Gum on My Shoe

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...