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Link – Why I Want People To Stop Mentioning My Suicide Attempt
This is important if someone you know has survived an attempt, or is even going through struggles with their mental health: I love that you love me. I love that you accept it has happened and haven’t buried it under the carpet. But please, don’t mention it. My suicide attempt is mine. There are so many emotions…
Shared Links (weekly) Sept. 21, 2025
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Link – With an epidemic of mental illness on the streets, counties struggle to spend huge cash reserves
I only have an eye roll for this: When California voters passed a tax on high-income residents in 2004, backers said it would make good on the state’s “failed promise” to help counties pay for the treatment of the mentally ill. After nearly 15 years, Proposition 63 — the Mental Health Services Act — has…
Sharing – People Aren’t ‘Addicted’ to Wearing Masks, They’re Traumatized
‘ve been describing it to friends and coworkers as “the inability to just turn off the fear of other people and their germs”. Because, in some ways, that’s exactly what it was. I’ve spent a year plus barely leaving my house. Sure, I worked from home even before the pandemic, but it’s an extreme sport now, going into the back yard is an adventure into a strange and exotic place, let alone being around other people.
Yesterday, however, I did manage to get out and meet up with a friend and former coworker. I won’t say it wasn’t awkward. But, it wasn’t as awkward as my anxiety had built it up in my head, mostly because I think we both knew it was awkward, and went out of our way to figure out what we were comfortable with. We met in the office building where she works, wearing masks. She asked if I wanted to keep being masked walking to lunch, and we agreed to not, and to sit outside to be safer. And she asked before giving me a hug after lunch.
It was an important lesson to me, that we need to navigate this together with the people we care about, and meet them at the level where they are comfortable. It’s not about racing to be the most “normal” group, it’s about making sure everyone comes along, and is comfortable, because we’ve all dealt with various levels of trauma over the last 14-15 months, trauma that will show up in a variety of ways. There’s nothing wrong with people who are slower to feel comfortable, they are just doing what they can. I’d rather meet them where they are, and where I am, than not see them at all anymore, or shame them about their own hesitation. It’s not a race.
