Editor’s Note: TakePart is collaborating with Community Access to bring you stories from their employees and housing residents. This is part of our Special Report on Homelessness inspired by The Soloist. Check back each week for more stories from Community Access.

Dwayne Mayes has been there and back. He survived extraordinary abuse at the hands of a mother whose mental illness went undiagnosed. He bears a large scar in the shape of a question mark on the back of his skull—the result of hot grease his mother poured on him when he was a toddler. In adolescence, Dwayne felt the stirrings of what would develop into his own battles with mental illness. He has known homelessness and addiction. At age 30, he entered a hospital research study and was diagnosed with depression.

“Until that moment,” said Dwayne. “I believed what I had always been told—I was lazy, I was weak, I had character defects.”

Dwayne has known triumph over mental illness and the joy of fatherhood.

“My daughter was pivotal to my survival. I had to get well. My Aunt Hope had been the first person to hug me. So I named my daughter Hope. She taught me unconditional love. Mothers in the park taught me how to braid hair.”

Dwayne saw fear in his father’s eyes when he told him he’d been diagnosed with a mental illness and was on medication. “My own father was scared of me.” That realization led Dwayne to want to educate and advocate for people with mental illness.

That’s when I discovered Community Access and went through the program to become a mental health peer specialist. That training propelled me into a career of working on behalf of people with disabilities. Now, seven years later, I’m the director of the Peer Advocacy Center.

I’ve been stable for nearly a decade. I got my degree from Hunter. I’m engaged to be married. And my beautiful daughter, Hope, is a high school honor-roll student with her sights set on Brandeis.

Aunt Hope taught me early on not to hate my mother, and now I have even come to appreciate the scar burnt into my scalp. That question mark reminds me daily that ‘why?’ is a question we sometimes can’t answer. What matters is that I survived and have stopped the cycle of untreated mental illness in my family. Today, I’m committed to helping other people with mental illness. That’s my answer to ‘why?’”

Dwayne Mayes is the Director, Peer Advocacy Center at Community Access