This & That...

It seems like ages since I last posted, or responded to your comments. I've been remiss. I apologize.

Please forgive me. I've missed you.

Although I hate it when people talk about how busy they are – because we're all busy – it seems that this is an uncommonly "wild and crazy" time.

Between Passover seders that fell this year on two of the three days I teach, plus all my marking, which is over for the time being, I have not watched any television, cracked open a book or even read the newspapers very carefully. To be honest, I don't miss the TV, but I'm feeling a little out of touch.

Except, I got a real kick out of a charming story in this past Sunday New York Times about U.S. President Barack Obama and this year's second White House seder. 

Most of all, I'm terribly sorry that I've had to neglect "Coming Out Crazy" – and you – for a few days.. So today, I'm going to play catch up and fill you in on what's happening with Angela and some other news and views. Plus, this is a short week, with Good Friday tomorrow and Easter Sunday. It's tax time, too. It means we're all working harder and faster than usual to accomplish more that needs to get done, in less time. 

Stressful, to be sure.

Next week, I plan to return to my regular schedule of two posts a week, plus commenting on your comments. Thank you for your understanding. 

ANGELA PLODS ON AS HER ECT TREATMENTS DRAW TO A CLOSE

Angela has about four or five more treatments left. Neither of us is sure if she'll be having ECT on Easter Monday, so we don't exactly know.

We speak almost daily. Yesterday morning, she was upset because there's been a hitch with her new motorcycle and she's anxious to get her hands on it and start biking the highways and byways of Ontario as spring temperatures are rising. I cannot believe it will be 24 degrees Celsius tomorrow, but that's what the weather man is telling us.

One recurring theme in our conversations is that ECT may do wonders for one's mood, but it doesn't solve all the problems in your life. And it can create others, like problems with memory – though Angela didn't complain about her memory at all yesterday.

I've been thinking about all the things that electroconvulsive therapy cannot do and was never intended to do.

Sometimes, Angela expects miracles but she's beginning to realize how much long term work she has to do with her psychiatrist in psychotherapy – in addition to the ECT. And she is willing to have maintenance ECT treatments if it is recommended.

ECT WORKS BEST IN COMBINATION WITH PSYCHOTHERAPY

"My way of thinking is messed-up," she admitted yesterday morning. "It's gonna take a while to fix. Still, I do think the ECT is beneficial. And I don't think it would be as beneficial unless it's combined with therapy."

This is true for all psychiatric treatments. And for emotional healing. Medications are much more effective in combination with psychotherapy. Ultimately, though, you have to do the work – and it IS work. Whether it's psychiatric therapy or peer support or any number of other approaches – any therapy. It's never easy and often painful. It's all about change. Transformation. I've been at it for close to 50 years and still counting. More than 20 years with Dr. Bob. Trust me, it's worth it.

Changing the way you think and perceive, changing your beliefs and your behaviour patterns is the toughest work in the world, but I wouldn't trade all those years of psychotherapy for the world. That's why I call it "my PhD in me" – though I'll never graduate with any degree. This is what recovery is all about. Those years have given me peace of mind – insight – as I hope they will Angela.

All that work is the only way to truly go into recovery. (As I've often said, you won't find insight in a bottle of pills.) It's a constant. Never ending. Because our lives are changing all the time – throwing us curves we have to deal with and adjust to. Dr. Bob and I often joke about how we'll be together until we die. "Whoever goes first." I don't view this as a weakness, either. It's a strength because change is so challenging and ultimately so rewarding. Builds resilience.

Despite the fact that we resist change, which is natural, I suppose.

CHANGE IS NEVER EASY – THERE'S ALWAYS RESISTANCE

Just look at what's happening in the U.S. and all the resistance to the new Health Reform Bill and its amendments that were passed over the last two weeks. Surgeon and journalist Atul Gawande puts this revolutionary change (for the U.S.) and the resistance Health Reform is facing into perspective in a fascinating commentary in this week's New Yorker titled Now What? 

When it comes to change, some things never change, I guess...

WHAT'S NORMAL? AM I NORMAL?

Whenever anyone, I mean ANYONE, starts talking about being normal or not being normal, I jump in and say, "What's normal? There is no normal."

Psychologist John Grohol had a nice little post about that this week on his PsychCentral blog World of Psychology that explores the question we all ask ourselves at one time or another: Am I Normal?

I don't ever ask it anymore. Instead, I view everyone as "Next to Normal" which nicely encompasses all manner of quirkiness and eccentricity and even outlandish behaviour. Extreme behaviours.

I picked up that handy little phrase after flying down to Manhattan last June for a mid-week matinee of a then-new Broadway rock musical/operetta about a suburban family coping with a mother who has serious and seemingly drug-resistant bipolar disorder.

WE'RE ALL NEXT TO NORMAL

This show is called Next to Normal and I will be forever grateful because of its integrity, honesty and respect for the complexities of psychiatric conditions and their impact on everyone they touch directly and indirectly. (We're all touched in some way.) More important to me is that it puts into perspective this rather absurd notion of "normal" – which applies perhaps to body temperature – 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. That's about it.

When it comes to people and their personalities and behaviours and experiences, I have no idea what "normal" means. 

Do you?

Three days later, this stunningly authentic show picked up three Tony Awards, including Best Actress in a Musical for the wildly talented and irrepressible Alice Ripley, who plays the mother, Diana Goodman and sings most of the songs.

This show was slated to close in August 2009, prior to its Tony wins. It wasn't drawing great crowds. That's why I was invited to attend and comped two tickets. Instead – three days later, after scoring big at The Tony's, it started picking up steam and has continued to resonate with its audiences. The wildly spontaneous standing ovation as the curtain goes down is testimony to that. Its run has been extended repeatedly.  

Last Saturday, March 27, marked the first anniversary of Next to Normal's Broadway run. This little show that almost didn't make it has turned a profit, both signs that it's a legitimate Broadway hit.

Here's the clincher. It's an artistic and commercial hit about a most unlikely subject for a rock musical – a serious mental illness – bipolar disorder. There's even a scene during which Diana undergoes ECT, and as a result loses her memory.

I think this is revolutionary. Think of it. A major mental illness goes musical and mainstream. It's not depressing, but inspiring and uplifting. A national tour is planned for the fall. I think this is the best news of all. 

Don't you?

Have a good weekend and speak soon. I feel so happy to be back.

Angela's progress ...

Hi there.

I'm back! How are you?

You have no idea how much I've missed you. So much has happened over the last week – my Reading Week. There were times I ached to sit down here at my trusty iMac and write to you – what a relief it would have been to interrupt the monotony of "marking midterms," but I needed a break.

I've continued speaking with Angela daily over the last 13 days even though I've not been posting about her progress. I take notes. I have an Angela journal.

She's had a few little ups and downs but nothing dramatic – with one exception – and this would definitely qualify as an "up"... she's sleeping well. Better than she's slept in years. 

Angela is athletic. She loves to snowboard. Watching hockey is one of her passions. You know where she is every Saturday night and could safely bet money on it. It's a good thing she doesn't have her Electroconvulsive Therapy treatments on Saturdays.

On a few occasions, over the last week and during the Olympic Hockey matches, she slept through the games. 

And she wasn't upset about it.

Once, she said she went to sleep "to escape my mind," a curious phrase. When I asked her why, she mentioned some long running personal concerns, matters of everyday living that no ECT treatment can or ever has been able to resolve. The stuff that can turn a good day sour for anyone. The stresses that wear you down emotionally.

ECT IS GRADUALLY TRANSFORMING HER OUTLOOK ON LIFE

These issues are not the cause of her drug-resistant clinical depression. They could be filed in a drawer called "Life Sucks" and we all have those drawers. Sometimes, I think unhappiness is confused with depression. Both can be exhausting and stressful, but for Angela, her ECT is gradually transforming her outlook on life. Brightening it. Refreshing her mind. Buoying her on so she can better handle the real consequential issues in her life.

Not just those "Life Sucks" issues, but even tougher stuff. 

SLEEP HEALS

Sleep, as I've often said, heals. So it is, often, for Angela. She's an early riser and not only on the two days a week when she must awaken at 6 a.m. to be at the University Health Network at 7 a.m., hopefully to be the first in line to receive her ECT treatment, which she prefers.

Since she began her eight or possibly 12 weeks of bi-weekly ECT treatments on Monday, January 25, she's has changed dramatically, although it's a slow and steady transformation and she's not entirely aware of it. These posts have become a mirror for her.

It's blatantly obvious to me that she's joking and laughing more these days than I've ever known her to do – and we've known each other for years. When I called last night, she was watching the Toronto-Boston Hockey Game and not sleeping.

"It's tied right now," she said, sounding anxious to get off the phone. I let her go back to her passion. Three months ago, Angela felt no passion for anything. She complained constantly of feeling "flat" or "feeling nothing" or "being blah." She was immobilized by her severe depression.

Last night, her gusto for the game she loves seemed a significant benchmark in the headway she's making.

SUICIDAL THOUGHTS SEEM LIKE A THING OF THE PAST – FOR NOW

After 12 treatments, her suicidal thoughts seem a thing of the past. She hasn't mentioned them in several weeks. This doesn't mean she is perfectly recovered. ECT doesn't purport to solve all your problems and cannot. She knows this. She sees her psychiatrist twice a week. She takes all her medications.

She also knows that she may need follow-up weekly or semi-monthly treatments when this current treatment course finishes because ECT is not permanent. Depression can be cyclical. So she may need ECT on an ongoing basis or every three or four or more months. But it should keep her suicidal thoughts at bay and help her function better than she has in years.

ECT IS NO ONE SHOT DEAL

No responsible, knowledgeable and experienced psychiatrist who routinely administers ECT would ever suggest that ECT is a one-time only treatment course. For some people, not all, it's not. 

Like medication, it may have to be part of an ongoing treatment protocol for mood stability. (Like the Tegretol that I take twice a day for my mania. I've been taking it for 22 years. It's one of my major recovery tools.) Any follow-up ECT regime, its schedule, differs depending on each individual ~ as does everything in life, it seems. 

Since her first course of ECT treatments in 2001, Kitty Dukakis has follow-up "sets of ECT treatments," on average, every seven or eight months, when her depression returns. The wife of Michael Dukakis, former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic Presidential candidate, bravely and with brutal, visceral honesty writes about her ECT experiences in Shock – The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy. It ended her lifelong struggle not only with severe drug-resistant depression, but with her alcohol and amphetamine addictions that masked it for years.

HER MEMORY HAS STAYED PERFECTLY INTACT

Angela is now in Week Seven of her treatment course. It may end next week or continue for four more weeks. She doesn't know. So far, her memory has stayed perfectly intact. Sometimes, like this past Monday morning, 90 minutes after treatment, when I called her from Seneca, she sounded groggy.

It was 10:30 a.m. "What day is it?" she asked.

She had been sleeping and my call woke her.

"It's Monday and I'll call you later."

Let's be honest. Don't you find that sometimes, it you take a nap in the late afternoon and wake up at 9 p.m. you feel a little disoriented. "Did I sleep through the night?" you ask yourself. You search for a clock wondering, "What time is it?"

By Monday night the disorientation Angela felt earlier in the day had disappeared. It always does within a few hours of her ECT treatments, always with healing sleep. To the best of her knowledge, she is experiencing no permanent or even temporary memory loss whatsoever, thus far.

Time will tell. And I'll tell you.

Now, then. Let me know how you're faring. Comment. Comment. Comment. 

I've missed your voices. Your ideas. Even your criticisms. You inspire and stimulate me.

It's great to be back.

Speak soon!

ECT: Up close and personal...

She called me about two weeks ago. Her voice was almost inaudible. Robotic-sounding. All she said was, "What do you know about ECT?"

As it happens, I know a lot. And we discussed it. Or rather, I discussed it. She listened so intently, it felt as if there was physical tension on my land-line.

She said, at one point, "I can't turn off the suicidal thoughts. And nothing is working." 

She has been struggling, no, suffering with fierce, deep and intractable depression for several years, as long as I've known her. About three years ago, she became so immobilized by her depression, she had to leave a senior position with a marketing firm. 

"My mind wasn't working any more. I had tip-of-the-finger syndrome. I couldn't quite come up with the right words."

That's when the suicidal thoughts started, though she didn't tell me at the time.

Last spring, for the first time, she called me one night, threatening to kill herself. As soon as I got off the phone with her, I called her partner and he told me she'd been threatening for days. "She's been calling several people. She's done this before." This time, he sounded worried.

For years, a series of family doctors had been prescribing anti-depressants. None of them worked. She had spent a fortune seeing psychologists and other counsellors because she hadn't been able to find a psychiatrist she felt she could work with. 

She couldn't sleep, so her GP added sleeping pills to the mix. They didn't help. She would fall asleep and awaken at 3 a.m. They fogged her up so much, one night she accidentally overdosed and ended up in Emergency having her stomach pumped. Although she was feeling suicidal, she swore at that the time, "that was no attempt." 

Five months ago, finally, she was able to start seeing a very good psychiatrist at a Toronto teaching hospital, with an expertise in women's issues, depression and psychopharmacology, who reassessed her medications and started her on a new regime. 

"They make me feel like I have no personality," she would say.

I told her to give it time. It takes time. I was wrong.

"I feel monochrome. I'm still not sleeping. I feel flat."

When I saw her, she tried her best to rally for me. She did everything she could to try to break through the haze. She took up sculpture. She dragged herself to her local gym. But most of the time, she stayed at home and thought about what a relief it would be to "not exist anymore." 

Over the holidays, she and her man went up north for a few days, but her depression and her suicidal thoughts travelled with her. Then, on Thursday, January 7, at about 6:30 p.m. she called and asked me about ECT.

I told her about my experiences in the 1960s and 1970s. I told her about several people I know personally who have had remarkable success with ECT. I sent her the two links to the July 2008 posts I wrote here about ECT and other "current" therapies. I told her that it's definitely something to consider.

On January 11, she called sounding more lively than she had in months. "I told my psychiatrist I'm thinking about ECT and she said 'it's certainly something we can explore.' I've decided I want to do it."

She had done her research. 

"Where did you get the idea to even consider it," I asked.

"It came to me out of the blue," she said. "I think I was watching something on TV. I can't remember. I just know nothing is working and this is a chance."

A few days later, she received a call from the psychiatrist who will administer her ECT treatments. Her psychiatrist had made the connection.

"I wasn't expecting him to call me," she told me. "It was a real surprise. He was great. So encouraging and informative. He had already spoken with my psychiatrist and he knew all about me. He said he thought it would be best for me to have two sessions a week of unilateral ECT for between eight and 12 weeks. Early morning sessions. He asked me to join a study and I said I would."

I couldn't remember her sounding so positive.

"Do you think I could follow your experiences while you're going through it?" I asked. "Since you're in this study, you're helping to further scientific research. My writing about your entire experience might help people see ECT as it really is and how it really works. It might clear up some misconceptions."

She said, "Yes, of course. That would be a good idea. It might really help. But please don't use my real name, okay?"

"Okay," I said. "Thank you."

Dealing with holiday stress

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah. Christmas Day is two weeks from today.

For the last three or four weeks, I've been deluged with press-releases from public relations firms all over the continent offering to set up interviews for me with psychologists and other "experts" who will enlighten me – and you – about "new ways" to cope with an old story – the stress of the holidays. 

Holiday stress has become an industry, I think. As viable and real as any retail venture offering "seasonal specials" at wildly discounted rates.

I suspect the "stress of the holidays" is a media event, to some degree. 

Charles Dickens may have had a hand it, too. 

Before I go one step further, let me be straight with you. I'm Jewish. My tradition is very different. But, I confess that I have been stressed about holidays in the Jewish calendar, like Passover and the High Holidays. 

However, I do not believe I have ever had a publicist approach me and propose I interview a psychologist about Passover stress or Rosh Hashanah stress or Yom Kippur stress or Hanukkah stress. Somehow, these holidays don't seem to generate the same calibre of stress. Maybe they did and I was too young to be aware of it. Maybe stories about how to weather Hanukkah stress run in Jerusalem Post. I don't know. 

More likely, it's simply a question of demographics. And business.

In the Western world, Christmas is everywhere. Big Business. No matter what your religion, it's Christmas and it's contagious. So, it seems, is its stress.

As I think back, way back to my childhood, I don't recall any sense of stress or anything like it. Anywhere. It was a beautiful time. 

Christmas had no religious meaning for us though we knew its origins. We went to public schools and Christmas concerts were regular annual events – and great fun. I loved singing all the Christmas carols. Still do. Especially the way Diana Krall sings them.

We were taken to see Santa Claus at Eaton's downtown Toronto flagship store (below is a picture of me at age 5, in 1953), to sit on his knee and answer the question he always asked, "And what would you like for Christmas this year?"

I was precocious. A mite like the little girl Natalie Wood played in the classic 1947 Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street. I probably lectured him on why I didn't want anything for Christmas since we don't celebrate Christmas because we're Jewish. Then, I'd tell him that my parents would probably buy me some little things for Hanukkah.

Still, Christmas was utterly magical for me. We always went to see the elaborate Christmas windows at the big downtown Simpson's and Eaton's stores. Those stores are gone and I think those delightful moveable displays are long gone, too.

They're still a tradition in New York and other major U.S. cities. Selling stuff is reserved for inside some major store, to a degree during the holidays, like Lord & Taylor in New York. But not here. 

It was a tradition for us to be driven around the twinkling, glowing residential streets of my grandparents mid-town neighhourhood or ours in North Toronto after dark. Now we don't have to drive far. We've dubbed our street "'Las Vegas North." 

And, of course, there was The Santa Claus Parade. 

We had holidays from school. All this often coincided, depending on the lunar Jewish calendar, with Hanukkah, which had its own lovely traditions and delicious foods – like potato latkes smothered in apple sauce or sour cream. Lighting the Menorah every night for eight nights and singing the Hebrew blessings. Playing the game of Driedel, which I have never understood and still don't, with gold-foil wrapped chocolate coins, that you could eat whether you won or lost.

I remember the early days of television. My grandparents had one. I was born in October 1948. Mass marketing and advertising were in their infancy. We weren't commercialized at the age of two and three like the phenomenon of Consuming Kids today. We also weren't as sophisticated and knowledgeable either. 

I don't want to sound like an old fogey bemoaning "the good old days," but I feel sad that these holidays, which should be happy, are somehow so stress-laden.

My friend, Tufts University clinical psychiatrist Ron Pies calls them the Holiday Blues, With Some Shades of Grey in an excellent post on PsychCentral about the myths and realities of suicide and depression at this time of year, too.

So, I plan to muse about The Holidays over the next little while. Not in every post. Not all the time. It may be a cathartic activity for us. Therapeutic, perhaps. Mentally healthy.

I want to open a forum for you. Come and share some of your warmest memories of this season, no matter how you celebrate – even if you escape to the south, where Christmas is snowless and sunny, but still Christmas! 

Let us turn "Coming Out Crazy" into a place of respite from the stress of the season. Come and vent if you wish, if that will make you feel better. It's open season during the holiday season here this year.

You know me. Ever the cockeyed optimist, even as I face mountains of essay marking. I'll find some hummable seasonal music to keep me company. 

And tomorrow night, we have our annual family Hanukkah party. Mmmmmmm. I can taste those latkes!

Living in the "now"...

Tomorrow afternoon, we're going to the funeral of my husband's closest friend. 

Bill Davidson was the most vibrant, charming, engaging man I've ever known – robust is the word I used to describe him in a newspaper story I once wrote. He never let me forget it, either. 

I fell in love with Bill the first time I met him about 10 years ago. He and my husband met in 1958 when he was directing a wonderful B-movie called Ivy League Killers. He cast Marty, 22 at the time, as one of a gang of young, rather innocent bikers. 

Several years later, they reconnected and began a professional partnership that ripened into a best-friendship.

They simply adored each other.

Besides his outstanding career as a television and film producer and director, and screenwriter, Bill was a poet, a lover of words and wordplay. He loved typewriters, too. Then his granddaughter introduced him to one of the first generation Apple iMacs. He was hooked. His email moniker was "finefrogfilet" and he never looked back. 

He and my husband preferred corresponding by email and their messages were long and literary, laced with wit and writerly hijinks, puns and playfulness. As well, there were always these peculiar, indecipherable references to The Young and The Restless. They were both shamelessly addicted.

I've been thinking about how Bill lived. He hated replacing things – preferred old to new – and always found the most fascinating people to do his repairs. A gentle giant, gregarious and curious, Bill loved collecting quirky, odd, idiosyncratic folks and their stories, which he then added to his wide-ranging repertoire of entertaining tales. 

When we were with Bill and his wife, Mary, there was always side-splitting laughter. They had their problems – no one escapes this life without them – but Bill managed to find a funny side to those, too. He spliced his misadventures with wit and wisdom, humour and humility. He was a brilliant raconteur. Bill never simply told his stories, he re-enacted them, playing all the parts. He seemed to stop time. He was ageless and timeless. 

He was 81. 

That might sound old to you, but it's not old anymore. 

This weekend, ironically, after several years, I heard from another friend who works as a professional "permanent companion," caring for aging people, no longer able to live on their own. Right now, she's caring for a woman about to turn 101.

Ursula has no home, no permanent address, no belongings, other than her clothes and whatever else she can fit into a suitcase. She has a car, a cell phone and an email address.

She's gloriously happy.

"I live in the now," she told me. She doesn't know when her current assignment will end or where her next one will be. When she cares for people, they tend to live longer than they or anyone else expects. She befriends them and enriches their lives. 

She travels with them, cooks for them and entertains their families. She creates a warm, homey, loving environment for them and when they die, she moves on.

When I was about 13 and Ursi was 16, my mother hired her as a "mother's helper" for the summer at our cottage. She was a cute, bubbly teenager from Oshawa, where she lived with her family. 

Every summer, for years, she came back, eventually becoming an honourary member of our family.

That first summer, she remembers me at my most vulnerable, my most histrionic, my most emotional. I had no diagnosis yet. I was at the beginning of my psychiatric journey.

"It was quite hectic," she wrote in response to an email I sent with a picture of me attached, taken that first summer. "Dealing with you was on the top of the list at the time." 

Now, at 63, she's lived and married, remarried and had several different business careers. She has a daughter and a grandson. She admits she's made a lot of mistakes, but "I'm happier than I've ever been."

When I saw Dr. Bob three weeks ago, I was so stressed out I couldn't function. 

He asked me one question. "What can you let go?" 

We came up with a strategy. Since then, I've made some major adjustments. One of them is to live in the present. To stop dwelling. To do whatever I'm doing, 110% at the time.

And then, let it go. 

It's amazing. I planned a month of Wednesday morning sessions with Dr. Bob, but I only needed one. 

Something twigged. I'm relaxing. Sleeping.

What a providential weekend this was. We lost our dear, darling friend, Bill, and on the day he died, my nomadic childhood friend and helpmate, Ursula surfaced. Out of the blue. 

We're having lunch next week. We're grabbing the moment.

That's what life means to me. That's how I want to live. 

All quiet on the August front...

I'm happy. I'm free. For the next 13 days minus one morning, I am not a part-time community college teacher. I am a blogger. Full-time. Your blogger!

If I have not commented or responded to your recent comments, please forgive me. I read them. I wanted to respond, but I was under a huge gun. Thank you for them, for caring and being so tuned in to me and to each other. That's what community is and we, I believe, are a community. I want us to be.

But now, today, as of 2:40 p.m. this afternoon, the Summer 2009 term at Seneca College is officially over and I am me again, entirely. Not a split personality, driving madly between my life with you, thinking about you, and concerned about you, and my students, and their concerns – trying desperately to get them through my course. If you want a thoughtful and very insightful sense of my life as a part-time community college teacher, read this from The New York Times. My niece, a newly-minted PhD who began teaching today at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh sent it to me and in turn, I've sent it to about 12 of my part-time colleagues, all of whom agree that it was the story of their lives.

Not now, though. 

Right now, I have NOOOOOOOOOOOO students. Yipppppeeeeeee!!!!!!!

So, I want to celebrate. Here I sit, with not a thought on my mind. Well, not quite. I have two deadlines that are niggling at me and I'm going to do something about those. That's a good thing.

You know, it's interesting, but since everyone takes August off, it seems, nothing much is happening in the mental health world. I subscribe to about 20 psychiatry, mental health and bipolar blogs and right now the biggest news story is that Prime Time on ABC is airing a show on Mad Pride in a few minutes – the old violence issue will be a focus. You'd think an outfit like ABC News could come up with something other than this tired stereotype. 

You know what they say. Good news is snooze news, so it's easier to go after a sensational angle that represents a tiny minority of cases than find the real story. When the media does the diagnosing, as often happens with a sensational crime, I wonder how accurate those diagnoses really are. Well, I'm not going to think about it right now. It's borrrrring. 

I'll watch it tomorrow.

Other than that, nothing much is happening in the blogosphere around mental health.

I guess when the psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and other psychotherapists go on vacation, "illness takes a holiday," too.

Helen Henderson's piece in this paper a few days ago about a British film called "Schizo, the horror story" was, as always, excellent. Have a look. The Brits are light years ahead of us in challenging mental health discrimination and working to end it. That's exactly what this new mini-movie, produced jointly by the British government and Time to Change, a leading mental health charity, is doing.

While the Mental Health of Commission of Canada is "Making the Case for Peer Support" with yet another cross-country, face-to-face consultation and focus group, we're still the only country in the G8 with no National Mental Health Care Strategy. They're still working on it. As if "peer support" is news. It's important. Very important, but I guess since it's August, nothing else is newsworthy. Please.

How many people are able to access Wellness Action Recovery Plan (WRAP) groups in this country? Or Pathways to Recovery? Does the MHCC even mention Mental Health Recovery on its website in any meaningful way?

But you know what? For the next few days, I don't care. I'm going to relax. Take care of business I've neglected. Doctor's appointments. Spend some time with my husband who doesn't recognize me these days. And my Dandies. Read anything that has nothing to do with what I'm going to be teaching in the fall. Go to a movie, if we can find one that appeals to us. And think about some intriguing material to share with you.

The Fall film line-up doesn't look all that promising, but I don't care. The Toronto International Film Festival is around the corner, and that's always intriguing to read about. Right now, though, this minute? I don't care about anything. I haven't a care in the world. Until September 8, when it's back to school.

On one sad but inevitable note. Senator Edward Kennedy has died. A voice for reason and compassion in health care, all health matters. Yes, especially mental health care. When you consider the madness that is exploding south of the border around securing  fair and equitable health care reform so all American people can receive the health care they need, Senator Edward's Kennedy's passing is a true loss and a great tragedy. His voice or reason will be missed.

Be well and speak soon!

Very soon!

"Julie & Julia" and me...

I'm back. Refreshed. 

That's how Julia Child in Mastering the Art of French Cooking instructs you to prepare all green vegetables after they've been blanched in boiling water. Refresh them. Plunge them into a bath of ice-cold water for a minute and they retain their glorious colour and crispness. They stop cooking, too. 

That's how I feel right now. Crisp. Bright. Not raw but ready. Tingly and alive again. Yum.

When I left you two weeks ago, I was a limp, burnt out asparagus spear. Desperately in need of refreshing. Emotionally parched. Spiritually dried-out. (Oh, dear. That's quite the metaphor, isn't it? ;-)) 

Then, the next day, the day following my departure – after I hung out my "Gone Fishin'" sign – my alter ego, my trusty iMac, burnt out, too. First, it froze. Then it died. Its hard disc damaged beyond repair.  

Now, all that is behind us – as you may have read in last week's Postcard from the Edge – and we're cooking with gas again. 

As you may have already guessed, over the weekend, my husband Marty and I treated ourselves to Nora Ephron's new movie Julie & Julia and we emerged refreshed and ravenous. 

More than that, we felt validated, knowing our marriage is what keeps us alive and loving life. We held hands all the way through the film – I cried – convinced our "enough" has made us rich beyond belief.

It wasn't always that way for me. Just as Julia Carolyn McWilliams Child wasn't always "Julia" – I wasn't always the person I am today. 

Back in the early 1990s, I was on dialysis. For close to two years, I had to spend 12 hours every day, seven days a week, hooked up to a peritoneal dialysis machine – to stay alive. Nauseous most of the time, I couldn't eat well. I had to restrict foods drastically, especially salt. Still do. 

Tethered to my machine through a shunt in my gut, in bed, I watched Julia Child's television shows religiously. Her vitality, wit, energy and passion for life and delicious French cuisine kept me emotionally enriched and vicariously well fed. 

If I couldn't eat, at least I could watch ... and imagine how her exquisite-looking dishes tasted. 

Those were lonely years. I was single. Unable to work. My Endstage Kidney Failure was the result of Lithium toxicity caused because my psychiatrist at that time neglected to monitor my Lithium levels properly. I never knew they had to be monitored so carefully back in 1975 when I started taking it for mania. (If you are on Lithium, please be sure to have your levels checked!) 

So, I lost the functioning of my only kidney. Yes, that's right. I had only one to begin with – not that it would have made much difference. Lithium toxicity affects both kidneys if you are lucky enough to have two.

Anyway. That was then. This is now. My youngest sister Glorianne saved my life by giving me one of her two kidneys on March 7, 1994 and the rest is history. She's healthy and well. Transplant is no cure, but it sure beats dialysis.

I returned to work as a Lifestyle feature writer at The Toronto Sun and on August 13, 1997, two days before her 85th birthday, I interviewed Julia Child. 

We talked about butter. 

Julia Child's trademark was her love of butter and rich French cookery ... and her revulsion for trendy, nutritious, low-fat cooking. 

"It's adulterating good food," she trilled on the telephone, I recall, in her unmistakable vibrato. "I was in a restaurant the other night and they had quenelles, and someone in our party said, 'Gosh, I haven't had a quenelle in years.' But this chef had done them complete 'diet', and do you know what one of those bouchees tastes like with no cream? It was awful, like chewing a chunk of rubber."

Yet even Julia admitted she was cutting back on butter to try to keep her weight down. Her approach to "cutting back" is either taste something rich or don't serve it at all. 

"Make another recipe. Don't adulterate something that's supposed to be good and delicious," she sternly 

advised. "You have your mouth all set for food the way it's supposed to be and then you get foam rubber. It's much better to eat an apple than this fake food."

Until seeing Julie & Julia, I never knew much about Julia Child's personal life. In part, the film is based her autobiography My Life in France. She wrote it with her husband's great-nephew, Alex Prud'homme in the last few years before her she died on August 13, 2006 – two days before her 92nd birthday.

It's a charming love story. Not only about her passion for France and its food, but her zest for life and especially, her lusty loving husband, artist Paul Child. She had a glorious and relatively late-in-life marriage – she was 34 and a virgin – to the most delicious man in the world. Paul absolutely adored Julia, who was 10 years his junior. He supported her wholeheartedly during her close-to-10-year odyssey writing her first landmark cookbook and getting it published. He illustrated and took photographs of her culinary creations for this and many of her subsequent cookbooks all their married life. He encouraged her to try teaching cooking on TV and was thrilled watching her phenomenal rise in the world of cooking.

What struck me most was that he loved her exuberance. She was loud and big and wildly enthusiastic. All 6-feet, 2-inches of her. Decidedly, admittedly different and he was utterly smitten. She was the "butter to his toast" and their marriage was a valentine, year-round.

That pretty well describes how my husband feels about me. And I him. And our marriage. He's more than 12 years older than I am. He calls me his "child-bride." He sees me as beautiful, even first thing in the morning, fresh out of bed. Unbrushed. He loves my exuberance, my excitability, my over-the-top enthusiasms. My passions, many of which he is thrilled to share. I'm different, too. Very different, as you well know. He especially loves that about me. 

I am not 6-feet, 2-inches. Just over 5-feet. As tall as Julia Child was, so I am round. 

Well, not quite, but in truth, I've had a real problem with food and my weight for too many years. I eat when I'm stressed, bored, anxious, frustrated and upset, as well as when I'm hungry. For any reason. The only time I don't eat is when I'm asleep. 

I eat too much. I gorge myself to fill emotional voids by stuffing my mouth and my stomach, sometimes to the point of pain. Food is my drug of choice. Unlike Julia. She was happy with tastes. A good eater. I'm not.

There's a reason. It began following a sexual assault by an orderly in the psychiatric ward of the Toronto Western Hospital when I was there for a week of observation in the early-1960's. I was in my early teens. It was my first hospitalization. Within six months I gained 50 lbs. I suppressed that memory for 14 years. All too common a story. Build a wall of fat around yourself and no man will ever want in again. Eat away your unconscious psychic pain.

Today, you might call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder but back then PTSD hadn't yet been invented. When I was about 28, the memory of that sexual assault suddenly came out during a therapy session with the same psychiatrist who neglected to monitor my Lithium levels. He didn't deal with it, so it festered for years. I ate for comfort. At one time, I weighed as much as 242 lbs. Now, I'm well under that, but by no means trim.

So, I am a perpetual yo-yo dieter. Marty met me when I was thin and fit. Now, I'm not, but he cannot see the difference. Like Julia and Paul Child's marriage, we are blindly in love and about to celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary on August 22. He's the most dashingly handsome man I've ever known.

Now, even my yo-yo dieting is less a problem.

As for the "Julie" in this film – Julie Powell and her account of her year-long adventure cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogging about it – that's me, too. 

I was new to blogging when we launched Coming Out Crazy on Healthzone.ca in April 2008. Since then, I've reinvented myself and I love my online life with you. My "other life." I live for your comments. I care about how you will react to my musings. Marty is my editor – he is also a writer – and although the New York Times has not come calling, I believe we're making a difference as one of the only online mental health blogs carried and promoted by a major urban daily newspaper. 

Sadly, I learned yesterday from Philip Dawdy at Furious Seasons that Liz Spikol is no longer writing her award winning bipolar blog The Trouble with Spikol at The Philadelphia Weekly – a loss for all of us.

I don't know what happened, but I hope she'll be back. Her voice is needed. The more voices, the stronger we become. Your voices, too. All our voices.

Meanwhile, on Saturday evening, following the movie, Marty and I picked up a fresh whole-wheat baguette, some luscious local Ontario strawberries, tomatoes-on-the-vine, a gorgeous bunch of fresh basil and a small triangle of Italian Parmesan cheese. I've discovered the most divine new salad, thanks to Mark Bittman and his New York Times blog, Bitten. 

Here's the recipe. It's easy. Perfect for right now. A seasonal summer "red salad" – divine.

Fresh strawberries, tomatoes, sliced parmesan, fresh basil and – get this – no fat. Just a good balsamic vinegar. Toss and enjoy. Julia wouldn't mind. I bet she'd love it because it tastes scrumptious – without a smidgen of butter. 

Julia always said, "We must have the courage of our convictions." In the kitchen. And in life, too. That's what "Coming Out Crazy" is all about. 

I'm so happy to be back. I've missed you. 

Speak soon!

What do you think about "Mental"?

I'm really thrilled that mental illnesses are finding their way into mainstream entertainment – Broadway Theatre and especially television.

Two examples are the rock musical Next to Normal – which won three Tony Awards last Sunday – and the new television series Mental.

Here are some random thoughts...

When Alice Ripley won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical on Sunday night, I was over the moon with excitement.

Perhaps that means that "Next to Normal" will continue its Broadway run, at least until mid-September. On Tuesday, fresh from watching the Tonys on television, my psychiatrist Dr. Bob and I were discussing this groundbreaking rock musical about a suburban housewife with drug-resistant bipolar disorder attempting to cope with her life, family and hallucinations. It feels more like an opera with so many traumatic moments viscerally exposing how mental illness reverberates within a family and expressed in song. 

Ripley is in 24 of the show's 32 musical numbers.  

It wasn't hard to convince Dr. Bob to trip down to New York for an artistic weekend to see this show and the new Tony Award-winning Best Play, "God of Carnage".

Between those two corporeal crawls through the innards of contemporary coupledom – in Normal, the circle broadens to include kids – a psychiatrist, especially mine with his psychoanalytic bent, can't avoid having the time of his life.

He seemed convinced and I can't wait to discuss his take on these two plays.

According to a terrific story about Ripley in last Sunday's New York Times, after every performance, she is mobbed at the stage door by a gang of admirers, "and one out of five people ... is bipolar. I meet them every night," she said. 

In researching the role of Diana Goodman, Ripley read extensively about depression and psychopharmacology, she said in the New York Times interview. She also relied on a favourite uncle and her personal assistant as real-life resources. Both are diagnosed with bipolar disorders.

Ripley makes a striking and hopeful analysis of her onstage persona – which is why this show deserves to run for a very long time. Even Sir Elton John clearly stated this when accepting his Tony for "Billy Elliot" as Best Musical on Sunday night. 

"I started by thinking of Diana as someone with a disorder and I look at her now, and there's nothing wrong with her. I think that tells me I'm on the inside."

No matter how anyone reacts to this show, I think it's a healthy and hopeful portrayal of a woman realistically struggling with her bipolar disorder diagnosis as it's handled by mainstream medical approaches. It's controversial and gets people talking – gives them the freedom and the courage to open up more than they did before seeing the show, or reading about it. 

It's liberating. Those of us who have ever felt marginalized and negatively stereotyped can see ourselves in this character and in other characters in this show, indirectly affected when someone close to us is grappling with a serious and complicated psychiatric problem. 

This show is also contributing to the public discourse about emotional trauma as it relates to the development of a psychiatric illness. It calls into question the way we, in North America, perceive mental illnesses and/or mental disorders.

Are they "brain diseases" or "emotional disorders"? Or both? Are they chronic diseases or can you recover?

These are not yet mainstream ideas because a long-standing yet incorrect "assumption" – that mental illnesses are rooted in brain chemistry – is generally accepted as true in the medical mainstream. It is not. There is no scientific proof yet. This is an increasingly debated issue.

No one knows for sure the causes of mental and/or emotional disorders. They are varied and differ with each individual. Causes can include genetic, intrauterine, biochemical, environmental, social, cultural, and psychological factors – or a combination of them.

And people do recover from severe mental illnesses. I'm one of them. 

Meanwhile, on the home entertainment front, my husband and I have been watching a new summer replacement every Tuesday night at 9 p.m. carried on Global and produced by Fox Telecolombia called Mental.

This show, shot in Bogota, Columbia is being vigourously debated among bloggers and others online and elsewhere, I'm sure. It's highly unrealistic, but dramatically intriguing. And also encourages people to start publicly discussing mental health issues more openly. In essence, it's helping to normalize mental illnesses and health issues, and it's broadening the public discourse. 

It has people talking.

Here's what I like about Mental.

It's lead psychiatrist – a terrifically appealing character named Dr. Jack Gallagher played by British-born actor Chris Vance – is highly unconventional. 

Gallagher is always getting himself into hot water in the mental ward of the L.A. general hospital where he's recently been hired.

He's obviously modelled on Dr. Gregory House played by Hugh Laurie in the multiple award-winning House, M.D., also carried on Fox – but with a more engaging personality. Gallagher is a creative and unorthodox problem-solver with a team of young shrinks-in-training assisting him with his bizarre cases.

Normal, run-of-the-mill people with diagnoses of psychosis, severe depression, bipolar disorders, anxiety or schizophrenia are rarely the focus of each weekly segment, which ends with a solution. How conveniently and conventionally "Hollywood"!

It would be nice if real-life patients received this supremely specialized care instead of the cookie-cutter treatment most of us receive when we're hospitalized and even as outpatients. In Canada, all-too-often, it's the proverbial "15-minute consult and a prescription."

Nevertheless, for once, psychiatric patients are not depicted as villains and murderers, but complex individuals, human beings, with reasons for why they may be acting out or catatonic and solutions for their potential recovery. This is a huge step forward for a mass-market television show. It's far from perfect, but it's hopeful.

And it's too early to tell. Next week's segment involves a young boy with bipolar disorder. 

Why not tune in and have a look. Give me your critique. Share your ideas and what you think. Do you hate this show like the very popular Philadelphia mental health blogger Liz Spikol? 

Or do you like it. Share your reasons.

Let's discuss it!

Flying-High on "Next to Normal" ...

I'm Broadway-bound and here's the scoop! It's cool. 

On May 12, the publicist for the Broadway musical "Next to Normal" sent me a personal email. 

"This show, which was recently nominated for 11 Tony awards, has a very unlikely subject matter for a musical – it focuses on a woman living with bipolar disorder and the effects it has on her family," he said.

He attached a link to a fascinating "must-read" New York Times story about the show's depiction of mental illness and then added: "I think your readers would be interested in this show and we would love to invite you and a guest to see the show, if you are in the NYC area anytime soon."

How about that?

Besides being a mite shocked as to how he found me, I couldn't agree more. You would be very interested, I'm sure, in Broadway's first mainstream musical – a rock musical, actually – about manic depression. 

But... until I received his invitation and two complimentary tickets, I hadn't planned to be in NYC "anytime soon," though I already knew all about Next to Normal. 

Originally, it opened at the 2005 New York Musical Theatre Festival, titled Feeling Electric – Up the Dose – "Darkly funny and brutally honest, this powerful new musical chronicles one family's personal battle to cure a mother of her long-term depression, with the controversial help of one hotshot young doctor who prescribes electric shock therapy as her last resort treatment."

One of my cousins who lives in Manhattan and frequents the theatre saw that production and said "it blew me away."

It's come along way, since then, when tickets were $15 each and it ran for only six performances. 

When the newly-named Next to Normal opened at the off-Broadway Second Stage Theatre in February 2008, Ben Brantley, chief theatre critic of the New York Times, wrote: "To watch this tale of a haunted housewife (beautifully played by Alice Ripley) and the household she in turn haunts is to ride a speeding roller coaster of responses. One minutes you're rolling your eyes; the next, you're wiping them. When the show ends, you're probably doing both at the same time."

With direction by Michael Grief, who also directed Rent and Grey Gardens – I saw the latter on Broadway in 2007 – the current revamped Broadway production of Next to Normal at the Booth Theatre is a "brave, breathtaking musical," Brantley wrote in his April 16, 2009 New York Times review. It "focuses squarely on the pain that cripples the members of a suburban family, and never for a minute does it let you escape the anguish at the core of their lives."

  

It's not "your standard feel-good musical" he said, which is probably why I was offered a couple of complimentary tickets. Ticket sales have vastly improved since the show received 11 Tony Award nominations – all the major ones, including Best Musical. 

That's not why I've decided to fly down to Manhattan for the day to see this show. I want to share my impressions with you. Brantley, to the best of my knowledge, has never been diagnosed with a bipolar disorder. I want to judge for myself. Through my experience. Not the least of which is that I, too, am a suburban housewife (well, sort of) with a husband and 22-year-old stepdaughter. 

And also... winging to New York for the day to see a Broadway show is nothing new for me. In 1969, I flew down to see the original Broadway production of Hair, which opened in 1968 and is now another Tony-nominated revival on Broadway. Theatre producer Marlene Smith hired me to write the program notes for Toronto's first 1985 production of Cats which had opened on Broadway in 1982. On both occasions, I jetted down to La Guardia early in the morning, taxied into Manhattan, had lunch and caught a matinee – then went back to the airport and was home before midnight. It's a kick, believe me.

So, I'm pulling the same routine and I'll be reporting and giving you my own review. By the way, I've reviewed theatre before – I'm not a neophyte – but this time, I'll be watching closely for authenticity. Hollywood has an abysmal record recreating characters with mental illnesses who are remotely close to real. I'm a huge fan of Tara in the new HBO series United States of Tara – but she's an artist. (Think Vincent Van Gogh.) In this show, we have a suburban housewife and the creative team did their homework, apparently, and created genuine characters. We'll see.

This show cuts even closer to the bone, for me. 

Stay tuned. I'll be getting back to you.

*    *    *

On the British front – I jwant to report that I've become a member of Rethink and Time to Change and I've made connections with the heads of several other agencies there, thanks to social activist Robert Ashton. In the coming weeks, I'll be branching out even further – to Australia and New Zealand. 

Wish me luck. And let me know what you think and what you're interested in learning about:

• How other countries' approach mental health and wellness, and mental illnesses  
• How they challenge discrimination  
• How people like us, with psychiatric diagnoses, emotional problems, mental illnesses and disorders are "treated" 
• How we can "heal" 
• How they define "Recovery" 

As far as I'm concerned, you never know, unless you ask. Here, in North America, we think we're the centre of the world – and we're not. I'm curious about other G8 countries with national mental health strategies. I know Australia and New Zealand are even more evolved than Britain. Certainly more evolved than the U.S. and Canada – where the neurosciences currently rule, along with the drug companies.

Something's gotta give. Let's keep the dialogue going. I want to hear your thoughts and ideas. 

I would love your comments, but there is a problem with the blog commenting function right now. If you have a comment that you would like posted, please contact me by email – let me know – and I'll arrange it, until this situation is resolved. 

Trust me, the powers-that-be at The Toronto Star are working on it.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Have a great meantime!

My adventures "across the pond" ... (part two)

This is the continuation of my post on Tuesday. It's about what happened as a result of my early morning curiosity getting the better of me and my overwhelming desire to broaden my perspectives on mental health and wellness... beyond North America.

You'll recall that I've been feeling claustrophobic. Itching to go beyond North America and join up with other non-profit agencies in Britain challenging mental health discrimination and "Working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

Here, there are too many barriers to change, too many old stereotypes, too many unfounded fears. There is still too much discrimination and prejudice. It's time to start dismantling them in a way that's healthy and productive. To look beyond our own borders to other countries and learn from them. We can be a global community.

To be honest with you, I'm not convinced that turning mental illnesses and mental health issues into brain diseases is the way to go and that's the direction we're going here.  

You will remember, on Sunday morning, I awoke after a wonderful night's sleep. I typed "mental health recovery" in the BBC news search engine and found myself on BBC's Mental Health page.

I ended up on Skype, clad only in my pink nightie, talking to the renown social and business entrepreneur Robert Ashton. Let us say that when he appeared on my 24-inch iMac screen in full-colour, live and staring back at me, barely awake, and barely covered-up, my face blushed to matched the colour of my pink night gown. 

Here's Part two...

Robert Ashton and I had a good chat, despite my embarrassment. He smiled a lot, but he's going to help me to join Rethink, a 30-year-old charity dedicated to "working together to help everyone affected by severe mental illness recover a better quality of life."

He's also linking me up to other British mental health charities that for decades have been fighting discrimination and prejudice, fear and ignorance while helping the one in four of us who live with mental health issues every day.

I discovered that Rethink – one of the largest of these charities – only allows Brits to join. So, I'm hoping Robert will help me join, as a Canadian. That will give me and you, too, a totally different perspective on Mental Health and Recovery. Robert has important connections with the British mental health community because he's involved in "spreading the word" – one of his social entrepreneurial passions. He also lives with depression.

Robert's definition of "entrepreneurship" is very enlightened:

"I'm a business writer, speaker, broadcaster with a passion for all that enterprise can deliver," he wrote to me in a Facebook exchange. "You don't have to start a business to be entrepreneurial, just get it into your head that you are in control of your life and stop letting others lead you where you don't want to go!"

One of his connections is British mental health activist Dawn Willis, Vice Chair, Regional Committee, at Rethink, Mental Health Services.

Robert arranged for us to meet on Facebook and we've already become "friends" – we have 13 mutual Facebook "friends", I discovered. The international community of activists and advocates is remarkably small. I'm hoping Dawn will help me and perhaps, I can help her. We can help each other. Communicate and collaborate. Share our ideas and learn from each other.

Synergy. 1 + 1 = 3. You know. Two heads are better than one. 

We have to do something, here, on this side of the Atlantic. Talking Therapies are big in Britain. There's more to mental health there than PILLS. I'm getting very bored and increasingly upset with the neuroscientific approach that's overpowering psychiatry here in North America. 

ENOUGH! We've got to make some changes. How to go about that process? We have to voice our concerns. And if not us, who will? We have to raise our voices. Collectively. We have to start agitating for changes. Healthy changes that include all approaches to mental health, including group therapy and peer support. 

Like a thoughtful and careful and prolonged period of diagnosis and a 60-minute hour psychotherapy session instead of 15 minutes – The McDonaldization of Psychiatry, according to my friend, Tufts University author, poet and clinical psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Ron Pies. He's also Editor-in-Chief of Psychiatric Times, the world's largest online psychiatric journal with more than 41,000 readers worldwide.

Pies is sounding a call for the survival of his profession. In Great Britain, there's a strong post-psychiatry movement afoot with psychiatrist Philip Thomas at the helm. I attended several sessions with Dr. Thomas last June at a Toronto International Alternatives to Recovery Conference.

Even my York University "friend" Julie Gazzola is excited about this prospect of my linking up with the British Rethink movement and other British organizations committed to change through education and communication.

Here's her reaction via Facebook – "Good for you, that's great! I worked as a social worker on a children-with-disabilities team. I loved my time in England. And yes, talking therapies are much bigger there. It's an interesting place."

So, I await word of my pending membership in Rethink. In the meantime, let's move forward. Let's branch out and expand our community here at Coming Out Crazy. Let's see what's happening 'across the pond'. Let's go global. Isn't that what blogging is all about? Social Media for Social Change to benefit the greater good of society. Community.

We can learn so much from each other. It's about time. Don't you think? Let me know! Comment, please! 

(In all honesty, I cannot answer all your personal emails, though I'm thrilled to receive them. I wish I could. That's what the comments on this blog are for. If you wish to remain anonymous – and I understand why – create a special email address, or a different username or identity. But, please, comment and keep on commenting.)

I want to hear your voices! Your ideas and perspectives. How else can we become a strong community and a force for change? That's what must happen. That's my vision for this blog! 

Change through the exchange of information, ideas, suggestions, experiences. All are valid when it comes to healthy recovery and healing. It's called "talking therapy"!

Thanks so much, in advance, for your support.

Speak soon!

sln