From Jane: I apologize for the lapse in time between posts. On March 1st, 2013, my wife’s mother died. It was 18 years to the day of my father’s death in the antipodes, so many miles and years away. In the following week, my wife and I helped her stepfather
As a long-time sufferer with depression, I can unreservedly say that helping care for a loved one in acute depression challenges everything you know and have come to understand and believe about the illness. Above all, I find my thoughts coming back to the same things. Depression is not a boogeyman.
I don’t think I’ve ever written a year’s review post, much less a resolution post, and I’m still not writing one. 2012 was a difficult year. Not the most difficult I’ve ever experienced, but difficult. During 2012, I learned that I still can be stunned and shattered by the events
I wrote a little the other day about my daughter, A-, who was diagnosed this year with bipolar, and is currently battling a severe case of winter depression. This morning she came to me and said, “I wish I was still manic, like I was in the summer.” I asked why
Day 29 – “If I could accomplish one thing (anything) in 2013 it would be…” I’m prone to all kinds of superstitions about a new year. Many’s the time in late December I would make pronouncements to myself about the coming year, often with at least a couple of drinks
Day 23 – What’s something your doctor taught you or you taught your doctor? The, dare I say it, positive experiences I have with medical doctors (MDs) could probably fit on a very small piece of paper, so as I was trolling around my brain on a different topic altogether,
Day 22 – Write about change In a recent post, I talked about invisible illness and the process of subtraction: how illness whittles away at one’s health, work life, family, relationships/connections, and more. However, not all changes related to invisible illness are bad. I’m going to highlight some of the
Day 8 – Write a letter to your health When I think of health, I automatically think of illness: a rather unfortunate side effect of having lost my health at the age of 24. To me, addressing a letter to my depression means personifying it. I’ve read a lot of
Writing prompt – Disclosure post. How did you decide what to share? What do/don’t you share? I’ve been sick for a while now, at least 22 years that I was conscious of, but the depression bit started a couple of years before that. I’ve come out of a few closets in
Day 3 – An unscheduled post – a rest I knew that daily blogging would be a challenge, but alas, not for the reasons I thought it would be. I thought finding words to write would be the challenge. That it wasn’t, surprises me, although it shouldn’t as I’ve