one more lesson to teach about life,” Hardy said. “There might not be any more math to cover, but she’s got something else to teach. We’ve talked often about how important it is to get to know our students, and let them know we care about them. That really helps them learn the subject when they’re in the class, if they feel like you care about them, and she’s definitely the kind of teacher with that philosophy.”
Powers, who has been married for 10 years to her third husband, Alan Lombardi, raised five children: Andrew, Stuart, Nancy, Katelyn and Robert. They all went to Marina High. Four of them now live in southern Utah, where Andrew is also a high school teacher.
She’s also very close with her middle sister, Kelly, who is three years younger and teaches at Pacifica High in Garden Grove. Kelly does not have bipolar disorder, though she said she does have a daughter with an undiagnosed mental illness and has sometimes acted as a go-between.
“They’ve all seen episodes, every one of them,” Kelly Powers said of her nephews and nieces. “People with mental illness, if they can have any control, they save it for the people who are closest to them. That’s where they cannot hold it together any longer. People that don’t understand mental illness say, ‘Well, then why don’t they hold it together all the time?’ But they don’t understand. Every one of her kids have seen her [episodes], and so I’ve had many talks with them.”
Kimberly shrugs it off. She said she knows she’s not perfect, but neither is anybody’s mother. She is sympathetic to her own late mother but has gotten the help to avoid making the same mistakes.
Kimberly Powers, who got her doctorate of education degree from Long Beach State in 2020, is unsure what form retired life will take. She said she’s a bit worried because it might not have the structure — helpful for people with mental illness — that she’s been used to while teaching all of these years.
But she knows she has a lot of people in her corner. She said she wants to continue helping people, whether that’s through her book, public speaking or other avenues.
“It’s a story that needs to be told,” she said. “There’s a really big percentage of people who have family members and friends who are mentally ill. Those are the people who have told me they liked the book. I guess it gave them an insight into what it was like.”
All the latest on Orange County from Orange County.
Get our free TimesOC newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Daily Pilot.
