Category: Compassion
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Exhausted While Bipolar
Recently I’ve been totally overwhelmed and exhausted. A virus almost took my mother’s life. Thank God she survived. Loving someone who is struggling for their life is hard. Really hard. I, too, was sick and avoided seeing my mother until she got so sick that cross-contamination was no longer an issue. Now, I’m still recovering,…
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Folie à Deux
I Am My Mother Caveat: Please understand that delusional thought processes are SYMPTOMS of mental illness. I feel compassion, even as I feel pain and anger as someone negatively affected by parental delusional thoughts. I, too, have experienced delusional thoughts and bizarre impulses. I’m heir to familial mental illness. I get it. With great trepidation…
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Trigger Warning Revisited
I first wrote this post June 2014 and am sharing it again, for the theme is still timely. Monday afternoon while shopping at Party City for some sugary treats for my son, in front of me in line stood a teenaged girl with wrists covered in fake blood depicting gory razor slash wounds. She told…
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Holy Friday
For those who do not believe in the value of religious mythology, I do. Whether or not the stories actually happened, whether or not they are literally true, they offer messages which are true. The meaning – the message – is what moves me. In Christianity, today is Good Friday or Holy Friday. Holy Friday commemorates the crucifixion…
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Grief, Compassion, and Love
Today my husband flew up to visit his brother who is at home receiving hospice care for advanced lung cancer which has aggressively metastasized. This post serves as a prayer for my husband, his brother, and the rest of their family. I’m at a loss for words. This is also my second Writer’s Quote Wednesday 2015 post. Thank…
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Prevent and Treat Childhood Trauma #1000Speak for Compassion
[ted id=2194] Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across a lifetime, to the point where…
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Childhood Trauma of Parental Mental Illness #1000Speak for Compassion
At the beginning of this week, Terezin – a woman who had been horrifically abused by a mother diagnosed with manic depressive psychosis – read my poem Suicide Infanticide and was understandably enraged. My poem described a fleeting and deeply disturbing psychotic thought I had postpartum. Her comment deeply troubled me and made me question my adequacy as a mother.…
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Child Welfare Resources
Updated my Resources page, adding Child Welfare Resources, in preparation for tomorrow’s post about compassion and childhood trauma for #1000Speak for Compassion. Child Welfare Resources Prevent Child Abuse America Healthy Families America Child Welfare Information Gateway Child Welfare Related Organizations Mental Health America ~ Parenting