Maybe I don’t have to know all the answers. I can stop searching my pain on the internet to find someone to hold hands with it. I can stop trying to solve it, and just let my heart burn as it wants to burn. Maybe I will fail my children…

My daughter wrote this song about me. If you’ve been following me at all, you’ll know that she is chronically ill — in fact very ill — and that she is seeking medically assisted suicide. The song is about how she has to claw and scratch for my presence when…

Sometimes, I think love is like this picture — an idea you hang on to for dear life. It’s a rough resemblance of prettier, more well-imagined things, but somehow manages to keep us afloat. Sometimes it seems a desperate sketch, etched against the dirty backdrop of a life filled with…

Dignity is difficult. To truly honor someone’s dignity, you have to strip away your own opinions and perceptions and approach them from a place of empathy — not compassion — but empathy. The kind that is born of true curiosity and a desire to know and understand. I think this…

If you have read any of my other blogs, you’ll know that I have a daughter who has become increasingly more ill over the last 3 years. She has a condition called ME/CFS and she is severe. One of the first things I did after realizing that her condition was…

As in turn your back and walk away. As in a break-up. As in divorce. As in, “bye, Felicia.” I’ve been thinking about it today. Why it’s hard. Why, sometimes, it feels too easy. And why I feel guilty about it. Leaving is a perfectly appropriate thing to do. It’s…

Stories are wild things. Untamed, and only a part of something so much bigger — something that is always in flux, writhing around what we perceive, only giving us small insights into the bigger, grander, unknown. Our own stories are the same — glimpses into the greater narrative of our…

Let me start with this: I know it is important. I am just frustrated because I don’t know how it’s possible. Self-care has become one of those terms we throw around in an effort to be aware. Don’t stay home from work because we can’t give you sick leave. Please…

The Stigma of Mental Illness I want to talk about the stigma of mental illness. It is something that has affected my life dramatically, and something that I still find myself trying to navigate. In some ways, mental illness reminds me of addiction. There are functioning addicts — like my…