change therapy

on tuesday i had the honour of hosting the #mhsm (mental health and social media) chat. that’s a weekly one-hour conversation about mental health on twitter. the topic we discussed was mental health and addictions. it was very lively, and perhaps the biggest topic was self medication, a topic that sprung up within the first [...]

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tomorrow night at 6pm PST I will be hosting the weekly #mhsm chat on twitter. #mhsm stands for mental health and social media. #mhsm was started by amy kiel, an ardent mental health activist. the topic of the chat will be mental health and addiction. #mhsm typically uses between 5 and 8 questions to stimulate [...]

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the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous are sometimes summarized in these seven words: i can’t god can i better let god these pithy words come from the first three steps: 1. we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and that our lives had become unmanageable 2. we came to believe that a power greater than [...]

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military mental health: sign of strength from militaryhealth on vimeo. it’s a sign of strength to seek help. for  an anonymous mental health or alcohol assessment try www.militarymentalhealth.org.

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aaaah, book reviews. let’s start with the bad parts: how to achieve a heaven on earth is full of conservative christian overtones, quite a few of the articles have a bit of “chicken soup for the soul” feel, and at times i thought i was dealing with an aborted e-book. but there were clearly good [...]

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unhealthy habits and demographic changes are combining to place an unprecedented burden on the health-care system that may not be manageable, the heart and stroke foundation said in its 2010 annual report on canadians’ health. so says the CBC about an alarming increase in heart disease and the potential for heart disease, adding `most of [...]

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“don’t give a panhandler money! he’ll only buy drugs!” we’ve all heard this. today i gave a hefty amount of money to the guy who always sits in front of my neighbourhood supermarket. the parking sign pole against which he was leaning was shaking because he was shivering so hard. i made him promise to [...]

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i’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year, this time determined to do all i can to make it to the 50,000 word count. so my blog posts may be sporadic, or short and sweet, or both. like this one. only it’s not sweet. at a walmart in lethbridge, told by a friend: a drunk native fellow [...]

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invisible illnesses are, by definition, not seen. there are two parts to this: the (un)seen, and the (non)seer. i’m not sure that invisible illnesses are in fact invisible. the man with chronic pain sits on his bed at 3:00 am, a gun in his mouth, ready to pull the trigger. he makes sure his wife [...]

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for a while now, i have been working part-time for the mennonite central committee in richmond. i’d get on the 49 bus to granville street, and then take the 98 B-line down granville. granville is one of the older streets of vancouver, and that stretch down to the fraser river is lined by old trees, [...]

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a buddhist metta prayer for mothers who do not fit our stereotypical image. the throwaway mothers, the bad mothers, the ones we point our fingers to.

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here is part 1 of my presentation at MentalHealthCamp on the topic “blogging yourself home – writing, blogging and creativity.” i’ll present it as if i was talking at the presentation and treat you, dear readers, as if you were participants in the workshop. here we go … when i was a little girl, there [...]

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the following is an excerpt from carolyn myss’ fascinating “gallery of archetypes”. most of us can recognize ourselves in one or more of these archetypes, or typical ways of being in the world. in her descriptions, carolyn myss tells us about the positive as well as the shadow (some would call them negative) aspects of [...]

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here is another interview with someone recovering from an eating disorder. this person used to eat too much, and has been and still is dealing with it by going to overeaters anonymous. isabella: “you’ve come a long way, baby” – how long HAVE you come? what’s changed? OA person: how long have i come? i [...]

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here is the last instalment of my conversation with joanna poppink. this is part of a series of interviews about different topics in eating disorders. originally, i was going to tack the answer to my last question on to the second part of the interview. however, i realized that the answer to this question is [...]

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