Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
In this edition of This Was Me, we'll look back at times in my 30s when I was unwell, although you wouldn't know it just from looking at the picture. This photo was taken in December 2011, only a week or two after being discharged from a 2-month hospital stay. I was better in a… Continue reading This Was Me: The Things That Photos Hide
I did my first big international trip (aside from a high school exchange trip to Japan) when I was 22, and that was when the travel bug firmly took root. From then on, each year I would take all my vacation time together in one block and do an international trip, other than the years… Continue reading This Was Me: My Travelling 20s
I decided a few months ago to go ahead and book an overseas vacation. I hoped that it would give me something to look forward to, and that it would help to finally put a dent in the anhedonia that's been such a challenging symptom of my depression. I decided to go to Italy because… Continue reading The pros and cons of travelling for mental health
For the last 2 weeks and a bit while I've been travelling in Italy, I've had my phone on airplane mode. No phone calls, no text messages, and for large chunks of the day I have no wifi access. Part of the reason is a desire to run away from the world, and part of… Continue reading I like airplane mode
I have mostly felt pretty safe as a solo female traveller. Sadly, there have been exceptions. One of those exceptions happened today. There was a staff guy at the hostel where I was staying who said that he "liked" me and would joke that he was "stalking" me, doing things like popping into my dorm… Continue reading The downside of being a solo female traveller
I've been in Florence that last couple of days and I'm not much of a fan. There are a shit-ton of people here crammed into a small area, many of them in large obnoxious tour groups. I've been having quite a bit of derealization to get me through it. Yesterday I walked right over some… Continue reading Going through the motions
Despite the happy-sounding title, I'm talking about falling in a very little sense. The combination of lithium-induced clumsiness and cobblestone streets was bound to catch up to me. It was around 6am and I was walking to the train station to catch an early train to Pompeii. I was crossing a street and completely wiped… Continue reading Falling head over heels for Italy
I'm in Rome, the first stop of my Italian vacation and home of amazing art and history. And by amazing I mean more along the lines of "meh". I'm finding the crowds hard to handle. At the Vatican museums all I could think was get me the hell outta here, and my response to the… Continue reading Sometimes “meh” is the best I can come up with
Later today I'm heading off to spend 3 weeks on vacation in Italy. This trip is what has been keeping me going through a rough stretch with my depression over the last 6 weeks or so. Not that my depression is allowing me to actually feel excited about it, but I'm hanging on to the… Continue reading Leaving on a jet plane
Travelling has always been a major passion of mine. Unfortunately depression makes it rather hard to feel passionate about much of anything, but in an attempt to get myself a bit more excited about my upcoming trip to Italy I thought I'd do a post covering the places I've managed to tick off my travel… Continue reading Places ticked off my bucket list