Proudly serving unpolished working motherhood, with bipolar depression & hilarity on the side
The moment I walked through the junior high doors, the baddies would pounce on me like a pack of jackals. “Buy some weed, kid!” they would sneer, shoving me back and forth like a hairbow-wearing sack of potatoes. If things got really bad, maybe they’d try to hold me down and force something….up my nose? […]
“Do you ever think about taking your own life?” asked the psychiatrist with a face like a board. I stared into his clinical eyes. “No.” It was a lie. After hauling myself up four flights of stairs to my dorm room, I’d tilt my head over the railing, imagining what it would be like to […]
When you go public about something that’s not usually public, people open up to you in a a different way. After I published the blogs in Depression: The Mini-Series about the gritty details of my depression, my swing into mania and recovery, a small wave of people reached out to me. I’d been in a […]
The hole was right there, in the spot where any sudden move would trigger a glimpse of deepest inner thigh or maybe a crotch flash of undies du jour. Even a lady of low fashion standards like me couldn’t bring myself to wear them, so I stashed the accidentally x-rated jeans in a bottom drawer […]
Babies have the best propaganda machine in the world. Look at this: Who could resist this stuff? Who could resist THIS? Meet Willow! She is the darling baby of my wonderful friends. Also, she’s a star recruit on the baby propaganda squad. Every time I see this kid, she’s either sleeping angelically or making feather-soft […]
The day was dazzling and I tried to rise halfway to meet it. Children’s laughter floated up into the air over the sparkling pool water as I drifted by on my daughter’s unicorn float. And right there, in the middle of Summer at the Pool: The Movie, the horrible little thought invaded like a demon […]
After I left the psychiatric hospital, I went to mental health grad school. Every weekday morning I’d leave my newborn with my husband or a sitter, head across town and spend the morning in classes and groups with my fellow recoverees. We’d start the morning with an optional spirituality/mindfulness type thing, which I liked the […]
Five years. It took five years of convincing, cajoling and damn near pleading for me to swallow a pill. I am not a Jehovah’s Witness. I am not a cat (or a guinea pig, despite the profile picture). But this was an SSRI, a pill to treat my depression, and I grew up with a […]
“It sounds like you’re saying you want to talk to one of those people,” my mom said slowly, across my teenage bedroom. I sat unevenly on the twin bed, eyeing the pictures of me and my friends taped around the dresser mirror and my CDs stacked up in uneven towers everywhere. I had corralled her […]