Sharing – Finding Beauty in the Pieces: A Journey Through Healing
I love the idea that healing can be messy. Most truly human things worth doing are messy and chaotic. We weren’t made to only do easy things, but we are made to grow and heal.
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Review – Madness: Race and Insanity in a Jim Crow Asylum
If we want to advocate for mental health, we need to advocate against policies that make mental health issues worse for so many people. Prisons do that. Putting more people in jail does that. The number of incarcerated people in the US is the highest in the world. Many of them need mental health treatment, not criminal records, and a felony conviction that prevents them from getting jobs, housing, and care even once they are outside of prison.
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Review – The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen
It will leave you asking more questions than it provides answers, but these are questions we should be asking.
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Reviews Elsewhere – Hold on to Your Kids: Why Parents Need to Matter More Than Peers
I’ll repeat what I’ve said many times. Kids are often vulnerable because they have no close adults to trust and lean on for support. No one is there modeling what a mature sense of self is, so they aren’t learning it. I don’t necessarily agree with everything Drs. Maté and Neufeld said in this interview that I’m sure I wouldn’t agree with everything in their book, but on this point, I agree. Kids need trusted adults who make them feel safe and loved.
Yet we keep creating a society that makes it harder to provide that for kids. We are paying a price for that.
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Reviews Elsewhere – The 5 Resets by Dr. Aditi Nerurkar
The list of five may not surprise anyone, but as you look at what you want to prioritize in the new year, these five things might be helpful, especially finding quiet time and breaks from all the noise in life to focus on what matters to you the most. I think that’s something many of us could use some help with. Check out the interview, and if you’ve read the book, let me know your thoughts.
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Insights from While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence.
As I read the rest of her insights, I realized this is where it all starts. We don’t have a mental health care system. If we had some semblance of a system the other four insights would go without saying. We’d see mental health patients as human beings, we would listen to them about their lived experiences, we’d have support systems for families, and we’d understand that despite all the effort and love put in, some people would still lose the battle, just like we do with cancer and every other illness.
