As some of you know, last week I had what was, for me, a rather significant falling apart. It didn’t come all at once and there wasn’t much of a public showdown, but it was powerful and awful and very scary. It was an emotional break several weeks in the making while I ignored red […]

Why do people with mental illness kill themselves when all they have to do is reach out for help? As some of you may remember, I recently went off my mood stabilizing medication in order to get pregnant. At first it was fine. I felt pretty okay. But things soon started to deteriorate. I felt […]

It’s important for you to know and to remember that you are 99.9% unlike most any other person you’re ever going to meet. Because the entire world is going to tell you things that they expect to work for you to fix the things that are “wrong” with you. And they’re mostly going to tell you the things that worked to fix them. But you’re not them. And maybe some of their things will work for you and maybe some of their things won’t.

I don’t know most of the people who follow my Facebook page at this point. It’s an incredible and humbling thing, to be allowed to speak on topics so personal to total strangers. I confess, I pretend that you are *all* strangers, that no one I know reads this. I pretend, while I write, that I […]

I hate relationships. It’s a terribly unfeminine trait, I know. But I do. I hate them, I always have. I hate the confusion of them, the work of them, the upkeep. I feel calmer and more at peace with myself when I am not responsible to or for anyone. When the first and final opinion […]

She is clinging to my leg and my skin is crawling. “Mommy is just getting you a bowl of cereal, darling, I can pick you up in just a minute.” I am hoping she can not hear the rising panic in my voice. I make sure to speak pleasantly and slowly; I work hard to […]

If marijuana was a legal substance, and were I to smoke it, I would want to tell you about it. If you’re a regular reader of mine you know I don’t like to keep secrets or, rather, I don’t like to present a half truth. For me, if I am to share with you how […]

Here is another blog post written by my friend, Jill Lillis. Read this one slowly and a couple of times over to make sure you really catch the fullness of what she is saying. There is brilliant insight in this. On the subject of maintaining your self-care practices when Complex PTSD symptoms are overwhelming and […]

Today I feel as if I am taking my first good, deep breath in nearly two weeks. I’ve been reading a book (Why Am I Still Depressed by Jim Phelps) about Bipolar ii Disorder and learned that, if you pay careful attention, you can tell when your mood is about to shift. The author says […]

One slow finger at a time, with white-knuckled concentration, I form my hands, tightly wrapped, around the bars of life. I hold on. Reminding myself of where I am, of who I am, of what these bars represent, I hold on. This life, the one I have chosen, the one I have made and designed […]