Emptiness, it fills me the way emptiness can; with vacancy and abandonment— alone and in the dark. The heaviness is back. Weight presses on my chest and I gasp for air, But there’s no oxygen left for me. I’m sinking in this mind of mine. Blurred thoughts leave me sinking, pulling me down, down like [...]
The cocky fireman got way too close to my face and rudely asked: “what, are you on drugs?!” My response? “YEAH ASSHOLE I HAVE A PANIC DISORDER!” I didn’t know I was pregnant. Let me make that very clear. I had no idea I was pregnant. I thought I was simply going insane and losing [...]
I will never forget the time I sat in the closet my belly panging at me begging to be fed. I was so upset that I simply was unable to speak. My anxiety disorder completely ignored. I was shouting on the inside but of course, no one could hear that except me the hollow echoes [...]
Childhood I know I did not have anxiety or depression when I was a kid. Yes, I was anxious about getting friends because I was a shy and quiet person. I also knew I had a hard time making friends because of it. So, my mother enrolled me in an after-school program and dance classes. [...]
Having been seduced and subsequently beaten into a pulp by this variety of mental illnesses, I have been placed in this burning seat again. Poked and prodded, like a newly discovered extraterrestrial, this process is beginning to bore me to a slow death. God, just make this repetitive bullshit stop. A constant droning inside my [...]
My kid knows how to ground me. If you don’t know exactly what grounding is you are probably one of the lucky that don’t suffer from anxiety. I do suffer from anxiety quite badly. I frequently get panic attacks, sometimes out of nowhere it seems. But my seven-year-old, he knows how to ground me. He [...]
Today I am asking you to admit a mistake. My students know that the 2 most important things to me are kindness and mistakes. I create art that challenges traditional ideas of beauty and acceptable body types. My art explores bodies that are not commonly pictured dancing, doing yoga, and loving themselves. My message is [...]
My daughter, Samantha, was seven-years-old when she was diagnosed with an “unspecified mood disorder.” This is what doctors usually say when they don’t want to tell you a hard truth – in our case it was early-onset bipolar disorder (as opposed to major depressive disorder or seasonal affective disorder) and we were in for years [...]
I got my first babysitting job when I was 9 years old. I was paid with a chocolate bar. I got my first real job at 14 working in a small playdough factory. I was paid $7/hr and felt incredibly rich. Since then, I have never not had a job. In university, I had 3 [...]
My sister wouldn’t talk to me for almost five years. The original story from my perspective was she was mad at me for not working while I was getting multiple panic attacks a day while pregnant with my first son. At one point she even told me “Fuck your therapist and fuck your doctor, you [...]
