One of Us
The headline in the electronic newsletter came was written in large font: “She’s one of us.” My favorite magazine that offers hope and harmony to people living with bipolar depressions, bphope, called attention to the recent disclosure that actress Catherine Zeta-Jones lives with bipolar depression. By the time I received the newsletter, I had already read a couple articles about Zeta-Jones from my twitterfeed, the Huffington Post and on the cover of magazines in the grocery store checkout. Even though I live in Los Angeles, where people are often defined in their relationship to...
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My favorite slogan of the environmental movement is the edict that we should: “live simply so others can simply live.” It’s a basic truism that most of us who are living in the world’s wealthiest nations find incredibly difficult to enact. The everyday components of our lives – driving to work, flying to visit family and friends, buying a plastic bottle of water, printing out important documents, using our cell phones – contribute to the planet’s disease and the diminishment in the life quality of our brothers and sisters in the poorest nations. Even the most ecologically...
Read MoreDream Big
While many individuals around the world play harmless pranks and jokes on their friends and colleagues, April first marks a different kind of celebration for me. April first marks the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Read MoreFlight
This is part three of three parts. See part one “cry it out” and part two “falling” Human beings have long admired and envied a bird’s ability to soar through the skies. I imagine that this initiated the design of the kite, and reaches its pinnacle in space exploration. I do most of my flying on commercial airplanes as I travel from one end of the country to see family and friends, or to give lectures and speeches. Although American inventors Wilbur and Orville Wright are often credited with inventing the first airplane, they readily admitted to their inspirations. They...
Read MoreFalling
This is part two of three parts. See last week’s part one, “cry it out” In 2001, the rock band, Creed, released their album Weathered that featured a song that climbed into the top ten of the Billboard music charts. “One Last Breath” has stayed with me in the years since it received a lot of radio play because it so well describes how I can feel during a depressive episode. My favorite verses say: Please come now, I think I’m falling I’m holding to all I think is safe … But I’m down to one last breath, and with it let me say “Hold me now. I’m six feet from the edge...
Read MoreCry It Out
I experience one of life’s greatest pleasures when a child hugs me. Warm fuzzies head to toe in less than two seconds. When I was a child, hugging adults usually conveyed a familial or extended family relationship, and joy for the adult’s presence. And like many other children, there were occasions when I needed a hug so I could be calmed: when the wasp stung me, when leaving home, when my grandmother died. I now understand how much the hug gives to an adult. Adults also receive a sense of dependence, fulfillment, comfort and joy from the hugs. In hugs, we absorb and diffuse pain;...
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