Gum on My Shoe

A good friend of ours, mental health writer and advocate Sarah Fader, has a new book out. According to the title, it may — or may not — be a mindfulness book. Intrigued, I caught up with Sarah and asked if she’d tell me a little about her book and why she wanted to write it. SF: This book is important to me because my mom taught me how to manage my anxiety with mindfulness when I was eighteen. That was over twenty years ago and it stayed with me. MB: What’s the key message you have for your readers? SF: I want people to know that mindfulness isn’t just a trendy word. It can help you cope with panic and anxiety, and there are simple ways to incorporate it into your life that you may not have thought of. This Isn’t a Mindfulness Book, or Is It? My mindfulness journey plus three easy ways to meditate in everyday life is available from Amazon (print and Kindle). Amazon com | Amazon UK I found it an interesting read. If you’ve heard of mindfulness but don’t know what it is ...

Real friendship is when your friend comes over to your house and then you both just take a nap. (Unknown) As we approach Time to Talk Day (February 3), I can only agree with Rethink Mental Illness that “[c]onversations have the power to change lives — helping to create supportive communities where we can talk openly about mental health and feel empowered to seek help when we need it.” The book Fran and I wrote about our now ten-year friendship is founded on our belief that any successful mutually supportive relationship requires a commitment to communication. That commitment is important no matter how close or far apart you are geographically, but it’s especially so for us, given that we live on opposite sides of the Atlantic. There’s nothing quite like having someone you feel safe enough with to talk openly and honestly about whatever’s going on for you. It can help enormously, whether you’re simply sharing what’s happening, exploring options, or asking for — or offering — a...

No place for beginners or sensitive hearts When sentiment is left to chance. (Sade Adu and Raymond St. John. “Smooth Operator.”) Have you ever wondered if you’re too sensitive or need to be more thick-skinned? Have others said it to you? The question came up recently in three separate conversations with friends and I’d like to explore it in some detail because it feels important. I’m wary of labels like “too sensitive” or “too thin-skinned” because they imply there’s some universal scale of sensitivity and you’re outside the acceptable range. There may be some truth in that but careless use of such labels fosters stigma, including self-stigma when we use them about ourselves. That said, my friends used words like these to describe what they’re going through. Setting my reservations aside, what did they mean? What Does “Too Sensitive” Look and Feel like? In their different ways my friends were expressing the belief that they respond to things in unhealthy ways, or to an unh...

By Daniel Wittler We are in the midst of a very difficult time. Covid-19 has taken away many of the luxuries we have in life and have taken for granted. Of course, many of these things are materialistic and possible to live without. There are certain groups of people that are being much more affected than most. I can’t tell you how many times a day I wonder how people in early recovery are doing while this is going on. I think about myself in early recovery and there were days where the biggest thing I needed was to go to a meeting and talk to somebody about the giant funk I was in that day and what I could do about it. There is a lot of power in simply talking to one another in recovery. Someone in early recovery feeling trapped and stuck from the outside world is a terrifying thought. Thankfully, with all of the advances of technology we are not truly alone. We are able to connect with our friends and family through internet/webcam services. Sure it’s not the same as being w...

By Jen Evans My friend Marty wrote down some things he’d quite like to do this year and I liked his idea so much that I thought I’d do the same. I’ve never been one for resolutions. They always seemed too resolute and never last because I think I literally expected too much of myself. But cultivating and harvesting ... a slow, gradual harvest over the year, that seems reasonable. When I think of cultivating, I think of habits that take time to build and maintain, and have to be worked on each day, or a set amount of time each week, in order for them to harvest. Here is what I’d like to cultivate and harvest this season. 1. Three times a week, I would like to write down in a journal all the things I am grateful for during that week. 2. Meditate twice a week and log it or write about the experience. 3. Cultivate a healthier me. To me this looks like a girl who makes healthier choices around food and who likes the way she looks in a mirror. I’d like to get down to 200 lbs. An...