Stigma Fighters: Once Upon a Time I Was Raped
Once upon a time in a land that doesn't exist, a girl crawled into a police station and says four words that only the bravest of the brave could ever say: “I was just raped.” The girl looks like she's been roughed up: eyes swollen and filled with tears, her clothes dirty and disorganized and her hair a tangled mess. Her fingers are bloody and her knuckles are white as she clings to the front desk. Perhaps fearing that the girl is just a breath away from passing put, an officer emerges from behind the desk. He places one hand upon her shoulder. She is reassured. She feels safe. She finally lets out a shaky breath of relief as her chin quivers and fresh tears threaten. The officer leads her to an interview room and hands her a glass of water. Moments later, the girl relays her tragic story, sparing no detail. The officer is calming and compassionate; he leaves the girl in the care of her doting family, determined to find justice for her. The officer and the other investigators are quick to gather evidence and nab the perpetrator. Soon after, the girl stands up in court, points to [...]
Stigma Fighters: Lindsay G.
I had a dream. My dream was to get married to the love of my life and have a family. I lived the good life in my 20′s. I worked in the music industry, hung out with rock stars and just had fun. When I reached 30, I knew it was time to say goodbye to the single days and get married. So, I met my husband, three months later we were engaged and ten months later we were married. Five months after we said “I do,” we found out I was pregnant. Two of my biggest dreams were coming true in one year! How lucky I felt. I had a long and exhausting pregnancy. I didn’t exercise. I didn’t eat well. I lived off of Jerry’s Deli chocolate chip cookies and pasta. I was sick a lot. I would fall asleep as soon as I sat down. I’d wake up hours later and not know what happened to the day or if I remembered to eat or drink. The days became a blur. The one thing I always remembered though was “OMG I HAVENT FELT THE BABY MOVE IN AN HOUR. I HAVE TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL.” I [...]
Stigma Fighters: Tina B.
My name is Tina I have been living with depression all my life, or at least for as long as I can remember. My story goes back to childhood when I lived a life that no child should ever live. I was exposed to drugs and sex at a young age and I was determined to get out of my personal hell called life. Flash forward a few years where things should have gotten better but they just got worse. I was forced into relationships I should not have been in and I was forced to do things I did not want to do. I have thought about and attempted suicide multiple times. I went in and out of psychiatric wards from the age of 19. I have functional depression. I was able to live; work and even do well in school. I seemed happy to all my friends. Most of my friends considered me the clown. I had my first child at 22 years old to a man I did not love. When my son was 7 months old I left and lived as a single mother. For years I put myself on the back burner and concentrated on [...]
Why I Write
I write because I don't know how to exist without writing. I was recently told I had to be careful about what I share online. This made me more anxious than I already am. Writing is a form of therapy to me. Sometimes, I'll get a nagging feeling in my chest. It rises to my throat and tugs on my adam's apple. I need to say something. Only, I don't need to say it, I need to write it. If I say it, only one person will hear it. If I write my nagging thought or feeling, it has the capability to reach an audience. It has the potential to impact change. Maybe someone has thought the same thing I've thought. Perhaps this person has been through a similar experience and they can relate. Writing is storytelling. Human beings share their stories in order to feel connected to one another. Sharing stories helps us to feel like part of a community rather than one distinct individual. I write to express feelings. I write to connect with other people. I write to express my humanity.
Stigma Fighters: Jack A.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder By Jack A. I have always been meticulous by nature. Not in a Felix-Unger-neat-freak kind of way, but in a stickler-always-by-the-rules kind of way. I remember one incident, when I was in sixth grade; I was utterly exhausted. I was struggling to stay awake at the kitchen table so that I could do my math homework. My mother encouraged me to go to bed, offering to write my teacher a letter of explanation. I wouldn’t have it because my sixth-grade math homework simply HAD to be done. Inflexible, sure, but that inflexibility got me a straight-A average from grade school through grad school. Some time in my twenties, however, things started to get out of hand. I was married with two very young children (my youngest had not yet been born), working as director of admissions for a small Liberal Arts college in New York, and I developed a compulsive checking habit. The main sources of my checking were: (1) Is the door locked? (2) Is the coffee pot turned off? and (3) Is my car where I left it? You would not believe how disruptive this can get. I would leave my house through the front [...]
Stigma Fighters: Pauline C.
Let’s talk about Being Brave. Not with a sword, but with our voices. Maybe we use a pen. Maybe we click, clack away on a keyboard, looking up only every now and then at the words born onto the white screen before us. Maybe we are Brave with our voices or a maybe it’s with a paintbrush. We are Brave when we share our truth with others. We are Braver Still when we know we are not alone. Jennifer Killi Marshall calls it Finding Our Brave. I call it Writing Without a Filter. Whatever you call it, the premise is the same, whether we write about our personal struggles with bipolar or eating disorders or sexuality, we are brave when we share that which others can connect with and know they are not alone. What’s my Brave? I’ll be honest. I’m only halfway home when it comes to fully embracing it. But that’s the beauty of Being Brave. For each of us, Bravery means different things and we are each defining the term for ourselves every time we sit down to share a new Something Personal about ourselves. Me? I’m a life-long recovering bulimic with compulsive eating tendencies. I’m ADHD [...]
Stigma Fighters: Tanya P.
I Had to Be Blind-sighted for my Eyes to Open I was blind-sighted by things I couldn’t see. The one I noticed first was physical and obvious and in my face. It was so much in my face that it forced my eyes open so that I could finally see the second thing. The first was a car accident. The second was mental illness. It was a cool but sunny April day in 2004. Kids in the back seat of my minivan, I was headed home late that afternoon. The speed limit was a mere 25 miles per hour, the roads straight and flat. To me, the intersection looked clear as I proceeded through it. It wasn’t clear. Without warning, I was struck. One second there was control and chattering. The next there was spinning and rolling, crunching and shattering. There was everything. And then there was nothing. And then I registered emergency vehicles on the scene. Tending and transporting were next. Hours, days, months, years of struggle and recovery followed. Trying to live with a traumatic brain injury was a frustrating challenge made more so by the fact that I could talk and walk and care for myself and [...]
Stigma Fighters: Cordula M.
Amazingly, I have gone through life undiagnosed with any mental illness, but if one were to know me, they’d know that this doesn't necessarily mean much at all. As a young teen, I struggled with food issues that turned into anorexia and bulimia that lasted until my 20s. I was also a cutter and had difficulty dealing with my moods and emotions. It wasn't so much a secret, but I didn't talk about it too openly either; I was still trying to get away with it. As I grew and matured and started to think about having a family, I knew I didn't want to continue those behaviors. However, without a suitable outlet or caring professionals to talk to, I found myself increasingly picking at my face. We've all done it, a few pimples or blackheads here and there. In a few years, my face went from mostly clear as a teen to a shredded, angry and infected mess. I don’t know when the turning point was, since I always liked to pick at my face, but somehow being able to stop myself has become almost impossible. It goes something like this: I see either one or two ‘pimples’ (possibly [...]
Stigma Fighters: Rose W.
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 of child abuse which started suddenly when I was four years old and my parent's marriage started disintegrating. Some of the abuse was physical but the worst was the emotional abuse All of this heaped on me by my own mother. I did my best to hide the cuts and bruises, but it was much more difficult to hide the emotional effects that the abuse had on me. It has often been suspected by a number of psychologists that I've seen that I may have a mild form of Aspergers Syndrome as I exhibit many of the characteristics, but they were unable to fully distinguish autistic traits from behaviours could be associated from having survived such an emotional trauma. • Until my early twenties I was unable to make eye contact with people without intense discomfort – even now, while I am generally comfortable it [...]
Stigma Fighters: Eva O.
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 mishaps is a completely deluded and uneducated assumption. I’ve lived with Bipolar Disorder since I was born. My mother suffers with bipolar two. In her case she’s let it become her identity. She blames being abusive, a terrible friend, a nasty wife, even her alcoholism on Bipolar. I believe it is the catch cry of someone who is weak. People who don’t take accountability for their own actions are those who lack strength. I was diagnosed with bipolar one disorder three years ago, soon after I turned 26. In a perfect world I should have, would have been diagnosed in my late teens. I spent my entire 20s in a world which flew by me in a blur of spending sprees, screaming matches, suicide attempts, sex and partying like it was 1999, finishing every day with a bong in my hand. I had no idea [...]
Stigma Fighters: Jen G.
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 postpartum depression and postpartum anxiety. I had no idea that I had three of the risk factors associated with postpartum mood disorders: previous history of an anxiety disorder, C-section births and gestational diabetes. I began my blog to smash the stigma of postpartum mood disorders. I wanted to help the other moms like me who were struggling. I found so much community, love and support within the Warrior Mom community that I wanted to pay that support forward. Stigma still surrounds one of the symptoms of postpartum depression: rage. No one likes to talk about postpartum rage. It is so common in women suffering with postpartum mood disorders. I had no idea that the extreme hulk smash rage was a symptom of depression. I yelled and screamed like a banshee. After these outbursts I would break into tears, horrified at all the vitriol that had [...]
Stigma Fighters: Overeaters
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 years and years. So many years, that now at 36, I can't really pin point when it started, how it started, or much about it. As far as I can tell, some point during adolescence, my other mind was born. At first I gained a lot of weight. I was a fat girl for quite a long time. Not because of the overeating in and of itself, I was just really lazy and ate poorly. Eventually I learned to eat better and I found a love for exercise. Exercise really changed my life. I lost a lot of weight and the mood boosters kept the anxiety, depression and general helplessness at bay. So much so, that many times in my life I have thought that THAT was behind me. That I had some how beat my other mind. The one that gets so overwhelmed. It [...]
Feet Frozen Solid
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 rather it is inside myself. The monster inside my chest makes me shake involuntarily. My whole body shakes in fear. I want to run. My feet want to run but they cannot. I am frozen solid. I shake with fear. I look at my hands. Liquid appears out of my palm and it freezes. Ice develops around my finger tips and spreads to embrace my hands. They are completely frozen. My hands are engulfed in blocks of ice. Ice spreads from my hands to my arms and to my torso. My rib cage is encased in ice. My entire body is fixed in one place. I am standing on a gravel filled dirt road staring straight forward into the sunset. The sun is setting and I cannot do anything but watch it. The darkness is upon me. I can do nothing but embrace it. I [...]
Stigma Fighters: Amelia O.
“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 be etched in the fabric of my mind. This was my first perception of myself. I don’t think the family members who did this meant anything by it. They weren’t being cruel on purpose. They were only teasing me in what they thought was all fun and games. Little did they know, those words became etched into my being. I was far from being obese. I carried baby weight as most 12 year olds do. I was a small town girl with big dreams and I desperately wanted to fit in somewhere. I wanted to be apart of something. I tried out for the cheerleading squad and failed to make the team several times. I needed this sense of belonging somewhere but I just didn’t know where I’d find it. I had gone thru a great deal personally and those events would continue to haunt [...]
Stigma Fighters: Kathy B.
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 began his manic journey through the small college town of Grinnell, Iowa. Before then, manic depression was not part of my vocabulary. I never imaged that it would strike my son. Max was picked up by the police that day, transported to the hospital, and diagnosed with Bipolar I. We took him home. I roasted chicken and mashed potatoes, dished up strawberry ice cream, warmed milk, hoping to bring my son back to himself. But just a few months later the other half of manic depression hit him hard. Writes Max, “Quick was the rant and rattle of suicidal ideation to snuff out completely any lingering hope for a normal life. The question of how and where I could end the agony soon turned into a habit of minute-by-minute thinking, like the compulsion to open and close a door.” Something had to be done. More [...]