Category: Motherhood
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I Spoke in Public!
Thank you, Lianne Sauvage, for inviting me to share my mental health journey at Belmont High School’s Mental Health Assembly! For my speech, I adapted content from My Bipolar Thoughts, my memoir work-in-progress. The speech was scheduled for 25 minutes! I plan to refine these speaking notes and use them again for future speaking engagements:…
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I Don’t Want to Write About #Suicide for #WorldSuicidePreventionDay
Poem recalling suicide of extended family member and my own suicidality at 18
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I do not whisper. I ROAR.
Motherhood transformed me. My identity changed. Now it changes again. I have constantly reinvented myself over my lifetime. As a pre-med biochemistry major at UCLA, I was miserable and suicidal. Then I studied part-time at a community college, biding time to find my direction. Finding a niche as a legal studies major at UC Berkeley, I tried to…
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Review: Birth of a New Brain #PostPartumBipolar
Dyane Harwood thrilled me when she sent me an advance copy of her memoir, Birth of a New Brain: Healing from Postpartum Bipolar Disorder. (I pre-ordered it and was anxiously awaiting it’s October 2017 release.) Her memoir fills a much-needed niche in sharing the experience of bipolar disorder, peripartum onset (beginning during pregnancy or within…
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Time to Write Again?
Pre-Christmas Travel Writing I jump from one app to another. Jigsaw puzzle to reading to writing. Back and forth, writing and jigsaw. Uneasy. Jittery. Uneasy. Not at ease. Tense. Guilty. Dramatic, yes, but so fucking what. That’s who I am. I have no desire to change that about myself. Besides, honestly, I keep most of…
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I'm at a Loss…
My son has missed WAY too much school this year. He’s attending a private school where he gets one-on-one attention and learns at his own pace, so he simply falls behind and the charges for missed classes just keep adding up. He had gastroenteritis earlier this year (which we all had and which we all…
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Nothering, Too Good, or Good Enough Mother?
Feminine Collective published Good Enough Mothering, a poem of mine about mothering a migraineur. Check it out: femininecollective.com/good-enough-mother/
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Wave the White Flag
Need to write out the pain and exhaustion in my heart Pain and grieving my parents’ dementias Pain and exhaustion caring for my son Must back off both Must take care of myself Must Must Must Must take care of myself Ready to throw in the towel To admit defeat To wave a white flag…
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Cocooning
Cocooning Recovering from social demands From social interaction From caring for others My son My husband My parents From caring about too many From caring too much You may not hear from me You may not read much from me I’m depleted I need to refill Not to care so much about others But to…