A Bicycle Saved My Life…. By Gene Bowen – Founder of Road Recovery I still relish memories of my first bike, a 1972 yellow Sting Ray Schwinn with a banana seat, and as a 8 year old kid, I certainly relished the independence it gave me. Long before I learned to drive, riding meant freedom [...]
I was 31 when I was first diagnosed with mental illness. I never ever expected it to happen to me (does anybody?) and it certainly wasn’t a label that I wanted. I had known that something was seriously wrong. Happiness, even for a moment, was becoming harder and harder to come by until it vanished [...]
On the day after Halloween in 2015, I found myself in a vacant lot alone and terrified after a nearly successful suicide attempt. Left sad, confused, angry and just plain exhausted from years of denying that I had a problem, that was the day that ultimately ended up saving my life. For years, I kept [...]
When I was three years old, my parents divorced. My mother, suffering from bipolar disorder and not knowing how she could raise a child on her own, attempted suicide. I have vivid memories of her return from the hospital: she was so sedated that she could not pick me up. With the dissolution of my [...]
I grew up in the ballet world, so it's impossible for me to remember a time when I wasn't highly conscious of my body size. As a recovered anorexic, many people assume that ballet must be the sole cause of my years-long battle with an eating disorder — but it's far from that simple. I [...]
Stoicism Ever heard or seen the phrase “Keep Calm Carry On”? Of course you have. You’re a human doesn’t live under a rock. At least I hope you don’t. Anyway, that phrase is a Stoic idea coming from the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. Believe it or not Stoicism is all over the place. It’s in [...]
I've never been one to embrace limits, but in the past few years I've learned that doing so is a matter of maintaining emotional stability. Recently, I was asked to accompany my best friend to his sister's. I hesitated because I'd been subjected to three incidents of hair-pulling in a 48-hour period by his teen-aged [...]
Support System I struggled from the time I was fourteen to the time I was twenty-two, with something I could not name. Doctors called it a lot of things from depression to allergies, and none of the diagnoses were correct. I felt that I was fighting an invisible demon, who refused to let me go. [...]
OCD Blogging OCD to the general public seems to be conveyed as simply washing your hands too many times, or organizing objects certain ways when they bother you. People on social media are always putting pictures up saying “this triggers my OCD”, or “I’m so OCD” not necessarily knowing what OCD is for people dealing [...]
More than anything, I want to help other people around me. Ever since I was young, I always helped others before helping myself. I was under the impression from a young age that if you gave yourself self-love, or self-care that you were selfish. This is unfortunately the conditioning that we receive at a very [...]
