Gum on My Shoe

By Janet Coburn December is National Family Caregivers Month, so it seemed like a good time to talk about caregiving. In my view, there are three kinds of caregiving: giving care, receiving care and self-care. Caregiving Caregiving is not an easy task, no matter whether you’re a family member or a professional. With an uncommunicative person such as one with depression, it practically takes telepathy. At times it seems impossible to know what kind of care is needed. A hug? Encouragement? Alone time? Help with chores? A listening ear? My husband, who is my principal caregiver, does all those things for me. One thing about caregiving that I learned from my parents is that caregivers need recognition, too. My mother took care of my father all through the years of the illness that killed him. He wasn’t mentally ill, but his physical needs were many. Once my mother came to me and asked if she was doing a good job of caring for him. Of course, I reassured her. The thing is, objective...

And sometimes it happens that you are friends and then You are not friends, And friendship has passed. And whole days are lost and among them A fountain empties itself. — Brian Patten, “Sometimes It Happens” Fran and I talk a lot about friendship. We post about it on social media. We blog about it here. We wrote a book based on our experience as transatlantic best friends. We believe friendships are healthiest and most resilient where there’s a commitment to honest and open communication. That’s not to say, of course, that honesty and openness guarantee a friendship will last forever. Things change, and that’s as true of friendship as anything else. Fran and I have weathered more than a few storms over the years. I’d say we’re stronger for it. But not all change is navigable and not all friendships endure. That’s something I’ve not written about before, although it’s a topic I’ve wanted to explore for a long time. The starting point for this article was a conversation with ...

  I am known, inside and out. I do not feel the need to hide parts of myself away for fear of scaring you. I listen, unafraid of the places you take me. We express love, wonder, anger, jealousy, envy, frustration, freely. We laugh and cry. Real laughter. Real tears. I tell you my how-it-is even when I know it is different from yours. I listen to your how-it-is, holding it gently in the space between us. We dance in the differences, the gaps where the magic happens.   ~mb   This post was originally shared on social media , November 25, 2011. Photo by Leslie Jones on Unsplash.  

I’m just waiting on a friend. — Mick Jagger / Keith Richards. “Waiting on a Friend.” Pretty much every voice or video call that Fran and I share begins with me messaging her “rwya” — our shorthand for “ready when you are.” It’s become so much a part of our friendship that I rarely stop to think about it. Except today I did as I was waiting for Fran to call. I thought it might be interesting to explore what that little acronym means for us, in the hope others might find it useful. I can’t remember exactly when we came up with “rwya” but it was early in our friendship when transatlantic calls were still a novelty for us. In those days, Fran was going through a protracted episode of mania. She wanted and needed frequent and often immediate contact. I loved spending time with my new friend and was happy to accommodate her need for connection, but we needed to figure out how best to do that. I consider it a kindness and mark of respect if someone messages me before calling to check if...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by the number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. 10 Ways to Spend Quality Time with Your Friend That Don’t Involve Talking about Mental Health Our Top Posts of the Month (October 2022) Exploring Bipolar Disorder and the Sister Diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder. Is My Friend or Sibling Underdiagnosed? Our Top Posts of the Month (September 2022) I Am Not Afraid: Three Messages of Hope for Caring Friends Being a Man: Exploring My Gender Identity for International Men’s Day 40 Mental Health Blog Topics From the Caring Friend’s Perspective How to Write the Best Acknowledgement Page for Your Book Our Top Posts of the Month (August 2022) Our Top Posts of the Month (July 2022) Our most visited pages were: Contact Us Resources About Us Our books News and Appearances Testimonials   Photo by Martin Baker.  

I think I became a writer because I used to write letters to my friends, and I used to love writing them. I loved the idea that you can put marks on a page and send it off, and two days later, someone laughs somewhere else in the world. — David Nicholls I recently shared a selection of open letters I’ve written over the years, but what about regular, personal letters? Letter writing has always been an important part of my life and I thought it might be interesting to explore that a little. The inspiration to do so came when I discovered my friend Louise shares my love of letter writing. “It’s such a lovely thing,” she told me. “That hardly anyone does now. My mom used to make us write thank you letters to all our relatives after Christmas and birthdays so I think it’s been instilled in me.” I can trace my letter writing back to childhood too. I mentioned this last year in a blog post titled Thank You Anyway: The Gift of Ingratitude . We’re taught to be grateful — or rather, to ...

Life is not a lesson, though you can choose to see it as such. Life is not a trial, though you are free to live yours as though it were.   My friend’s words from the other day are still present in my mind: “The truest response is letting go...” Yes... let go of pain, of joy, of aching, of delight... Do not hold on to any of it, let it rise, have its moment, and go, to be replaced by what arises in its stead... externally and within you. Offer minimal resistance to what arises... Let it pass through you, joyously, gratefully... We cling, we hold on, from fear. Fear of losing what was never ours to begin with. Fear of daring to reach for what is within our grasp. This moment is all that you will ever own. It is what you have brought into being, it is what you were brought into being to experience, herenow. You are the universe’s gift to itself in this moment. No other has been granted this gift. Accept it, take it in your hands, examine its shape, colours, textu...

My pronouns are he/him/his . Observed each year on November 19, International Men’s Day (IMD) celebrates the positive value men bring to the world, their families and communities, highlighting positive role models and raising awareness of men’s well-being, including mental health. I shared some general thoughts on connection and conversation for IMD last year. This time, I thought I’d go a little deeper, and explore what being a man means to me. That should be pretty easy, right? I’ve had sixty-one years to figure out what being a guy is all about. Oddly enough, it’s proven a lot harder than I imagined. It’s not that I’ve ever felt misgendered, or unhappy at being thought of as male. I’ve worn my gender identity all my life, albeit without thinking much about it. I was a boy. I am a man. But what does that mean ? Let’s start with International Men’s Day itself. Do I feel it’s for and about me? Does it resonate? It does, yes. Last year was the first time I’d engaged with IMD, bu...

I can’t promise I won’t get scared sometimes, but I am not afraid. The first key message I want to share is that there’s nothing to be afraid of in being friends with someone who lives with mental illness. That might seem an obvious thing to say, but it’s important given the degree of stigma and social isolation many people experience if they live with debilitating illness of any kind. We all like to believe we’re above such prejudices, but if we’re honest most of us can admit to having felt uneasy at times in the company of people who, on the surface at least, appear different from us or whose needs leave us feeling uncomfortable or helpless. Even if we don’t feel that way ourselves, we might have had difficulty dealing with other people’s negative reactions to our friend or loved one. If anyone had told me years ago that I’d meet somebody online who would become a close friend, I’d have been happy to believe them. If they’d gone on to say that this person would live on the other...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by the number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. 10 Ways to Spend Quality Time with Your Friend That Don’t Involve Talking about Mental Health Exploring Bipolar Disorder and the Sister Diagnosis of Schizoaffective Disorder. Is My Friend or Sibling Underdiagnosed? Our Top Posts of the Month (September 2022) Our Top Posts of the Month (July 2022) Our Top Posts of the Month (June 2022) Our Top Posts of the Month (August 2022) 40 Mental Health Blog Topics From the Caring Friend’s Perspective Our Top Posts of the Month (May 2022) Our Top Posts of the Month (April 2022) Speaking Up, Speaking Out: Harnessing the Power of the Spoken Word for WMHD Our most visited pages were: Contact Us Resources Our books About Us News and Appearances Testimonials   Photo by Alfred Schrock at Unsplash.  

By Janet Coburn Of course, blogging didn’t exist when I started writing. It was quite a journey ending up where I am today. Even mental health services were a big blank to me when I was young, something that no one I knew experienced or even talked about, except to make jokes about going to “Wayne Avenue,” the location of the nearest insane asylum (as we called it then). But it’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t write. Childish poems fueled by voracious reading. Hideously depressive poems fueled by burgeoning bipolar disorder. (I still commit poetry from time to time, writing sonnets and villanelles about bipolar disorder.) But before I returned to poetry with more structure, I indulged in free verse – unrhymed, unmetered verse that relied on the juxtaposition of images rather than formal style. I studied creative writing in high school and college. But the bipolar disorder was undeniably with me, influencing the topics I wrote about: “Two Ways of Looking at the Same Pain” a...

In the latest in our series of themed posts , I’ve selected articles from our backlist which cover various aspects of blogging. Scroll through them all or click a link to jump to the relevant section. Blog Topics and Prompts Blogging Workflow Blogging Q&As Practical Tips The Personal Touch I’ve provided a short excerpt from each post, with a link to the original article. I will update the list as relevant posts are published in the future. Blog Topics and Prompts Struggling to come up with a compelling idea is one of the inevitable frustrations of blogging, especially if you publish frequently or to a set schedule. The articles in this section offer a variety of topics and prompts to help get your creativity flowing. 40 Mental Health Blog Topics From the Caring Friend's Perspective Whether you’re an experienced blogger or starting out on your blogging journey, one thing I can guarantee is that you’ll sometimes struggle to find a new or engaging topic to wr...

Check out our top posts for the past month. Posts are listed by the number of page views they attracted during the month, most popular first. 10 Ways to Spend Quality Time with Your Friend That Don’t Involve Talking about Mental Health Our Top Posts of the Month (July 2022) Because You’re Worth it! A Curated List of Self-care Posts Our Top Posts of the Month (June 2022) A Few Thoughts on Taking My Own Advice Time to Care: A Curated List of Posts for Mental Health Awareness Days and Events Everyone Gets to Be Who They Are I’m Weak and What’s Wrong With That? 40 Mental Health Blog Topics From the Caring Friend’s Perspective This Isn’t a Mindfulness Book, or Is It? A New Book by Sarah Fader Our most visited pages were: Contact Us Resources About Us News and Appearances Our books Testimonials  

When we speak we educate and also free ourselves from a silence that surrounds mental illness. — Brynn McCann Organised by the World Foundation for Mental Health and observed each year on October 10, World Mental Health Day (WMHD) is an opportunity to raise awareness of mental health issues and mobilize our efforts in support of mental health. Fran and I have shared pieces in the past to mark WMHD and other mental health awareness days and events . I was keen to do so again, but when I saw this year’s theme — Making Mental Health and Well-Being for All a Global Priority — I was unsure what to focus on or how to proceed. The topic is hugely important, but that was the problem. It felt too big, too wide-ranging, for me to address it meaningfully. Surely, anything I wrote could do no more than touch the surface. I was pondering this when my friend and fellow mental health blogger Aimee Wilson asked if I’d like to go with her to a local WMHD event. I said yes immediately. We atte...