He's the very definition of hope...

Early this month, at an awards gala at The Carlu, The Mood Disorders Association of Ontario honoured a prominent psychiatrist for being "the very definition of Hope" – Dr. Emmanuel Persad.

He's called "Mr. Education" in an upcoming profile in the April issue of Canadian Psychiatry, – cited as "one of the main pillars of Canadian psychiatry, particularly in postgraduate education."

He's also described as a "renaissance man of psychiatry, a superb negotiator. Patient. Quietly respectful. Charming."

Yesterday, in his small, simply appointed, windowless office at Markham Stouffville Hospital, Dr. Persad and I spent an hour together, our first shared-hour since he had a much larger, windowed, plant-filled office on the eighth floor of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry.

Our appointment, yesterday, was at 3 p.m. and at precisely that moment, Dr. Persad approached me as I wandered a little dubiously in the busy lobby of this suburban Toronto hospital. I recognized him instantly. He has hardly changed, especially in his humility, his concern that I might lose my way to his office on a subterranean level of the hospital. That caring gesture was a clue to the kind of person, Dr. Persad is.

This was our first reunion in about 25 years.

The last time we met, in his Clarke Institute office in the early 1980s, he said, "We're very proud of you, Sandy." I was a full-time feature writer at The Toronto Sun and Women's Editor at CHFI. Doing well, apparently, on the mood stabilizer Lithium Carbonate.

That meeting was a far cry from the previous time we'd shared an hour, a decade earlier.

I met Dr. Persad in 1975 when he was a professor of psychiatry at The University of Toronto and a newly-minted senior psychiatrist at The Clarke, now part of The Centre for Addiction of Mental Health,

And I was seriously troubled.

Following my graduation from Queen's University and the break-up of my short-lived first marriage, I was psychotic. Again.

Hospitalized for the fifth or sixth time since the early 1960s. Delusional. Delusions of Grandeur, actually. My thoughts racing. "Flight of Ideas," it's called. Talkative. Sleepless. Irritable. Hallucinating.

I remember how Dr. Emmanuel Persad listened to me. Very carefully. Intensely. With respect. I've never forgotten the way he listened.

"What transpires here, in the work I do, is having the person I am with know that they're being listened to and that it's safe enough with me for them to come back," he explained yesterday.

I remembered that feeling of being intensely listened to. You never forget it. Dr. Bob listens the same way. Why wasn't I surprised that Dr. Persad and Dr. Bob are professional friends. Colleagues who share the same psychiatric spirit and vision.

"There is something sacred about the interaction between a psychiatrist and a patient. Trust. Autonomy," Dr. Persad continued. "It takes courage to come into this office.

"And I avoid labels – which have a way of dismissing the person."

During that 1975 hospitalization, Dr. Persad changed the course of my life.

From 1960 to 1975, my psychiatric diagnosis was schizophrenia. At one time, in the late 1960s, catatonic schizophrenia. I was, in the words of many psychiatrists, "a revolving door case" – in other words, "doomed" to a life in and out of mental institutions. My mother recalls being told that "there was no hope for me."

Somehow, Dr. Persad saw something in me that eluded all those other psychiatrists.

I did not have schizophrenia. Manic Depression, as it was known then – Bipolar Disorders, today, a spectrum of disorders – was a more apt way to describe my behaviour back then. But it was a difficult diagnosis. I do not get clinically depressed. Ever. Just high. Ultimately psychotic.

Today, my diagnosis is Psychosis in Mania – and it's rare. I don't think about it much. It's just a label. I prefer "in recovery." Most of the time I'm simply exuberant. Hypomanic, with medication and therapy.

The point is, as Dr. Persad explained yesterday, "no label aptly describes a person's unique life experience." Furthermore, he strongly endorses the practice that whatever treatment is prescribed must be managed by the person in partnership with their therapist. "It's a joint-event."

In the 39 years since Dr. Persad more accurately understood what was troubling me, he has continued to educate several generations of medical students and psychiatrists at the University of Toronto, the University of Western Ontario and now Queen's University, while practicing his profession.

(Coincidentally, I will be delivering the keynote to the students at the Queen's Faculty of Medicine next week during their "Mental Health Awareness Week.")

Today, he continued, the tensions between the neurosciences and the mental health issues pose serious problems for psychiatrists. "The "biopsychosocialspiritual model" is almost invisible behind pressures of Big Pharma and the push to prescribe, prescribe, and prescribe.

The reasons are too complex to deal with here.

"We're part of the problem," Dr. Persad admitted. "We perpetuate the undesirable nature of our profession. We treat the person as less than a person."

He envisions a re-introduction of psychotherapy – talking therapies – into the treatment of serious mental illnesses, like schizophrenia. He's completing a text on this subject right now, stressing instead the far more powerful impact of listening and respecting the integrity of the person who needs and/or seeks help.

"As psychiatrists, we seem to have lost the intellectual rigor, to be comfortable with the ambiguities of people, and this needs to be resuscitated," he says referring to this return of "talking therapies" and a re-examination of the overemphasis on medications-only as therapy – the all too ubiquitous "15-minute appointment and prescription" which plagues the practice of psychiatry today.

"I've always felt there's a kind of giftedness to people with mental illnesses – not just moments of insight," he said. "But people are often frightened by that kind of expansiveness."

Dr. Persald, now 72, is committed to changing the way psychiatry is practiced and perceived. For his entire career, which began in the mid-1960s, he has actively involved himself in the academic world, in teaching young medical students – stressing the inherent humanity of psychiatry. Teaching is learning.

His humanity – in a word – is hope for all of us.

My homage to February...

I don't know about you, but this month has just about "done me in" as Liza Dolittle said on her first run as a "Lady" at Ascot! That was her hilarious euphemism for "killed" in My Fair Lady.

I don't mean to complain, and I know I'm supposed to offer you inspiration and hope and insight, but sometimes it works the other way round.

You inspire me! Yes. True.

This morning, I was trying to think of something to tell you that would make you laugh. After all, my last post was pretty rough.

I drew a blank. And it's not just because it's February.

Forget the weather. February is always dreadful in this climate. Blaaaaaaaah!

Not enough sunlight. SADs. Air that's so sharp it sears your lungs. Forget walks in the park. The ice along the sidewalks will throw you if the subzero, wind-chilled temperatures don't.

Who knows? This year, there's been so much snow and for the first time we equipped our 10-year-old Honda Accord with snow tires! I should be delirious, but I'm not. Even though my husband keeps reminding me that they've saved his life numerous times on his 100-kilometer ride to and from Humber College where he teaches. Why am I so blaaaaaaaaah?

Wasn't Family Day supposed to give me a lift? All it did for me was deplete my paycheque, since I wasn't paid for two classes I usually teach on Mondays.

Ho hum!

On Sunday night, Instead of watching the Academy Awards, an annual ritual, I marked my students journals. (Actually, many of them were inspiring.) I didn't really care who wore what or who said what or even which films won. I had seen only a couple. I just didn't care.

Actually, The Spirit Awards for Independent films on Saturday night were more fun. My husband taped both shows. On Monday, we whizzed through the Oscars in about 10 minutes – stopping only to see Tina Fey, Steve Martin and Jerry Lewis. Then we zipped through The Spirit Awards which took place in San Diego. Everyone was dressed down. Looked like you and me, well, that's a stretch when it comes to Penelope Cruz. But you get my drift. No one looks like Penelope Cruz.

Anyways, she won for Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona and cracked me up with her acceptance speech on the earthy and expletive-filled and bleeped-out award show. It seems, she said in her acceptance speech, that Woody stopped production of his film for one entire day because he had to run to a dermatologist. Apparently he found a new freckle on his hand.

That's the last time I can remember laughing.

Forget my oral surgery. My messy looking smile. My emotional lability. I'm getting used to eating baby food and porridge and not being able to brush my all my teeth. I'm craving salads. Anyone who knows me, knows this is cause for serious concern.

Forget all the financial mishaps – plugged toilets, my dog Riley needing expensive uninsured periodontal work on his gums which necessitated his vet having to give him a general anaesthetic, surprise tax assessments – that's just money. (Riley's fine and financially we'll manage.)

Forget the textbooks that didn't arrive for four weeks, making my teaching at Seneca treacherous or to put an upbeat spin on it – a new and valuable learning experience.

All this is peanuts in the big scheme of things. I would say that 364 days a year, I wake up greeting the day with a joyous, "Well, I'm still here!" No joke, considering my health history, Waking up is a minor miracle.

Yet, occasionally, even I wake up with the blues. Or on the wrong side of the bed, as my mother used to say.

Curiously, today is not one of them. Yesterday was.

It's sunny today. The sky is my favourite shade of periwinkle blue. There are only four days left in February. Next week is Reading Week. I didn't lose any weight at Weight Watchers last night – but I didn't gain any, either.

So, here's the point. The days are getting longer. All things do pass. I'm still here, in my nightgown, writing to you – for one main reason. To thank you. Your emails and comments are my tonic. Better any antidepressant – which, by the way, I cannot take as they make me manic – nor would I, even if they didn't.

On Facebook, this morning, I started following the blog of Ron Unger, a therapist in Eugene, Oregon. I heard him speak at an international mental health recovery conference in Toronto last June and he was rivetting.

In his description of his blog Recovery from "schizophrenia" and other "psychotic disorders", Unger describes what he calls the "life" model as opposed to the medical model.

"People's life experience and their interpretaions of their experience can lead them into some strange and often distressing mental states, in which they often get stuck, but from which they can find their way out."

He says, "finding the way out is what we call recovery." (I love this defnition.) "Like poeple who have been inadvertently taken on a risky adventure, those who do find their way back often bring back a gift of some kind or other for the rest of us."

We all have gifts to share. And adventures. I really believe this. That's my cockeyed optimism rearing it's little head, again. Can't help it. I can see March – and almost see Spring!

Take care.

Dying of cigarettes...

This past week, I have learned that too many people I know or have know of – are dying of cigarettes.

Yes. That's right. Not lung cancer. Or Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease – COPD. Those are symptoms.

Their cause?

Smoking cigarettes.

In the penultimate paragraph of the death notice in today's Globe and Mail, the family of Dr. Mary Cone Barrie, courageously wrote:

"Mary's life ended all too soon. The cause of death was cigarettes, which first addicted her at 14. In lieu of flowers, contributions to the crushing of the tobacco industry would be greatly appreciated-whether in dollars to the Non-Smokers' Rights Association, or by persuading someone you know, in Mary's name, to quit now."

Dr. Mary Barrie was an extraordinary person. An educator, years ahead of her time, specializing in Andragogy, the art and science of teaching adults. My husband enormously enjoyed teaching at the University of Toronto's School of Continuing Education under Mary Barrie's watch, when she was its Director from 1994 to 2005.

If you're addicted, as I am, to CBC:Radio One and Andy Barrie, who anchors the morning show. If you wake up with Andy, as I have, for so many years, I cannot remember. (Long before I started waking up with my husband.) If you have missed Andy desperately, as I have, since last November when he took an "indefinite leave" for "family matters" – you know that Dr. Mary Barrie was Andy's wife of 40 years.

She was 64 years old.

At close to 3 a.m. this morning, I was crying at this computer as I read a blog new to me called Life as a hospice patient, written by Judi Chamberlin, a pioneering activist in the psychiatric survivor movement.

"I believe that until people labeled as 'mentally ill' have the same rights as others, we will continue to be marginalized and discriminated against," she states in her Blogger profile.

Judi has COPD but she is not a candidate for a lung transplant. In her first blog post, Trying to make sense of it all, on December 4, 2008, she wrote, knowing that she doesn't "have a very long life expectancy," she hoped to see Barack Obama inaugurated and to be around for the Super Bowl. "After that, I'll set another goal," she said.

On Wednesday of this week, she called her post The Good Things, which says a lot, though not nearly enough, about Judi Chamberlin's take on life. It is also her gift. One of many.

Judi is 64 years old.

Last week, I received a note from a woman, a family friend, who found me though this blog. I had not heard from her for many years. She is a friend of my mother's. Brilliant, charismatic. A dynamo. When I was a kid, I babysat for her three children, now grown, with kids of their own.

Superbly accomplished. Anything she tries, she masters. With pizzazz! You never forget her. She's a force. Funny. Fabulous. I adore her.

"I've had two bouts of lung cancer (clean at the moment) and suffer terribly with my emphysema... Mind you, some days I can manage and others simply cannot breathe. That's a trial. However, I AM STILL HERE," she said her in note.

And finally, during a call this morning to my mother who is wintering in Florida and I knew would not yet know of Dr. Mary Barrie's death, she informed me of yet another amazing man I had known, a smoker, who had died recently after battling lung cancer.

I was a smoker. My husband quit 20 years ago. Addictions don't often appear here in "Coming Out Crazy," but they should. Often, addictions are highly complex and comorbid – linked to deeper psychological trauma and pain.

Timing is everything. Who knew nicotine was a highly addictive drug 50 years ago? Toxic. Poisonous. Deadly.

Alcohol is highly addictive, too. The founders of Alcoholic Anonymous knew that back in the 1930s.

Food can be highly addictive. I know. I'm an addict.

The pleasure pathway in the brain is the same for nicotine, alcohol, food – even sex.

We are human. I don't judge anyone. But I applaud the bravery, the integrity, the honesty, the audacity and the leadership of the late Dr. Mary Barrie and her family for stating boldly in her obituary, that the cause of her death was cigarettes.

Graciously and generously, they are giving all of us a unique opportunity to take action – to become activists. By either supporting the Non Smokers' Rights Association, or by helping someone to quit smoking, we can join in honouring and memorializing Dr. Mary Barrie's wonderful life and legacy.

We may make a difference for the Greater Good.

We may help each other choose to "Say yes, to life."

And, finally... Andy, Jess and Wrigley and those grieving with you – please accept my profound sympathy.

Mona Winberg – my memories of

Look at Mona Winberg's face. Her smile. This is how she looked when we first met in 1986 – a petite powerhouse at 54 with a fire in her soul and a zeal for making a difference for the greater good.

One month ago, on Monday, January 19, activist Mona Winberg died at 76 after a two-week battle with pneumonia.

A fighter to the end. A fighter empowering others to fight. What a legacy she leaves.

This photograph is how I will always remember Mona. It was my first impression. Her finger poised on her IBM Selectric Typewriter. Passionately, painstakingly blasting her words onto paper. Words that make people stand up and listen. Words that sneak under peoples' skins and stick. Words with heart. Words with hope. Words inspiring empathy. Progress.

Mona's words touched people where it hurts and showed them by educating them how to make life better for people with disabilities. Like hers. Cerebral Palsy.

Mona had a way with words all her own.

I was assigned to interview and write a profile of Mona Winberg after she wrote to The Toronto Sun with a demanding suggestion. (Mona wasn't one to take no for an answer.)

"Why not give me a column about people with disabilities!"

Her letter and her impressive record of disability rights activism caught the eye of Mike Burke-Gaffney, then-editor of The Sunday Sun and a personal champion of disability rights himself. He offered Mona a weekly column – Disabilities Today – which ran under her head shot every Sunday for 10 years. A typical column took Mona 16 hours to hunt and peck out on her IBM electric. It was a labour of love for her because she was hitting a lot of nerves with every word.

Talk about grit, spirit, strength and pure perseverance transcending her disability.

I remember years ago, reflecting in a column about having my mental illness – as far as I knew at the time – that I didn't view it as having a disability, but actually an extra-ability. Why? Because you're always trying and working so hard to overcome. To prove yourself. To become stronger. And you do. I think I did. Mona did, for sure.

That's the paradoxical gift of having what is perceived as a dis-ability. (The hyphen makes a difference, doesn't it?)

Here's how Mona put it.

"The problem with being handicapped is you always have to make the first overture, because people don't know how to react. They're nervous, fearful, apprehensive. They don't know if you're animal, mineral or vegetable," she said in a 1983 interview, wrote Star reporter Nick Aveling in his Wednesday, January 21, 2009 obituary.

My 1986 story about Mona was her introduction to The Sunday Sun readership and a launch for her column. Here's what I remember about meeting Mona.

She lived in a North York flat in a house on a quiet residential street not far from where I lived at the time. Near Yonge and Sheppard. She lived alone. Her flat was very compact, so she could get around easily, without taking too many steps. It appeared cluttered, but it was very orderly. She knew exactly where everything was.

On my first visit, Mona warmly welcomed me in, when I knocked on her door. She was tiny, but she seemed to fill the place with her graciousness and charm. She offered me cookies and instant coffee. We quickly established an easy rapport, sharing a number of common connections in the Jewish community, though she was 16 years older than me.

What I remember most was her passion. She didn't hold back. She would get very angry talking about the injustices, the prejudices, the discrimination that people with physical disabilities had to face, to endure. At the same time, she loved to laugh.

I made several visits to see her, spent a great deal of time with her, several hours on at least two occasions, "to get her story."

It took me hours to conduct these interviews because of her garbled speech which was difficult for me to understand. Many of her statements had to be repeated. Sometimes she had to spell a word so I could write it in my notebook to see and comprehend it.

Her accomplishments before she started writing for The Toronto Sun were outstanding. She went on to win numerous awards, including her supremely well-deserved  The 2001 Order of Canada, which cited her as "a role model of courage and persistence and an inspiration to others."

But back in 1986, sipping coffee and munching cookies, Mona and I shared our own "disability" stories. Her life with her cerebral palsy. My life with my varying psychiatric diagnoses. Back then, it was manic depression morphing into bipolar disorder. (The names change, the symptoms don't.)

The point is, we connected. Became soul-sisters. I learned so much, not only about her, but from her.

Her life was remarkable. In the days following her death, memories of all kinds poured into The Toronto Sun Family Blog – worth reading. 

One of them was mine. Written with sadness but in a spirit of celebration for this invincible crusader. Physically, she was fragile at times, but she never let you know it. She was fearless. Her voice was powerful, though her speech was faltering. In print, she sang, she boomed, she enlightened millions of minds. Words were her weapons and she wielded them magnificently.

Her strengths lay in her intrepid service to others and to her cause. Her advocacy, fuelled by her empathy and her anger, was for human rights – rights, she, herself, had been denied most of her life because of her cerebral palsy.

Through her exquisite mind, her tenacity, her fierce independence, and her Sunday Sun platform, this small woman moved mountains with her words. She proved "the power of one."

Mona inspired me in my mental health advocacy, too. Although I always spoke out, after meeting her, my voice grew louder.

In his new book, "Solitary Courage, Mona Winberg and the Triumph over Disability," (Blue Butterfly Books), author Patrick J. Boyer, an MP when he met Mona in the 1980s while chairing the parliamentary committee on the status of disabled persons, tells her life story.

It began in 1932 when she was born in Toronto and her mother's doctor said, "This child will never walk and never talk. I advise you to place her in an institution and forget you ever had her."

Mona was her mother's daughter. Sarah Winberg defiantly stormed out of that doctor's office clutching her baby.

And the rest is history.

Thank you, Mona.

Being a little labile...

I'm beat. So much is happening. Mostly good. Some challenging. All stress-inducing.

So, you won't be seeing much of me next week! (Except on "Facebook." I'm a neophyte and learning it is fun and relaxing for me.) I'll be teaching at Seneca but laying as low as a college teacher can, with six classes a week with 42 students on two campuses.

Did I mention to you that Queen's University's Faculty of Medicine, Class of 2012 -- second year students -- have invited me to speak during their Mental Health Awareness Week next month? Based on "Coming Out Crazy"? 

It's a little scary. I love an audience, but medical students? This is a first for this pajama or in my case, "nightgown" journalist cum blogger.

As a Queen's alumna, B.A. (Drama and English) Class of '74, I'm relishing a return trip to Kingston. Tammy MacKenzie, a regular commenter here, lives in the area and she's kindly agreed to be my guest and moral supporter. (I always need moral support when I speak, especially to a daunting audience like 100 "medical students.")  It will be a fascinating new experience, even if I bomb.

"I won't think about that right now," as Scarlett O'Hara would say. "I'll think about it tomorrow. After all, tomorrrow is another day." 

On Tuesday, I'm having some major gum surgery. Because of my kidney transplant and my three different immunosuppressants to prevent rejection, this surgery is complicated. It involves using some foreign material to do the repairs. Not my own tissue. Hence ... the possibility of rejection.

After consulting with the periodontist, my transplant specialist said I must go off one of my three anti-rejection drugs. And hike up dosages of the other two, by about 40%. These drugs interact with my mood stabilizer.

(A Word of Warning... if you're taking Lithium Carbonate, please be certain your Lithium blood levels are being carefully and regularly monitored. I developed Iatrogenic End-stage Kidney Failure due to Lithium toxicity 1991 -- because mine were not! Latrogenic means "treatment or doctor-caused." It can mean negligence. I didn't know my Lithium levels were not being properly monitored. As a result,I lost my health, forever. A kidney transplant is no cure in the relatively rare cases, like mine, with no signs of diabetes. It's a treatment with critical, life-changing complications.) 

Back to this week. Monday, I began my new drug regimen. It's very short term. Dr. Bob didn't know if anything would happen, but wasn't too worried. In 1999, when I needed a major, permanent adjustment to these drugs, I had to spend a week in a private room in the psychiatric ward at The Toronto General Hospital. I was a little high, but that wasn't why Dr. Bob hospitalized me. Working with the transplant team, I had to have daily blood tests at 6 a.m. so the blood levels for all my transplant drugs could be monitored and re-adjusted. They affect each other and I take seven different medications in varying doses each day. It's really complicated.

This time, I'm just a little labile. Great word. It means your moods "easily change or alter....they're easily aroused or freely expressed," according to my online dictionary. "They tend to alter quickly and spontaneously; you're emotionally unstable."

Mine are slipping and sliding slightly all over the place. One minute I'm "thinking pink." The next, just colour me "purple" or "blue." Then, "daffodil yellow." My husband is having a little trouble with me right now.

To be honest, so am I! 

So, "Coming Out Crazy" is going on hiatus for a week, returning after "Family Day," on Monday, February 16. 

Please don't forget to be good to yourself and on Valentine's Day. Love comes in many colours! Let me share with you a gift my husband dropped on my desk this week.

"When love is not madness, it is not love."

-- Pedro Calderon de la Barca, the celebrated Spanish dramatist and poet -- 1600-1681

xoxox

sln

A stunning invitation ...

Wednesday, February 5, 2009 at 11:35 p.m.

Wow! You won't believe this? I can hardly believe it myself!

At 9:58 p.m. this evening, the most astounding invitation arrived in my inbox. Like nothing I have ever received in my entire journalistic career! I'm stunned by it. I've just opened it up!

It's from Dr. Ron Pies. Remember The Wit and Wisdom of Dr. Ron Pies? In two parts? He's a professor of psychiatry at the State University of New York Medical University in Syracuse and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Tufts University in Boston. 

Dr. Pies keeps an eye on this blog and he and I engage periodically here and privately about many issues related to psychiatry. He is very kind and generous with his time. I value him as a professional and personal friend, and although I have never even heard the sound of his voice, he speaks to me!

It all started with an article he wrote for The New York Times -- where I first encountered him last October -- and I cherish our correspondence which began here at "Coming Out Crazy." 

It seems I have struck a nerve -- his -- with my ongoing campaign against the use of the "S" word as it relates to mental illnesses. 

On Tuesday, Dr. Pies and I "discussed" this word and my post about it last week. He quite rightly sensed my concerns about his citing me and an older "Coming Out Crazy" post about the "S" word, in an article he's written for the February issue of the journal Psychiatry 2009. 

Tonight, he informed me that he had removed all references to the "S" word from this draft, including the footnote naming me and that July post.

Instead, he simply acknowledged me and other colleagues for having commented on his article -- a fascinating examination of the question -- Should DSM-V Designate "Internet Addiction" a Mental Disorder? 

I'm much happier about that. 

But, to be honest, I'm over the moon about what came next.

I didn't know that Dr. Pies is Editor-in-Chief of Psychiatric Times, which he says reaches "over 35,000 U.S. and other psychiatrists -- PT is the most widely-read publication in the field, by some estimates.

"I am wondering if you would like to submit a piece on the infamous 'S' word ... explaining to psychiatrists why this word, in your view, is damaging, inappropriate, etc., per your recent blogs."

Then ... he issued this invitation:

"You have been officially invited to write on this topic for Psychiatric Times! It might be a good opportunity to 'educate' us (sometimes 'stodgy') academics! I look forward to your response when convenient. Best regards, Ron."

I plan to accept this "juicy" invitation. You betcha! :--) It's my dream come true! Thank you, Dr. Pies!

In fact, from now on... I'm going to refrain from using the "S" word" here at "Coming Out Crazy" so I will not to contribute to the foul and confusing innuendo created by its explicit association with mental illnesses and mental health issues. 

It's all about "respect in language," especially around "mental illnesses" and "mental health".

It's been a struggle, writing tonight, before Dr. Pies invitation arrived. I was working on today's post -- talk about providence -- which began as follows...

I love the word "human." It's the only label I'll accept. As an adjective, though -- not an noun.

It means, to me, that nobody's perfect. We all make mistakes. We err in judgement. 

The other day, I lost my temper over something and left a rather irate, though well-aimed voicemail. I won't go into the details, but I assure you, it wasn't ill-timed. And it got the desired results. Almost immediately. 

Look, I'm impatient, a great quality for an activist and sometimes being "a squeaky wheel" -- admittedly a very loud and angry squeaky wheel -- is the only way to go. On the other hand, my tirade was interpreted as inappropriate, too. 

I'll never know if it was because it is no secret that I have a mental health issue or that I'm inexperienced in the ways and workings of The Ivory Tower. I'm used to living with that "unknown" and I've learned to understand it and accept it. Plus it's a great way to initiate a conversation about emotional and mental health, which I do as often as I can. At every turn. Do a little informal "educating" of the educators, in this case.

It depends on your perspective. That phrase, "it depends," is also one of my favourites.

Even President Barack Obama in his decision to nominate Tom Daschle for the post of Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary, is human. It's just that every time he has puffs on a cigarette or picks his nose, it's big news. That's the price you pay for being in the most powerful position in the world, and initiating a new paradigm shift in leadership and presidential politicking.

Here's how New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny summed up the whole situation: "The president was so intent on reforming the nation's health care system that he overlooked shortcomings of Mr. Daschle -- specifically his tax problems -- because he was 'uniquely qualified' to bring about change."

Obama is human.  A "catalystic" leader -- a new word for his very human approach to change-making. (Is it possible to be very human? Or too human?) Reporters, political commentators, the media and particularly academics who tend to move at a glacial pace, will have to play catch up to recognize how momentous Obama's changes are -- including his choice to wander about The White House sans tie and jacket! Believe it or not, even dress code is being questioned.

That's why I love Barack Obama -- he's so committed to change that sometimes it's a little blinding, hence this slip up in judgement. He has admitted it was a "self inflicted injury" in the numerous interviews when he was asked about "his screw up." A refreshing change in itself, when you compare it to his predecessor's inability to name anything in his administration that he would change.

I mean, give me a break!

So, the last word for this evening, another favourite of mine, is hope. Dr. Pies and I have disagreed a little about this word, as it relates to mental health. He prefers "realistic hope." I think that's an oxymoron. 

I prefer using "hope" both as a noun and a verb. That way, it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

All of this, wouldn't you agree, is very hopeful, isn't it?

It's now 2:18 a.m. on Thursday morning. I must be in class in less than eight hours. I'm going to bed.

I'll be having short but sweet dreams, tonight! You, too, I hope!