mental illness
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Admittedly, sometimes when I read the Bible my brain checks out. It’s off making plans for the day, stressing over a thousand things that need to be done right-this-minute, and noting I really need to put on some lotion. It can be hard to focus alone in a quiet room, so it’s all the more…
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Grief is a constant companion from the first moment it arrives. It bursts through the door uninvited, often unexpected, without any regard for what you already have going on. It spreads out, taking over every corner of your space with its presence. You notice things are missing and grief just shrugs, refusing to give anything…
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Chapter 12: Freedom My Dad was teaching, and my brother was in school, so my Mom and I had a long drive just the two of us. “I promise I will never send you back there,” she said in earnest, and the rest of the weight floated away. We had a real heart-to-heart, and though…
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Our family of four, along with a bunch of our extended family members, have been going on summer vacation together since 2019. Typically, we all go in together to rent a cabin somewhere. We’ve stayed in Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina. This time, though, we shifted gears and ventured away from the picturesque woods. When…
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Chapter 11: Homestretch? My period started and I was very unhappy about it because I didn’t have the freedom to grab a heat pack or take Tylenol as needed. So, I just suffered through the cramps. While I waited for breakfast, the morning news program was on in the background, and I started writing to…
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I have been attempting to post one chapter each Friday. Even though they’re already written, it takes a bit of work to skim each one and make sure I change some of the names and places for privacy reasons. I missed last week, so I am posting two chapters today. Chapter 9: God Is With…
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Chapter 8: Prisoner Someone should take the paintbrush from that therapist because the picture she painted was a grotesque misrepresentation of what my hospital stay would actually look like. I knew something was off the moment my parents pulled up to a large red brick building that looked nothing like a hospital and more like…
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Chapter 7: Crumbling Down On the morning of September 11, 2001, I awoke to another day of school. School hadn’t even been in session long enough for me to memorize my schedule and I was frantic because I couldn’t remember which class I had third period. It was one of the classes that rotated depending…
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Chapter 4: Not So Merry Traditionally, my little family of four spent Christmas day with Grandma P and Uncle M. I was wary when I found out that they had both been sick on Christmas Eve. They insisted it was just something they ate, maybe the fish, and so my parents made the decision to…
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Chapter 3: Pivot We did not end up moving to Guatemala. I was led to believe that it was pretty much a guarantee. We had our family portrait taken at the Wal-Mart photo studio, those smiling faces slapped on some prayer cards to distribute at the churches we needed to visit. My parents were tasked…