Glen Ellyn mother honors daughter’s memory with mental health resources to help struggle

The message to Stefania Rahn when she was enduring a panic attack as part of her ongoing battle with anxiety, depression and crippling phobias was often an overly simplistic one, her mother, Xristina Rahn, says: “You just need to calm down.”

That reaction didn’t cut it, Rahn says. It didn’t encompass the totality of what Stefania felt as she lived with mental illness. And it didn’t help.

In the years since Stefania’s 2022 death from mental illness at age 28, her mother has worked to put a more complex, nuanced and hopeful message into a place where she says teens need it most — their schools.

Stef’s Corner is the result of Xristina Rahn’s efforts to place mental health resources into students’ paths, and it was started in the district her children attended, Glenbard High School District 87.

he corner is a bookshelf, painted with the animals, flowers and symbolism Stefania loved and decorated with inspirational messages. At Glenbard East High School in Lombard, where Stefania went to high school following her two older siblings, the shelf is “very prominently displayed” near the guidance office, administrators say, to help students recognize that they’re not the only ones struggling.

“There’s so much power in even sometimes the title … even just seeing those books on the shelf,” said Gilda Ross, District 87′s coordinator of student and community projects. The books and their topics can create a helpful thought, Ross said: “If someone’s written a book about it, I’m not the only one.”

Help without barriers

The first Stef’s Corner went up at Glenbard East in fall 2023, about a year after Stefania’s passing, and it works like a Little Free Library. Students can browse the titles and can take — for free — any book they need. Titles focus on coping with anxiety, combating stress, understanding panic attacks and rising from depression, among a variety of other mental health and wellness-related topics.

“Stef was really a huge advocate for mental illness,” said her mother, who lives in Glen Ellyn and works at Glenbard East in special education. “She was trying to remove the stigma. That’s what she really wanted to do. It was like her whole life.”

The shelf also is stocked with some of Stefania’s favorite things, which are intended to help students cope with stress and anxiety in the moment. There are pens, pencils, colored pencils, stickers, notebooks and guided journals — all free for the taking. The setup is the same at five additional Stef’s Corner sites at other Glenbard schools and district facilities.

“It’s accessible, and I’d say that it’s working in being able to provide literature and different items for students — without there being any barriers,” said Broderick Booth, assistant principal of student services at Glenbard East. “It’s definitely in line with supporting students in all of their full well-being as a whole person.”

Feelings often dismissed

Stefania’s time at Glenbard East in the late 2000s was not a phase she enjoyed, said her sister, Katerina Rahn. Stefania’s intense fears of large places, crowds and stairways made everything about navigating the building of roughly 2,200 students nearly untenable. Katerina, 33, remembers often eating lunch with her sister, their cousins and a few friends in the quiet classroom of a kind Spanish teacher, rather than the bustling cafeteria.

“She couldn’t go anywhere near stairs or walk down them,” Katerina said. “It was extremely difficult.”

Stefania spent some of her high school phase at a therapeutic day school rather than at Glenbard East, but she and her sister — though 21 months apart in age — graduated at the same time in 2010.

Afterward, her family says, Stefania attempted classes at the College of DuPage and tried to work at McDonald’s and a pet store. All were a struggle. So she spent a lot of time at home, engaging in creative projects or helping her aunt balance the books for a coffee shop she owns in Westmont.

Mental health challenges began for Stefania when she experienced her first panic attack at age 7, her mother said. Her family describes her as a “very, very intelligent kid” — an animal lover who played three instruments, a grammar whiz with a quick wit and a precise memory — but says she faced “relentless” bullying at school that likely sparked her anxiety and depression. As she sought help and understanding, the reaction she received too often minimized what she was going through, her family says.

“We really didn’t understand her emotions and her feelings,” Stefania’s mother said. “They were often dismissed as, ‘Well, everyone feels anxious and depressed.’”

Striving ‘to be hopeful’

Stefania’s sister says she had her own first experience with feelings of anxiety and depression in middle school, but felt lost about addressing it. That’s why she thinks the self-help books and calming resources at Stef’s Corner are so meaningful.

“I couldn’t name those feelings, and I had no idea what I was going through,” Katerina said. “I think if I had those resources available, I could have looked at something and understood, ‘this is what I’m going through, and this is how I deal with it.’”

Katerina and her mother spoke with a few classes at Glenbard East last fall during National Suicide Prevention Month, telling them the backstory of the bookshelf and encouraging them to use everything it has to offer.

District 87 chipped in roughly $1,000 toward establishing the first Stef’s Corner, said Booth, the assistant principal, and administrators at all the Glenbard schools try to allocate some funding to keep the shelves stocked. Ross, who runs the GPS Parent Series of educational talks, donates books she receives from authors and participating speakers.

Meanwhile, the Rahn family supports the cause with a GoFundMe page and an Amazon wish list of items they’d love to include. They hope to host fundraisers in the future, possibly selling seeds to grow sunflowers, which were a favorite of Stefania’s because they represent the conscious decision to turn toward the light and grow.

“Sunflowers are symbolic of resiliency, endurance and hope,” Rahn said. “That’s all she ever wanted, is to be hopeful.”

https://www.dailyherald.com/20250208/news/im-not-the-only-one-glen-ellyn-mother-honors-daughters-memory-with-mental-health-resources-to-h/