Category: mental health
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Talking Publicly About Trauma
Anna Spargo Ryan has written a riveting and widely appraised book called The Paper House, and I’m thrilled for her success (if not a bit jelly) because I’ve followed Anna on Twitter for a few years. She is intelligent, witty and an advocate for mental illness awareness and I was particularly keen to read her…
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When Your Child Has Mental Health Issues and You Want To Use The Get Out Of Jail Card
I’m tired of this particular journey. Self-absorbed I know, but there I said it. No “parent of the year” award for me; I’m the parent who loves her child but is tired of this arduous journey at his side. I’m tired of not sleeping, the stomach pains, the disagreements about the best way to raise…
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The Curse Of Anxiety, Dogs and Teenage Commitment
The dog has decided to upstage the rest of the family in the anxiety stakes. I am reliably informed that part of her condition can be blamed on her Poodle heritage, in which separation anxiety is a common issue, but the other part is either a question of osmosis ie. living with us, or a…
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Why I Blog…
I had the chance to speak at a local library event recently about blogging, using this blog as my example. It had little to do with talent or notability, more an obvious case of nepotism as one of my close friends is a librarian there, but we all have to start somewhere. One of the…
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Never Judge A Book By Its Cover
Picture the scene. I’m at the local pool, in the fast lane even though I know that I have no right to be there after two weeks of culinary debauchery and enough alcohol in my body to pickle every organ, but I don’t feel too guilty because there’s some cheeky geriatric in there, too, and…
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Death By Probiotic: Not How I Imagined I Would Go
It would be highly ironic if I were to finally meet my maker from choking on a probiotic. But that is something that very nearly happened on the day of my father’s wedding. Death by bacteria I’ve considered my death a lot over this past few weeks, thanks to my old friend ‘anxiety’ doing his…
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It Takes A Village To Raise A Child…I Hope
Some people believe it takes a village to raise a child; in our case it will probably take a whole fucking city.The lengths you go to, to prevent your dysfunctional, magnet-attracting-trouble teenager, from creating havoc while you’re away. When Louisa Clare shared a post from Revolution From Home entitled In The Absence Of The Village,…
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Parenting, Anxiety and Leaving Your Kids Home Alone For The First Time
Digest for a while this great little article about Helicopter versus Hands Off Parenting and deduce where you think I sit in this conversation. Watch the video below at the end of the post. This question has become a bit more sensitive recently because I’m trying to keep the fact that we’re leaving our kids…
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Do You Ever Stop Worrying About Your Children?
In the week that NC has achieved another milestone by passing her driving test, Kurt’s dangerous enthusiasm for life has escalated to a new hair-greying level. A text with ‘I’m all G’ doesn’t quite cut it at ten o’clock the morning after a sleepless work night spent waiting for the reassuring sound of your teenager’s…
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Friendship, And How Twenty Minutes Can Be A Lifeline
This was going to be a post about how I’ve finally found my doctor, which is a big deal in my life because I’m a bit of a messed up, menopausal, hypochondriacally-challenged shell of the former woman I was most some of the time. So finding a great doctor almost feels like I’ve won the…
LOUISA SIMMONDS 