Minds

For years, I didn’t know I was hearing voices. When it started to happen, it felt like someone else’s thoughts were being inserted into my mind, shouting at me, undermining my reality — impossible to control.

Here’s the thing: I have benefited greatly from reading stories from others, the daring narratives of those who have histories similar to my own. We feel more human when we hear that other humans relate to an experience we maybe thought was our very own private hell.

My goal isn’t just to raise a son who can avoid the trappings of eating disorders. It’s to help him actively embrace who he is, on all levels.

It wasn’t until I hit my twenties that I ever remember hearing anyone discuss the topic of mental illness like it was an actual thing you could take yourself to the doctor for.

This ad is the furthest thing from funny. It’s not humor, it’s not satire, it’s just plain distasteful. Good humor punches up. But there’s no humor to be found in an issue that, according to the Center For Disease Control, killed 47,055 people in 2014. Of those over 47,000 people that died of a drug overdose, opiates — like heroin — were involved in 61% of those deaths.

You can swear up and down that you meant it some other way, but the reality is that “crazy” and “insanity” refer to a lack of sanity, which will always circle back to and affect mentally ill people, especially when it’s used in ways that diminish or sensationalize our experiences.

If you’re an entrepreneur like myself, you probably know exactly what I’m talking about. No one is looking over your shoulder to see if you’re on-task, but you’re probably working 12+ hour days anyway.

These are precious years; years that pass too quickly as your little ones speed towards adulthood and the ever increasing awareness that their parents are fallible. What I never wanted, nor expected, was for these years to be punctuated by my second spell of severe depression.