Hope Is Real!

Everyone I meet - it matters little whether they’re mannered or rude, smart or simple-deepens my sense of   interdependence and obligation.   (The Message Bible, 307) 2017: this will always be the year of the Donald Trump election and so politically it is a terribly sad year for  progessives .  Oh yes, it’s seen an increase in activism and more Democrats are now getting elected in conservative areas but still, it seems like such a tiny consolation.   Objectively, this seems like a horrible year for me too. In one year, I became single again after a two-year serious relationship, had a relapse with a traumatic ten-day hospital stay, which included a major psychotic break.  I had PTSD so severe that I startled too easily to drive for a few months.  I am now working the bare minimum hours at work and was declared still disabled by the government. Or was I?   I am not disabled in spirit.   This year I had to confront a lot of issues that needed confronting and I h

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”  ―  Audre Lorde  ( Sister Outsider ) I have been practicing with the Rise Theater lately and it has brought up memories of old career goals and passions.  Here is a reworking of a long post I wrote on FaceBook a few days ago: ***** Today I briefly thought that maybe I should go back to school and finish my music therapy degree and then I thought no, I should just look for nursing home activity coordinator jobs - I'm already qualified and it's my pas

My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.  ~ Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider " Escape from Special" by Miss Lasko-Gross is about a girl who is labeled “special” as a child and how that label affected her.  I was never given that specific label but I was held back a grade in elementary school and I did have many of the same experiences.  Like her, I could never finish my work on time-I still struggle with that.  I have always found it so frustrating that people put such emphasis on finishing by a certain time when we are all different people who work in different ways.  How in the world can someone know how much time I need to finish a project when they are not me? We are all on our own time tables and I

The phrase “responsible relapse” has been rolling around in my head for several days now.   I have returned to work and it is incredibly surreal that I am back when just a month and a half ago, I was in the stabilization unit at Peachford Hospital.   It’s a weird thing.  I struggle with shame and guilt over relapsing into old symptoms.  I used to end my mental health presentations by saying that I no longer fit the criteria for an eating disorder and for Borderline Personality Disorder and so now my ego is struggling because those are things I cannot say right now. I took such pride in that. I think it may be time now to not take so much pride in being rid of something undesirable but of handling returning symptoms in a responsible way.  I desperately want recovery to be a straight line but it isn’t.  A part of me is sad that I was hospitalized again but my therapist reminds me that this is the longest I have ever been out of the hospital as an adult and that it was the r