My fourth decade is only just around the corner and every day I pinch myself not quite believing that I lasted this long, and that I go about my daily life with most people never suspecting that I'm anything other than a happy popular woman leading a nice “middle-class” existence. You see I'm a survivor [...]
Living with Mental Illness is Brutal; let me be clear. It’s a full-time job on top of every other responsibility there is in one’s life; kids, work, relationships and debt. It’s not for the weak or faint hearted. The misconception people living with a mood disorder can’t cope or don’t have strength to overcome life’s [...]
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 [...]
I feel it in my chest as my feet walk one by one. My heart is pounding in my chest. My breath is shallow. My feet stop. They are frozen in their tracks. I kick at the gravel. I want to move but I am terrified. There is no monster in front of me; but [...]
“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 [...]
Canadian Sarah Carmichael is a ninja. But not the kind that secretly fights crime. She is a Thank You Ninja. Her mission: to secretly thank the world one postcard at a time. More than a decade ago, Sarah sent a postcard thanking someone anonymously for a good deed they'd done. After she sent that note, something [...]