Yesterday Andrea posted about how one is responsible for ones crazy, and I want to dig into that a little more today. Owning up to our shit, and owning up to our pasts is an important part of the process of living with a mental illness. It takes time, and yes, it takes a lot of energy, but it is… Read more →
Let me open this by saying that I have been crazy as a shithouse rat for many years now. Were you to print out the mental illness portion of my medical record, you could probably handily bludgeon someone to death with it, if you were the kind of person who did that sort of thing. I’ve spent a lot of… Read more →
A letter was delivered anonymously to the mother of an autistic child in Ottawa this August. It was posted on twitter, and both buzzfeed and Huffington Post picked it up. READ THE LETTER and the come back here so we can talk about it. In the thread on which I first found this letter, someone said “I don’t think… Read more →
For those of you who don’t know, I was a rubella baby. I came with the full complement of symptoms, vision loss, hearing loss, congenital heart issues, and learning disabilities. I’m luckier than some, but not as lucky as most. Lucky isn’t everything either. I still can’t drive. I still wear a hearing aid, a scleral shell, and my eye… Read more →
About a half an hour ago Representative Thompson from Texas spoke words that broke my heart. They weren’t words about how abortion shouldn’t be a choice. Hell, she was speaking FOR women who are survivors of rape and incest. She was speaking FOR the side of the debate that I support, the pro choice side. But I don’t feel like… Read more →
Last Saturday I met up with some family down in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a pleasant lunch and afternoon of wandering the downtown pedestrian mall there. There’s all kinds of amazing independent stores in that mall, as well as a few chains. As usual when I’m planning to be out and moving around on hard surfaces for several hours, I was… Read more →
Andrea here, while our beloved blogmistress Elsa is off conquering Vegas. I thought about turning the blog into a showcase of the worst cat macros I could find, but decided in the end to use my powers for good. That being the case, here is some actual content. Recently, I’ve seen an increased trend towards bloggers I follow doing podcasts… Read more →
Two years ago I would have laughed at you if you’d suggested I apply for a PhD. Six years ago it was part of my plan. Get a Master’s, then onto a PhD? Then: The World. Today? Today I’m investigating PhD programs and thinking about scholarly pursuits again. You may be wondering what happened in the interim. Grad school happened… Read more →
People with disabilities and chronic illness are particularly vulnerable to assault in medical settings, where there is plenty of privacy but not a lot of internal security. Hospitals have done little to address this, seeing instances as isolated incidents. Patients assault other patients, strangers and visitors walk in from the streets into hospital rooms and assault patients, medical professionals and… Read more →
I don’t remember the first time someone urged me to be a Good Cripple. It might have been on my Livejournal, when someone I thought of as a friend told me I was “ruining” my “lovely journal” with negativity. It might have been the first time I gathered my courage and hissed “fuck off” at someone trying to distract my… Read more →
