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On the evening of Monday, January 9, I made a note on the next day’s to-do list: find a therapist so you can stop crying yourself to sleep every damn night. A few days later, I sat in front of my new...
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The Big Reveal
Groucho Marx couldn't even make this look good, and I'm not as funny as him by half. Remember when I told you I was getting new eyebrows? And then, if you follow me on Facebook*, you know that some...
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In the Forests of the Night
I am tired. Tired in the extreme. Tired enough to be a little concerned about driving. Not half as tired as Carter, though. Spring is flat lousy for some people with bipolar. No one really knows why;...
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One Final Roadtrip
Margery Mae Harrold, my grandma, was born on July 23, 1922. She was Freda and Roy Harrold’s first child. Freda and Roy had two more children in the early years of their marriage: Norma Lee and...
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The Success of Love
The success of love is in the loving. —Mother Teresa A few days ago I read the first post I ever wrote about my two eldest children, Jacob and Abbie, and how they came to live full-time with their dad....
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Too Vast a Project
It was my ability to cast my mind out—out to the experiences of others and out in time—that made me. My childhood imagination was vivid but it was never populated by monsters and fairies or dreams of...
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Our Very Flesh
That hate. Does it hold your hand, comfort you, dry your tears? Will it make love with you in the warm dark of a July night when all is anguish and you need to feel life truth hope whispered against...
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Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin: Historically
I don’t hate Native Americans; I just think things will work out better for everyone if we move them to their own special areas. I don’t hate people with cognitive disabilities; I just think they...
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Pick Your Poison
It’s 3:11 am and there are some people sleeping in this house, but Carter and I are not among them. I was dozing in and out, trying mightily to find my way into unconsciousness when Carter woke and...
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One Sack of Hammers, Hold the Water
Brian: That guy is as dumb as a sack of wet hammers. Me: How is a sack of wet hammers any stupider than a sack of dry ones? Brian: The wet ones didn’t have the sense to come in out of the rain. Moral...
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Truncated Motherhood
The setting of a great hope is like the setting of the sun. The brightness of our life is gone. —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow I had a therapist about a year and a half ago who gave me a hard time for...
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Ordinary Violence, Ordinary Heroism
Another day, another news story about bullets tearing bodies. Another news story about shocking violence, another moment of stunned silence. Another moment of stunned silence, another round of heated...
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A Little Girl in Danger: This Is America’s Health Care Crisis
My dear friend Kirsten has a little girl called Pickles, and Pickles is very sick. Her diagnoses include schizoaffective disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, oppositional/defiant disorder, and...
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Into the Heart of the Thing
I kind of hate it when bloggers write about blogging because duh, most of my readers aren’t writers at all, so apologies in advance. In November, 2010, I decided to take a short break from blogging and...
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You Are Going to Pay for Our Kids
For all of his struggles, and in spite of the amount of suffering that exists in his day-to-day life, Carter is among the very most fortunate of the seriously mentally ill children in the US. His...
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Value Options and the Denial of Care: Continuing the Conversation About...
On December 20, 2012, I wrote a post called A Little Girl in Danger: This Is America’s Health Care Crisis, in which I told you all about my friend Kirsten and her daughter, Pickles. If you missed that...
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Happy In the Meantime
I was diagnosed with major depressive disorder when I was 18, and even at that early age the diagnosis had been a long time coming. Near as I can remember (and depression + many years have done their...
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The Cosmic Measuring Stick of Love
Since I appeared on The Ricki Lake Show: Inside Childhood Mental Illness last Wednesday I have heard from dozens of parents. Most say some variation of “Thank you for sharing your story. It makes me...
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A Dislocation of Mind
My 17 year old daughter, Abbie, broke her leg the other day; a bad break in her femur. She was in terrible pain, begging me to make it stop, to help her feel better, so I took her to the emergency...
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Graduate
Jacob called me on a Friday morning a few weeks ago and asked, “Hey Mom, can you come pick me up at Job Corps? Like, now?” Job Corps, where Jacob has been living and studying for the past year, is a...
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