I can stretch my legs and feel already sore muscles groan. I can stand, feebly perhaps, to my feet as my body demands the rest it thinks it deserves. One hand to sore back I can take one more step forward. It may complain, but my body will move. They may ache but my feet will carry me. I may be tired, but I am strong. This is what growth looks like.

And I don’t know if it’s because I have my own mental illness that I bounce around a bit more often between the really balanced mom of awesomeness and the ‘life is stretching me’ mom of passableness and the ‘I should really get a sitter because I’m going to seriously start saying shit I might regret’ mom of awfulness, or if that’s just normal.

“What if we tried to be brave instead of perfect.” Unknown I could not love this any more. I don’t think I could strive more for it than I do but I still fall short and so I keep trying. Perfect seems so important. How do I look? How about the kids? The house? Are […]

After a particularly awful anxiety attack, like the one I had this morning, it might be a time to live your life in such a way as if to say, “I’m sorry, my body just reminded me it can kill me at any given time without notice and my Self is in need of my attention. Your opinion of that is currently invalid.”

Look at that little smunchy faced baby. It would only take her three short years from this photo to shout “I don’t love you mommy! I don’t love you and I want you to move out so Daddy will stop loving you too!” She’s thorough, at least. I probably don’t need to explain that today […]

You know those folks who say things like “when it’s what you’re meant to do with your life, you’ll just know… when it’s you’re real ‪dream, there’ll be no giving up… nothing will be able to stop you…you’ll know when you find it… trust me, you’ll know..” I mean, I guess I don’t know who […]

I had a dream last night that I was the Stanford rape victim. Became I am. Because I have been raped. I have been molested as a child, assaulted as an adult on a date, and raped by a stranger while completely blacked out. I have believed that these occurrences were my fault and were the natural […]

Here’s a talk myself down from the ledge moment… “If the sun doesn’t come back to Vermont soon I’m just going to give up the fight and head to bed permanently. I cannot stand it anymore. Breathing is beginning to take effort. I need to hibernate. Of course, what I really need is to get […]

I grew up in one of those families that that didn’t believe in mental illness. Depression? Anxiety? Please, everyone gets sad and nervous, get yourself together and let’s get going. Therapy? For what? Psychology is a crock. So it’s no wonder that in this environment the idea of pharmaceuticals was laughable. Not just for us, […]

I feel good today. If I didn’t that’d be alright too, I suppose. I stopped pretending I was just like everyone else a couple years ago so now no one even thinks to expect it. These days I don’t even know if I believe in a ‘just like everyone else’… It’s more like a median line […]