Last week I debuted the first blog “Mental Illness in the News” round-up. Thank you all for your great feedback; many of the blog readers were very excited about last week’s list! Since it was so well received, I decided to do it again! So this week, we again looked for news and other articles that showed the […]
Mental Illness in the News
As a caregiver and mental health advocate, I keep my eyes and ears open for news and discussions related to mental illness and stigma. There seems to be an influx of news stories recently, and the good news is that these stories are not being circulated on the heels of a tragic event or situation […]
Ghosts of Christmas Past
Christmas time, as the song goes, is a time of joy and cheer. For me, it serves as a reminder of a specific Christmas season four years ago; the year that everything changed. It was a major fork in the road for me, and as Yogi Berra says, “When you come to the fork in the road, take it” and take it I did.
Caution: Caregiver Pitfalls
As I started down the long road of my son’s health crisis, I couldn’t believe the number of times I tripped and fell into something that I had no idea I needed to watch out for. I was, as many would be, fully immersed in the experience; focusing on what my son needed to keep […]
Guest Post: The Concept Of Self Value
So thrilled to feature our first guest post here on the blog; the subject is Self Value and finding your worth as you look through the sometimes dark and cloudy lens of depression.
Peer Pressure
***My hope is that this post will help parents and caregivers better understand the role that peer pressure can play in an adolescent’s mental health crisis, especially where cutting is involved*** One of the most startling experiences during my son’s mental health crisis was the realization that within his adolescent peer group, mental illness […]
Speaking Up
The following post was originally published on the Childhood Bipolar Project site on June 28, 2014. As you read, think about this… how often do we ignore that voice inside us that says something is not right, this doesn’t feel right to me or this doesn’t honor my needs? And why do we ignore? Food […]
Yoga, Hip-Hop and Healing
Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend a yoga conference in the mountains of Vermont. Perhaps, upon reading this, your mind went right to a visual of hippie flower children running around the mountainside Namaste-ing each other. And you know what? You’d be right on! Oh, but it was so much more […]
Unexpected Memories
On a recent morning, I was driving to an early meeting when I hit quite a bit of traffic. Living where I do, we can be anywhere from the suburbs to the city within 20 minutes; during normal “rush hour” it might take 27 minutes. But on this morning, traffic was stopped. I flipped on […]
Shattering the Stigma
Today, Far From Paradise’s latest post is being featured over at OldSchoolNewSchoolMom.com as part of their Stigma Fighters series – You can read it in full here. ****Head on over and show some love! Stigma Fighters is a blog series where real people with mental health issues are sharing their stories in order to combat societal stigma. Human beings […]