Category: Name It
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TimeHop, 20/20 Hindsight, and Dyslexia
I try to not live with regret. But when it comes to my kids, there are definitely things I wish we’d done better, or sooner, or different. Hindsight is 20/20 and thanks to social media, I am often reminded that sometimes there are warning signs we don’t always recognize as warning signs in real-time. This…
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Make a Wish – Part 2
In the first part of this post, I talked about World Mental Health Day and how the significance of that date was different for me this year, as my son was about to turn 13. That was yesterday. Now we’re at today, and suddenly I have a teenager living in my house – a teenager…
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Make a Wish – Part 1
October 10th. World Mental Health Day. Also the day before my son turns 13. When he wakes up tomorrow he will have made another trip around the sun while living with anxiety and depression, and will morph from being a child battling mental illness to being a teenager battling mental illness. The fact that the focus…
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Sticks and Stones…Words Matter
Intentionally choosing words that are derogatory, inflammatory, stigmatizing….that is not sticks and stones. It is trees and boulders crashing down in a landslide and destroying everything in their path.
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Reality Check: Mental Health, Violence and False Perceptions
In a world that is increasingly polarized by media outlets that are increasingly polarizing, it is a challenge to get non-biased, fact based instead of opinion based, reporting. On any given day, I listen to and read the news from a wide variety of media outlets – all in an attempt to piece together the…
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Valentine’s Day – Real. Raw. Broken. Beautiful.
So Valentine’s Day. Commercial holiday? Totally. But do I still love any excuse to shower some love on my kids and husband? Totally. Sometimes showering love in real life, doesn’t always look like it does in my head. Today was one of those days. Today showering love looked like me holding my son as he…
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October 10th…World Mental Health Day…Also My Son’s Birthday Eve
On this day in 2005, I was 37 weeks pregnant. It was one of those 90+ degree October days we sometimes get in Southern California, and when I entered the doctor’s office for a routine weekly checkup I can remember the receptionist asking me if I had walked up the stairs because I was apparently…
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Guest Post – A Little Broken, by Owen
I am excited and proud to share this guest post written by my son. He used a writing assignment for his 6th grade English Language Arts class as an opportunity to be brave and share a piece of himself with his teacher and class. And he has agreed to let me share his words with…
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Precision of Language
99% of the time, the words you read here have been cycling through my head for days or weeks before they find their way through my fingers and onto the screen. Part of the reason for that is a time factor – I may have an idea I want to write about, but not have…
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Maintenance Dose
377 days. That’s the total number of days between the date my son was first prescribed psychiatric medication and today. In those days the type of medication has changed 3 times and the dosages have been adjusted 7 times. And today, on day 377, the psychiatrist sat across the desk from us and told us…
We're All A Little Broken 