Have a Great Vacation

I. There’s a joke mothers make: mental stability is overrated! A month at a psych ward sounds like a vacation!   It’s not that mental illness is a laughing matter, but a joke in bad taste sometimes feels like the only way to say motherhood makes a psych ward sound fun.   II. The gaslighting […]

Companions in the Darkness

Editor’s Note: Holding a conversation with Diana Gruver is like sitting in the sun: She radiates kindness and compassion in a way that makes you want to lean in and steal as many moments in her presence as possible. It may seem surprising, then, to hear her story—of how she, herself, “clawed toward the light” […]

Soul Sifting

My heart sank into my stomach as I stared at the familiar face on my computer screen. Her eyebrows lifted, likely wondering if my feed had frozen again. But my internet connection was working fine. I forced myself to take a deep breath as the word my therapist, Callie, had just spoken echoed in the […]

Breaking Bread and Belonging

I struggle with feeling accepted when it comes to enjoying time around people. Mainly it is all in my head. I have dealt with mental health struggles since middle school. It caused me to isolate and question whether people approved of me or whether they only tolerated me. Anxiety and depression do that to your […]

Untangled

My mom has a particular story about me that she likes to tell: As she was doing dishes in our kitchen, she looked out the window and saw me in the backyard trying to catch frogs and kiss them. While it’s rather cute to think of a porcelain-white toddler with black curls and thick baby […]

Hello, I’m Weak

 “You may want to consider going on antidepressants,” my counselor says at the end of session. My eyes widen in shock and fear. And shame. Lots of shame. This bomb continues to reverberate in me as I leave. I have no problems with people taking antidepressants. I have many family members who do and I’ve […]

Why Bad Self-Care Is a Kind of Sin

“This author really pissed me off,” I told my husband the other day. I brandished a book called Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination, by Andrew Santella. My anger surprised my husband. He enjoys a heated debate while I tend to shy away from black-and-white argument. But this book? I ranted about it for fifteen […]

I Switched Husbands

I got off the plane and in the car with 6 other women, perfect strangers. I was in Nebraska, a state I’d never been before nor expected to ever go. I was there as the keynote speaker for the women’s retreat, Jumping Tandem. Given the nature of my previous three years, keynoting was also unexpected. […]

When I Am Bipolar

I hold the small red pill between my thumb and forefinger. It’s miniscule. Maybe a third the size of a breath mint. I’ve already taken my antidepressant faithfully, as I always do. I habitually gulp down the rest of my pills but this one I take last, because it’s so small. There was the time […]

Tiny Steps Towards Greatness

“Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.” – 1 Thessalonians 1:5, ESV. “You’re so brave,” she said admiringly as she slipped the receipt across the counter. I fought back the urge to laugh or cry, I wasn’t sure which. She saw me one side of me—the foreigner in […]

Abortion: Unwanted Reality

I had two abortions. They weren’t “crisis pregnancies.” They weren’t “unplanned pregnancies.” They were simply unwanted. I was a teenaged girl living with her boyfriend, playing house. Our “unplanned pregnancies” were nothing more than “not planning ahead and being responsible pregnancies.” I didn’t use birth control. So abortion became my birth control. 1987 was the […]