Blog
This Christmas and Valentines turned out to be very special to me this year. My son came home to spend Christmas with us before he began his very first semester at the University of Arizona. He had bought us all gifts, without any prompting from me, with his own money.
Lately I have been thinking a lot about the idea of what it means to feel safe and protected. This is an area that I have always been curious about since I was a child. As a child I never wanted to be alone.
When I decided in November of 2022 that I would not be contemplating resolutions for the New Year, I found some curiosity about resolution.
The human being is a miraculous creature…in the truest sense of that word. I believe that we are each a gift from God, that God is written into our hearts, […]
“…not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is (human*) connection.” That is how Johann Hari ended his TED Talk on “Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong.”
Drugs make him numb out
They prevent him from feeling
I’m scared for my son
I was meditating in the bath the other night, with my favorite binaural beats pulsating through my water-resistant headphones the other night (Have you discovered binaural beats yet? Magical!). I […]
An online search of “mental health during the holidays” brings up a barrage of articles from sources including the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Mayo Clinic, and Harvard Medical School, […]
The term “stigma” has a long and complicated history, and countless definitions to describe it. Researchers across time have broken down stigma into differing types, including internal and external (or […]
Without knowing it, I had a definite agenda for my son’s life. I had a story in my head of how his life would unfold. I envisioned him living a fairytale […]
In 2014, two bombs were thrown into our family: Addiction and Mental Illness. It was like the chicken and the egg. Which one came first?
While everyone initially resisted our family’s transformation (including myself), I think we can all now agree that we are stronger and more connected than ever.
My admiration of walking in the woods, as serpentine as it might be, did not translate to my expectation of a recovery path. Nope. Not one bit.
Gratitude is a gift I give myself. Even in the darkest of times, it is waiting there for me to open it and explore what’s right in front of me so that I can appreciate life’s beauty.
I am not always okay and that is hard to say out loud. For years, I disassociated from my life due to trauma. This came in many forms and at often inconvenient times. I didn’t even know how to be present when my life was going well. I found a way to numb my feelings, any feelings, by not seeing it or acknowledging it.
After about a year of battling depression, anxiety, an eating disorder, substance abuse, cutting, and suicidal ideation my 15-year-old daughter started telling me that I had changed. She said I wasn’t the same mother I used to be.
When our kids struggle with mental health, they can behave in some appalling and unattractive ways. One of those ways is being manipulative. It’s infuriating when someone we love more than life itself deliberately betrays us to get what they want.
Peer support has a long history, both formally and informally. As applied to mental health support, “peer support” generally refers to the process by which individuals with lived experience of […]
What to expect when you’re suspecting that your child is using? You can’t control your kid’s behavior but you can communicate from a place of love and empathy.
When I first discovered my son Jon’s substance usage, it was as if the earth below me had fallen away. I was weak on my feet, blurred in my mind and hurting in my heart.