I consider myself a well-educated woman, but postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety blindsided me. I am a planner by nature. If I had known that I was at risk, I would have prepared myself, my husband, and my family. As a lover of words, I devoured everything that I could get my hands on regarding [...]
Having an eating disorder is often like living a double life. One in which I am a functioning member of society, viewed as perfectly normal and completely sane. The other is the secret world in my head, that I can’t escape, that is anything but sane. I am an over eater. I have been for [...]
“Fatty Fatty Two by Four….Can’t Get Thru the Bathroom Door”…I was 12 when I first heard those words from a family member. The way we perceive beauty and our own image starts with our own family. Right? The torment I experienced of being called “fatty” by family members and even being “oinked” at will forever [...]
The Contract of Your Birth “It was just before sunrise at the electric blue hour I had come to appreciate in the week since I had given up sleeping,” writes Max in the opening chapter of Walks on the Margins: A Story of Bipolar Illness. Max was twenty and a junior in college when he [...]
My first suicidal plan occurred in college when I was a freshman. I’d had a break up, self-medicated with alcohol for 1 ½ semesters, done poorly in my classes, and felt like a complete failure. I wanted to jump out the window of my dorm room. At least by ending my life, my roommate would [...]
The first memory I have of that knot of anxiety in my stomach was in bed on a school night at about nine years old. I lay awake wondering why I felt so scared but I couldn’t be sure, was it because we had sports tomorrow? Was it because I had homework due in? But [...]
I am going to start my story with a confession. I really, really don’t like the word ‘stigma’, I don’t even like to use it as ‘ignorance’ fits much better. I’ll never attack anyone for using the s-word because we all tend to be ignorant to things until we experience them ourselves. I was ignorant [...]
I looked out my room’s window, taking in the winter scene that filled my soul, since I love the snowy season. I saw the all-too familiar streets I had grown up in, the tattoo shop where I got my first permanent ink, and the skyscrapers that made my heart feel warm. I was in the [...]
Growing up I was a miserable kid. I didn’t think anyone liked me and it made me feel like I lived in a bubble, not able to fit in. I felt isolated. Alone. That bubble is still with me today. Fortunately I don’t live in it anymore, but it still engulfs me now and then. [...]
My entire life I have been living with mental illness. For most of my life I wasn’t aware. I just thought what I was feeling was “normal” day to day life for everyone. I had a great home life. My parents divorced when I was quite young, however, both met new partners. I had two [...]