Have you ever had someone say something hurtful to you and it stick with you all day long? It's hard enough dealing with one person saying hurtful things to you, but to deal with yourself is a totally different matter. That's what my depression is. It's the voices of my two worst enemies berating me [...]
WRITE POETRY, HE SAID At age 38, I was dancing and singing at the top of my lungs in my second-storey apartment, while my two young children slept peacefully in their bedrooms. The year was 1984 and I had no idea my brain was rattling and clanging inside as I experienced my first manic-psychotic episode. [...]
Mental Illness is my mother By A. When I was asked to write for Stigma Fighters by Sarah Fader, I was a bit baffled at first. I don’t suffer from mental illness myself. I thought about it though and decided that maybe, just maybe, there were other people like me. Others who were raised in [...]
I'll be honest about it: This is the most difficult thing I've ever had to write. Not because I'm afraid of what others will think of me or my illness, but rather what I think about it. But each time, I've had an episode of depression or mania, I refused to give in. One thing [...]
Bleed By Aleccia Lin Shaffer A timeline of pain is written across the skin I hide from public sight... With pilfered razor blades as a quill and my body as parchment, I wrote out the stories of the hurt I had endured. It was easier to bleed out the shame I felt for who I [...]
My life, since I was eight years old, has been a roller coaster of emotions. I was bullied badly in school, up until I got into the 11th grade, and then I simply changed my persona to be 'a bad ass', but in reality, I was so anxious of people's reactions. I was molested by [...]
Some Dreams Just Don't Come True... We learn at a young age to follow our dreams, that all our dreams will come true... our parents encourage us, our teachers encourage us, our friends encourage us. There are so many inspiring quotes out there about it "never being too late for your dreams to come true." [...]
Delusional... Imagine lying in bed at night... your eyes, although they feel slightly heavy, are wide open. Your brain is unable to put itself into sleep mode. Your building up frustration as this is the 4th... no maybe 5th night you can't fall asleep. Tears are now falling down your cheeks because all you want [...]
Accepting Reality I could never say my childhood was completely unhappy. I was actually very fortunate. Still, there loomed a dark cloud over my youth that would grow stormier throughout different points of my life. My parents divorced when I was in my early teens. Over the course of my youth I lived in absolute [...]
Inside My Head Part II I started taking yoga almost two years ago. At the end of our 90-minute class, we lie in corpse pose, Shavasana, to cool down. We clear our minds and meditate for 10 minutes. As we wrap-up the end of this moment of calm, our yoga instructor will say, "As you [...]
