Hope Is Real!

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them, I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. They will be my people, and I will be their God. Ezekiel 11:19-20 Ezekiel has a vision and this is part of what Godde says to him about the Israelites. I relate to these verses a lot, but more in a recovery way. I don't have "a heart of stone" and never did, but there have been times when my commitment to recovery has not been full-on. Ever since I told my doctor almost a year ago that I would agree to go back on Zyprexa, even though I might gain weight on it, I feel like a new spirit has been put in me. And then I took the dialectical behavioral therapy class and what had once been a heart of chaos and drama turned into a heart of wisdom and mindfulness. Now that I know just how precious my recovery is, I will do my best to keep it. That means taking my med

I had an awesome moment the other day and it involved being sad!  I was with some friends and something one of my friends said triggered me and I became sad.  Everyone else was talking about happy, positive things and I had to tell them that I was feeling sad at the moment and that I wasn't going to participate for a little while.  I sat back and listened to everyone else talk for a while and after approximately five minutes I felt much better.  It may not sound like much, but I realized when I got in my car to go home, that I had done something that I would not have been able to do half a year ago.  Before getting experience in dialectical behavior therapy, I would have tried to avoid feeling the emotion, with the result that I would either be wildly attention seeking and dramatic or I would have pretended that I wasn't feeling sad and so would feel worse later.  Knowing me, I probably would have at first tried to be happy, wouldn't be able to do it, start crying and then

Another picture from my Color Me Calm coloring book:   I love baths.  So, this picture is about self-soothing yourself in a way that does not involve calories.  I'm not too wild about that sentiment, because it makes it seem as if calories are something we should avoid when calories are really energy that we need, which is why I crossed out the word, "no-calorie."  I think it is totally fine to sometimes treat yourself to a foodie treat in order to soothe or calm yourself.  I usually have a coffee and cookie from Starbucks after my weekly therapy appointment, myself.  People like to reference eating certain foods or not eating at all as being a "guilt-free" activity, but I think all activities that we purposely do to soothe ourselves should be considered guilt-free.  Learning how to safely soothe ourselves is a worthwhile endeavor and can be very hard to do at first.  Moving from self-destructive behaviors to healthy ones may take a while, especially if one is

In the past, I have always hated Thanksgiving.  With all the emphasis on cooking and eating rich foods, I was always overcome with anxiety and food fears-gratitude was nowhere to be found.  But this time was different for several reasons.  One, my mom and I decided to have a healthier menu than usual.  I actually do not usually enjoy really rich foods, because I do not like the way they make my body feel, so I was excited to be cooking lighter fare.  The food still tasted great-in fact, I thought some of the foods, like the little, golden potatoes tasted better than the traditional fare-after so many years of having rich mashed potatoes, it's nice to have a change.  Two, my brother is home.  He lives on the other side of the country, so I don't get to see him that often, but I love spending time with him.  And three, I made a conscious decision to focus on being grateful this year, instead of focusing on the food.  Sure, I cooked a lot-I made pumpkin muffins, cranberry sauce, s

My most popular quote on my tumblr blog is this, from the blog, This Aint Livin' : And why is disability never included in discussions of natural beauty, when disability is natural?   The quote has gotten a lot of reblogs and a couple of additional comments, including one where the person mentioned that she thought it is hard for an able-bodied person to find a disabled body as beautiful and to not be fetishizing if one does.  This caused me to think.  I think there is a difference between fetishizing a person's body and finding it beautiful.  I can appreciate scars, or fat, or amputated limbs and I am simply a person that has a perspective open enough to be able to include those things in my own definition of beauty.  It is only if I need to see that scar, fat, or amputation to be sexually turned on that my appreciation becomes a fetish.  To say that an able-bodied person can only see a disabled person's body as beautiful if they are participating in a fetish is extrem

Not Alone: Reflections on Faith and Depression by MonicaA. Coleman – Great book!  This is a collection of reflections that are from Coleman’s blog, Beautiful Mind.  I really like that it is a forty day devotional, as opposed to one for the whole year-Coleman knows that people with depression have trouble with commitment.  I love Coleman’s theology and her devotionals are thought provoking and affirming.  Her writings are not condescending, cheesy, or trite the way some mainstream devotionals tend to be, but ring with truth as Coleman is a theologian who experiences depression herself.  She tells it like it is and I really appreciate that.  If you are looking for a devotional that isn’t just a collection of syrupy sweet sayings, then I heartily recommend this book. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by Bell Hooks – I started a feminist book club and this was our first book.  This book isn’t quite what I thought it would be in that I think sometimes Hooks is