I was 25 or so the first time I went to therapy as an adult. I was living in NYC, working full time, and lived with my partner of several years. The past was catching up with me in ways I did not have the capacity to handle on my own, and my partner thought…
About a year ago, I posted my editorial, Thoughts on/of Suicide. The process of writing, publishing, and discussing this essay was almost like putting a little pressure valve in my brain/heart/stomach that lets out the emotions, anxiety, and dark thoughts. I think about this piece often and I have reread it more times than just…
“The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed, exactly as it is.” ~~~ One of the first things I was taught when I began my 40-hour training to become a certified Advocate for victim/survivors of sexual violence, was that our job was to “support and…
I wonder if it is ironic to say that this article overwhelms me. This article speaks to me in so many ways, and it is both validating and kind of scary to see myself being described so accurately. I often worry about being “too much” for people; when I get excited about someone, or a…
If there ever was a time for men to shut their mouths and open their ears, minds, and hearts to the women in their lives, that time has to be now. To be fair, that time was actually a long damn time ago, but it’s (hopefully) never too late to do the right thing. Through…
“Getting help for mental health is not enough. We live in a world where people don’t want to live in it anymore. We need to change the world.” – @nikkimwalls ~~~ I think about suicide a lot. That is a loaded sentence. I mean it in two specific ways: 1. I often think about killing…
Comedy can be an incredible tool for furthering social justice by challenging seats of power and shining light on uncomfortable truths. Alternatively, comedy is often wielded by those with power—straight white men—to perpetuate oppression and discrimination by picking on people marginalized by society; by punching down. In Hannah Gadsby’s Netflix special, “Nanette,” the Tasmanian comic squares her…
We still have far to go in our understanding and discussion of the violences of men in the United States and abroad. Domestically, there has been increasing recognition in the wake of acts of mass violence in schools that a common trait in each of the perpetrators–who are predominantly young white men–is a history of violence…
