Spotlight on Stigma... Welcomed but Not Accepted

The day after Thanksgiving...  I always have regrets.  Many people do.  Most revolve around eating or drinking too much, or staying out too late, or spending more on Early Black Friday sales than they should. I have regrets every year.  Mine almost always involves thinking about how I failed at coping with the day and trying to think of ways to cope better next year.  Sometimes the regrets do include how much food I ate or the kinds of food (ie - desserts), though since I'm not a huge fan of most Thanksgiving foods, I'm more likely to eat too much pizza than during a Thanksgiving meal. Thanksgiving is a horrible day for someone with an eating disorder.  Even though I'm technically not in recovery, as I haven't committed yet to working a program for food addicts, I know I'm close to making that decision.  I'll be honest in that I actually plan to wait until Christmas is over to do so.  I know that's not the smartest move, as one more month of l...

I have mentioned my daughter on this blog several times.  I have several mental and physical issues that I deal with... my daughter has more.  She has fibromyalgia, dysautonomia, generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and has a few addictions.  This semester at school has just about taken her out.  It has been very difficult for her to deal with, to say the least.  But Friday something happened to give us hope... Her old rheumatologist was a wonderful woman and we are thankful for her helping us figure out what was going on.  However, she is pretty old-school and has resigned herself to saying that there's nothing that can be done for the pain of fibromyalgia, except for narcotics, which she won't give to a young person, especially one with a history of addiction. This all makes sense but when my daughter is in so much pain she can't make it to class AGAIN, I always have to wonder if there is the possibility of something else out there...

I write this blog from both the perspective as someone who deals with these things personally and as someone who has several loved ones who also deal with these issues.  Right now the latter is tearing me up inside. My daughter has several health issues - mental and physical.  As anyone who deals with these issues knows, the mental makes the physical worse and vice versa.  In other words, anxiety from an anxiety disorder can cause physical pain.  If you already have a condition that causes pain, like fibromyalgia, add anxiety to the mix and it's a lot  to deal with. She is currently in college and was hoping to do something really special next semester - one of her big dreams.  However, this semester has been truly horrible for her.  Right before the semester started, she hurt her back badly - so badly we thought for a while that she would need surgery.  Instead she "just" needed physical therapy 2x-3x a week by a specialist in this type of ...

It's been a very busy few weeks.  I'm a professional photographer and when the work is there, I have to take it.  Who knows when I'll get another job?  In the past two weeks, I have been blasted with work, which is a good problem except that I totally wore myself out and got sick.  I've had a bad cold for the past week and it continued through a massive 3-day out-of-town shoot I had earlier this week.  When I got back home I hit the bed and haven't been out of it much since. Today I decided I wanted to get out of the house.  I really don't think I'm contagious and my coughing is at a minimum, especially when I'm sitting up, so I wasn't worried about infecting anyone.  So I decided to go to a social activity I've been looking forward to attending for a few weeks. Background... One of the things I've been doing lately is learning sign language.  This is something I've been trying to learn since I was probably about 10 years old but for ...