Someone asked me, “What makes it all worth it?” I questioned what they meant. Are we talking about my past? Are we talking about the present? Are we talking about the future? If we’re talking about the past, I have just figured it out in the last year. The #pain, the #poordecisions, the cowering in regards to #abuse of many kinds, the lack of #honesty and #forgiveness, the inability to talk about my feelings, the awareness of self and of others, the inability to even articul

I have now been actively working in the #MentalHealth field for 5 months. In that time, I have heard, seen, and felt emotions I was not expecting to, nor experienced before. Given both my history and my role, patients ask many direct questions pertaining to thoughts or actions they know are not right, but think or act anyway. One of the most common is, “How do you accept and deal with the fact this will be an issue, a challenge, and define you for the rest of your life?” Trut

I graduated from High School in 2005. I went out west to Arizona State University, as far away as I could get from the town I grew up in, and the only house I ever lived in, to obtain my Bachelors. Needless to say, I’m pretty certain my focus wasn’t “obtaining my Bachelors” but instead to party as much as humanly possible until I “became an adult”. I “became” an adult a lot earlier than expected, with the most handsome surprise ever. My oldest son made his debut into society

When I was 15, a therapist recommended that I speak with a psychiatrist for Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. It was ignored, at the time, by my parents, because it had seemed as if everyone that went to therapy was being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. I went back to therapy at 29, when I gave up the “good fight” and worked hard to maintain my sobriety. Again, the same mental illness diagnosis was suggested. This time it was ME who refused to accept, dec