I was nominated for BlogHer Voices of The Year for two categories: humor (3-Year-Olds Are Assholes) and Op-Ed (Fighting Against The Stigma of Mental Illness) I am so grateful that I was nominated. I didn’t win.

Two of my favorite people on the Internet did win, however. Lea Grover and Jenni Chiu. Congratulations ladies, you deserve it and more.

It’s been a hell of a year for me on a personal level. Becoming a single mother suddenly has been rough for myself and my children. I was hoping to end the year with a bang. I was hoping to win Voices of The Year. If I won for anything, I wanted to win for my mental illness piece.

I would have been psyched if I won for humor, but to me it’s more important to fight for a cause I believe in. My cause is a stigma fighter. I wanted to win for Fighting Against The Stigma of Mental Illness so that I could stand up in front of a group of people that I respect and say that mentally ill people are also intelligent functional members of society and we deserve a voice.

I am grateful to have had the support of a large platform such as the Huffington Post. I am happy that they published my journey, but that is just the beginning. I will not stop until stigma is extinguished from our society. I don’t know if that’s possible, but my goal is to provide people living with mental illness a voice. Living with bipolar, panic disorder, clinical depression and other mental illnesses is not a sign of weakness, but rather a sign of incredible strength. We are all warriors fighting a seemingly invisible war.

If I had been selected for Voices of The Year, I would have communicated this message.

I’m happy for the winners of VOTY. I respect all of their work. I just wish that I was up there for fight for what I believe in.

Nevertheless, I will continue to tell my story and the stories of others like me who  deserve to be heard.