Building mental wellness on a foundation of strength
Dan DeChiaro / CC BY Today marks 19 years since the terror attacks in the U.S. on 9/11. For this post, I decided to talk about the fallen in quite a literal sense; those who jumped and/or fell to their deaths from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Shown at the bottom of… Continue reading Remembering the Fallen of 9/11
IASP Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. It's also National Suicide Prevention Week and National Suicide Prevention Month (that's a lot of awareness!). I thought it would be a good time to talk about suicide attempt survivors. The term "suicide survivor" isn't generally used for people who've lived through suicide attempts. Rather, it's the term… Continue reading World Suicide Prevention Day: A Look at Suicide Attempt Survivors
I heard recently the Daisy Coleman, who was in the 2016 documentary Audrie & Daisy, had died by suicide. I had watched the film on Netflix a couple of years ago, but I thought I'd watch it again and write a post about it in honour of Daisy. Rape culture was a problem then, and… Continue reading Rape Culture Kills
The Silent Scream: An Anthology of Despair, Struggle, and Hope is put together by Maria Alfieri. There are 10 other contributors to the book using their full names, including myself, and other writing anonymously. In the introduction, Maria writes: "It is through our vulnerability that our liberation from our inauthenticity starts. Through honest conversation we… Continue reading Book Review: The Silent Scream
I recently did a post on whether the wording "committed suicide" was likely to be an effective target for anti-stigma messaging. A commenter mentioned that in their home country, suicide was only decriminalized quite recently. That got me curious about where attempting suicide is illegal to this day. Why suicide first became illegal The Stanford… Continue reading Where Is Attempting Suicide Illegal?
Can't Keep Me Down is the latest book from Maranda Russell, who you may know from her blog or the multiple other books she's written. This is a poetry and short prose chapbook, which isn't a term I'd ever heard before. So, off to Wikipedia, which says that it's a form of short book with… Continue reading Book Review: Can’t Keep Me Down
I saw a post recently by another blogger about stigmatizing language to avoid. One of the things he mentioned was "committed suicide," which is something that comes up regularly in discussions of language use related to suicide. Personally, it's not a term I find offensive, although I know some people do, and I choose not… Continue reading Is “Committed Suicide” Worth Making an Issue Out Of?
The emerging blogger series is aimed at community building through giving mental health bloggers who are early in their blogging evolution the opportunity to have their work seen by a wider audience. It's also a way to introduce you as a reader to some newer members of our community. This post is from Quiet Person,… Continue reading Emerging Blogger Series: Quiet Person Loud Thoughts
Shame Ate My Soul is Susan Walz's personal story of rising above stigma, suicide attempts, addiction, and misdiagnosis, and eventually finding recovery. I've known Sue, who blogs at My Loud Whispers of Hope, since the beginning of my blogging journey. The book opens with a heartbreaking conversation with 2 of her 3 children, as they… Continue reading Book Review: Shame Ate My Soul
As a person with depression, being open and honest with treatment providers is likely to go straight out the window if it appears to conflict with whatever goal feels most pressing to me at the time.