As many of you know, I attended the BlogHer conference in San Jose, CA just over a week ago and while many attendees posted their recaps right after the conference, I felt like I needed time to reflect on the pros and cons before sharing my personal experience. I honestly don’t plan to do a […]
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 […]
Fighting Stigma
Last week, I had the honor and privilege to share an original essay on shattering stigma as part of the Stigma Fighters series on oldschoolnewschoolmom.com. Sarah Fader created Stigma Fighters as a safe place for people to share their stories about living with mental illness. Sarah not only has created this non-judgmental space for others […]
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 […]
How Big is your Brave?
I am participating in Diane DeBella’s #iamsubject project http://www.iamsubject.com/the-iamsubject-project/. Here is my #iamsubject story. “I want to see your brave, show me how big your brave is” – Sara Bareilles At certain points in life we are all presented with opportunities to be brave. There are many ways to be brave but none tougher, […]
A Letter to my Sons on Mother’s Day
Dear Sons, You may not know this but I didn’t become a mother on the day you were born. I became a mother the moment I found out that I was pregnant with you. From that very moment, I loved you. I didn’t even need time to fall in love with you because the […]
Healing is NOT a Competitive Sport
First, I want to say thank you so much to all of the readers who have commented on the Blog, Twitter and Facebook since my last post. I’m blown away by the response. I’m grateful and thankful for such a supportive and accepting reception for my big secret. (If you have not read it yet, […]
