Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
Photo by author Guinea pigs have very good hearing. They're also very good at recognizing sounds that are associated with getting food. Most guinea pigs do a high-pitched wheek wheek noise to call for food. Mine don't wheek much because Peanut chews the cage bars, and everyone seems to consider that the most authoritative way… Continue reading Sounds My Guinea Pigs Associate with Food
I first heard of World Toilet Day last year, when the theme was leave no one behind. I was reminded earlier today din a post by Philosophy Through Photography that today is World Toilet Day 2020, and the theme this year is climate change. It's been observed by the United Nations since 2013 in recognition… Continue reading It’s World Toilet Day 2020
Here Until I'm Gone Here Until I’m Gone: 40 Poems About Trauma, Illness, And The Inevitability Of Death is a booklet of poetry by Mio Angelo of Mentally Ill in America. The poems capture the challenges of living with chronic mental illness, including dealing with the ignorance of others. He writes about finding healing from… Continue reading Book Review: Here Until I’m Gone (& Thoughts on Therapeutic Writing)
Many fields have their own jargon, which Wikipedia describes as "specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity" that often isn't well understand by people outside of that particular field. While jargon can help people within a field communicate precisely, that doesn't necessarily translate well outside of the field. It can be… Continue reading The Use and Misuse of Jargon
Recently, I read a story in the local news that made me angry (not that that's unusual lately). A mother had gone to court to try to block her 17-year-old from getting a gender-affirming double mastectomy. A BC Supreme Court judge issued an injunction to stop the surgery that was scheduled to happen the next… Continue reading Gender Identity and Parental Obstruction
This post is an only mildly coherent hodgepodge of things related to how we search for information. I like looking stuff up. I'm curious about the world, and I want to know more, so I spend a lot of time searching. Reading other people's blog posts often sends me over to Google or Wikipedia to… Continue reading How Do You Search for Information?
Here's what happened in my life over the past week: Sometimes, people manage to get it right. In last week's elections in the U.S., Darren White, the former sheriff in Nodaway county in Missouri who leaned hard into victim-blaming in Daisy Coleman's rape case, got his ass kicked. His opponent in the race for sheriff… Continue reading Weekend Wrap-Up
In this series, I dig a little deeper into the meaning of psychology-related terms. This week's term is addictive personality. The concept of an addictive personality, although often referred to in pop psychology, is actually less of a thing than you might think. For there to be an addictive personality, that would suggest that there… Continue reading What Is… an Addictive Personality
Today is World Kindness Day. How will you be kind?
Here are some of my favourites from back in the day (specifically, the 80s and early 90s). Favourite books I was a voracious reader as a kid, and a frequent visitor to the library. I was a huge fan of Nancy Drew as a smart, independent, ass-kicking female. I also liked The Babysitters Club and… Continue reading Favourites from Times Gone By