Invisible #1 © 2013 Jane Waterman
Creativity

Wordless Wednesday #1

I’m taking part in WEGO Health’s Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge Day 3 #HAWMC – Wordless Wednesday #1 – Post a picture that symbolizes your condition and your experiences.

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Depression #1 © 2011 Jane Waterman
Creativity

Art and Depression – When I Can’t Talk About It

There have been many books, articles and even papers in refereed journals written to explore the linkages between creativity and mental illnesses such as depression, bipolar and schizophrenia. I have read convincing arguments for both weak and strong links between creativity and mental illness. I personally believe there is a

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Stained Glass © 2010 Jane Waterman
Creativity

Care Package for People with Sjogren’s and Depression

Day 9 – Community Care Package. Create the perfect care package for your members or fellow patients. Note: A Sjoggie is a person with Sjogren’s syndrome. A care package is all about comforting. Happily, there are a lot of things on this list that will comfort both people with depression

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Quanta #1 © 2012 Jane Waterman
Invisible illness advocacy

30 Things About My Invisible Illness You May Not Know

This is part of my contribution to Invisible Illness Week. What’s that you ask? Click on the graphic at the end of this entry to learn more! 1. The illness I live with is: A wily combination of things, but it appears that Sjogren’s syndrome and fibromyalgia are a very

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Alone In The Universe #2 © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Compassion for my Younger Self #3

Our parents can’t save us, no matter how much we wish they had, or could. When I was 27, I descended into madness. It didn’t begin then. That process began so many years before, perhaps when I was born: the same and yet so different. There were stages to this

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After Munch #8 © 2012 Jane Waterman
Interior life

Silent House

I will try to connect All the pieces you left I will carry it on And let you forget I’ll remember the years When your mind was still clear All the flickering lights Filled up this silent house From Silent House (Finn, Maines, Robison, Maguire) I love the song ‘Silent

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Shame © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

Shame

I come to writing today wrung out, hollowed, disappointed, ashamed. I can forgive myself the days that lapsed since my last entry. I sank into the recesses of a cave, and there I went through the motions of life in the grip of a depression so strange I can not

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Conflagration © 2012 Jane Waterman
Creativity

Compassion for my Younger Self #2

These are not the colours of my sadness and pain. The colours of the emotions I feel for the younger self I wrote about yesterday. Her sorrows are deep purples and blues, stretching into long twilights, the one searching the stars for one that might assuage her loneliness. Her longings

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The Experience of Pain © 2012 Jane Waterman
Living with invisible illness

The Experience of Pain

During a discussion of pain and pain management with a good online friend (you can see his remarkable photography here), my friend Michael made the remark that the efforts of those who cope with chronic pain are heroic. It’s certainly not a typical way to view ourselves. My frequent experience

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Storm On Jupiter © 2012 Jane Waterman
Mental health challenges

Theories of Depression

I’m far away from my first career as a physicist, but not so far that I didn’t learn a few things. In particular, when preoccupied with the search for a theory of everything and being foiled yet again, physicists discover there’s always another level of complexity that they hadn’t considered.

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