At the beginning of this school year if someone asked me what was wrong or why I was unhappy, I could not have told them; I’ve always been this way. It was not until off a whim I signed up for a class on gender identity and sexual orientation that I realized how much my [...]
I am a 31 year old woman of color and mother of 3 living with mental illness. My official diagnosis is “rapid cycling bipolar disorder type 2 with OCD and anxiety.” I can trace the anxiety back to my childhood. My father was emotionally and verbally abusive and physically violent during my childhood and teen [...]
July 2011 I arrived at the ER in pain like a rabid badger in my guts. Hunched over, shuffling, I had a little paint bucket in my hands because I wretched continuously. I sat in the chair across from the receptionist, my bucket between my feet, and passed her my insurance card. She said, “I’ll [...]
I am an only child. My parents had no intention of ever changing that, and yet, I have heard my mom say, you need to have 3 kids, one to replace you and your hubby and one to populate the earth, my whole life. Why would I hear that from a woman set on having [...]
Shattering the Stigma By Amy White When you find yourself in the midst of a mental health crisis, whether your own or of someone you love, you can feel as though you are about as far from paradise as you’ve ever been. That is how I felt after I found myself in the middle of [...]
Once upon a time in a land that doesn’t exist, a girl crawled into a police station and says four words that only the bravest of the brave could ever say: “I was just raped.” The girl looks like she’s been roughed up: eyes swollen and filled with tears, her clothes dirty and disorganized and [...]
I had a dream. My dream was to get married to the love of my life and have a family. I lived the good life in my 20′s. I worked in the music industry, hung out with rock stars and just had fun. When I reached 30, I knew it was time to say goodbye [...]
My name is Tina I have been living with depression all my life, or at least for as long as I can remember. My story goes back to childhood when I lived a life that no child should ever live. I was exposed to drugs and sex at a young age and I was determined [...]
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder By Jack A. I have always been meticulous by nature. Not in a Felix-Unger-neat-freak kind of way, but in a stickler-always-by-the-rules kind of way. I remember one incident, when I was in sixth grade; I was utterly exhausted. I was struggling to stay awake at the kitchen table so that I could [...]
Let’s talk about Being Brave. Not with a sword, but with our voices. Maybe we use a pen. Maybe we click, clack away on a keyboard, looking up only every now and then at the words born onto the white screen before us. Maybe we are Brave with our voices or a maybe it’s with [...]