Erin McKelle

If you're one of those people who has 100,000 excuses as to why you can't take a vacation, I'm here to tell you why and how to make it happen — even on a budget and with no time!

I began to see my mental health go completely downhill. This led me to seek out a psychiatrist, who raised an interesting concern: she thought my birth control was messing with my depression. It’s not like I hadn’t been aware of the link between hormonal contraception and depression before, but it never occurred to me that these two personal realities could be connected.

You might not think of food as being a savior in eating disorder recovery, but I have actually found food to be one of my greatest sources of refuge — and not in a relapse sort of way.

Many books in the self-help genre are either hokey or just plain scams. However, thanks to my perseverance and voracious reading, I've discovered there are self-help books out there that can transform your life and thinking in powerful ways and I’ve rounded up a list of my 5 all-time faves.

This year I’m going into the holiday season with a self-care game plan, so that I’ll be ready when the holiday blues come around. I think that probably more people get the holiday blues than you would think, since this isn’t an issue that’s often talked about openly.

Here are a few ways you can do some inventory on your own behaviors and start dealing with addiction in a healing way.

When you think of astrology, what first comes to mind? Is it your sun sign, the weekly horoscopes you see in newspapers, or a wonky new-agey scam? If you’re in the latter group, I’m here to tell you that astrology is not a crock of you-know-what, but actually has some historical merit to its practice.

I’ve been writing about body positivity on the Internet for a couple of years now, but I have to admit that if anything, loving my body has become harder than when I started. Since then, I came to understand that I had an unresolved eating disorder that I battled for six years, I’ve started working out and I’ve discovered a passion for cooking.

I’m adopted. It’s one of those things that has been a major force in shaping my identity, but that’s hard to talk about authentically almost anywhere.

There’s nothing worse than taking a pregnancy test when you don’t want to be pregnant.

It’s especially bad when you don’t know who the father is.

Last year, this is the exact situation I found myself in: 23, single, not on contraception, and with a late period. I was nothing short of panicked.

After finding the least expensive test that CVS carried (by the way, can we talk about how expensive pregnancy tests are?!), I went home to find out my fate. After locking myself in the bathroom, I turned the shower on to drown out the noise of my thoughts. I waited five minutes and then peered at the stick, leaning as far away from the sink as possible in case it showed two lines.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw one clear line on the screen.

I quickly tossed the test in the trash, turned off the shower, and hopped in bed with a bottle of cabernet.