mental illness

Healing is hard work. It will be hard today, tomorrow, next week, next month, 3 years from now.

I wasn’t thankful. I was too negative. I wasn’t doing enough. When I found out my mood swings weren't my fault, that I had bipolar disorder, I cried.

More than any other unsolicited mental health advice I’ve received over the course of my life is the admonishment to “fake it till you make it.”

For many people, activism induces as much anxiety as the disastrous news stories that compel us to keep doing it. So here's an activist’s survival guide!

There’s a reason I turn to Friends when I get depressed. Ok, I lied, there are several reasons.

Prescription meds are part of my daily routine. I start my day with three. I end it with four. I take two in the middle. This cocktail of meds, regardless of how much I hate them, keep me functioning like a mostly normal human being. But sometimes even the meds aren’t enough.

I am a lot of things; some people might think I am too many things. But I am all the things that you are, sometimes just in greater quantities. I am also worth loving.

An obsessive spiral is largely invisible, with no quirky Monk-like hand washing to ground it in reality. The hand washing stuff — the compulsion — comes later.