Category: Vocation
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Ten Year Anniversary of Hospitalization
Ten years ago, two weeks preceding and including Valentine’s Day, I was hospitalized. Twenty years ago, I experienced a psychotic break during the same season: this season – the season of Lent. Though I do not attend church, this season moves me deeply. I could write more about seasonal affective disorder and how those of…
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Mental Illness, Religion, and Spirituality
Healing, recovery, or simply living with a serious mental illness such as bipolar disorder may require medical, psychological, and spiritual support. Struggling with mental illness can at times feel like spiritual war. As someone living with bipolar disorder, while in the deepest of depressions, I’ve experienced what I can only describe as a living hell, and…
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Eric Arauz
[vimeo 86542977 w=500 h=281] Eric Arauz How Written and Oral Storytelling Saved MY Life 2-12-14 8.58 AM from International Bipolar Foundation on Vimeo. Sunday I was particularly impressed by Eric Arauz‘s presentation on Conscious Storytelling. He gave us each a copy of his autobiography, An American’s Resurrection: My Pilgrimage from Child Abuse and Mental Illness…
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Happy Anniversary!
WordPress just wished me a Happy Anniversary! Today is my one year anniversary blogging. Hurray! The process of blogging, of writing, of networking with other writers both in “real life” and online has shaped me over this past year. I now feel intellectually engaged, emotionally supported, purposeful and hopeful. Yes, hopeful. That is HUGE. I…
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Why Do I Write? Kitt O’Malley
Why Do I Write? Kitt O’Malley. First published September 8, 2014 on STIGMAMA.com * I write for I am more than a mother and a wife. I am a writer. I write for I must. I write to keep my brain from atrophying. I write to capture those speeding thoughts. I write to pull myself…
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As a Child
As a child I wanted to be a doctor To cure people of disease As a teen I wanted to be a neurosurgeon To fix brains with a scalpel As a young woman I became a psychotherapist To fix troubled youth with broken lives With the exchange of spoken words I kept falling apart My…
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Thought Wisps
F*ck what was I thinking? Cannot recall. Had a thought or perhaps even more than one. Something to write for my blog. Now I’m drawing a blank. My mind cannot hold onto thoughts for very long. They slip away. Slip away. Wisps. The thought had to do with removing my MFT license from my description for…
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Minor Tweaking
So last night and today I made some minor tweaks to my site. My blog subtitle now is: Living with Bipolar Disorder. Loved by God. Hope the new subtitle resonates with others. My former seminary papers hadn’t received much interest. So I removed some articles, and retitled and revised others. Now I ask in my menu bar, What…
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Third Person
Once, a lifetime ago, when I was only twenty-eight, a rather gifted poet friend of mind, upon reading the first person narrative of my journal, suggested that I try writing in third person. I gave it a try and in so doing turned my rather self-absorbed navel-gazing journal writing into fiction. Some day, some year, I…