Tag: mental-health

  • Like Buttered Toast With Jelly and Coffee In The Morning 

    Sometimes, in my early morning musing with my coffee, I get philosophical.  That sometimes makes me want to kick my own ass.  I mean, why am I complicating a beautiful quiet morning with deep thoughts? That guy in the mirror is still half asleep and wont listen anyway.  Funny how we wake up, sit down…

  • No Schedule, Just Sunlight and Shortcuts to Nowhere

    I grew up in the 70s and 80s, in a city that felt like it was still learning its own edges. Streets weren’t lined with development yet, and blank spaces—lots of dirt, weeds, and sun-baked patches of ground—were waiting for someone to claim them. We claimed them. We ran through them. We made trails, shortcuts,…

  • Throwing Words Into the Wind

    Let me tell you a story…something I learned about myself, and only fully recently acknowledged. This won’t be a confession of weakness, nor a tale of courage or inner strength. Those are just labels. And the truth is, labels are strangers to far more people like me than most realize. If anything, this story is…

  • Out of the Dark to Find Me Again

    So last night, I had a realization. Not one of those cinematic, lightning-strikes-the-soul kind of realizations. No dramatic music, no sudden gasp into the void. More like… sitting there, minding my business, and boom—my brain quietly taps me on the shoulder like, “Hey… you good?” And apparently, I wasn’t. Or at least, my writing wasn’t.…

  • Between Me and Myself

    Sometimes the quietest conversations are the ones we have with ourselves.They come in fragments—moments of memory, glimpses of people we’ve loved, the echo of a voice we thought we’d lost. This is one of those conversations. It started with a dream, a few small visits from my mom, a song that kept coming back, and…

  • The Burden of Grief

    This comes not as a confession, but as a quiet observation—drawn from conversations with those who have known loss, who have carried grief quietly and persistently. Grief is both deeply personal and inherently human, connecting us even as we navigate it alone. It is born of shared experience, of listening, of trying to understand. What…

  • Fire and Grace

    There are things that will make you angry. You’re human. It’s inevitable. Something, somewhere, sometime is going to piss you off. It’s going to happen. What really matters is how you respond. I was faced with that today. Let me provide a little context. Like countless others, I’m susceptible to outside forces—things that can alter…

  • Dichoso El Árbol

    Music. For most, it is simply entertainment. For some, it fills the silence. For others, it is just noise, or a distraction from what weighs on the mind. But for a smaller number, music is more—it is healing, it is connection, even a kind of spiritual touch. For me, it is a bit of all…

  • More Than a Story

    When I was a kid growing up, like any other kid, I had dreams about what I wanted to be when I grew up. A writer wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t even on the radar. Not even in the same universe. Yet here I am, telling stories. Like most kids, my list was the…

  • Not Just Here, But HERE

    It started as an observation. Not a complaint — at least I don’t think it was. Why do we write referrals for things that could be solved with a conversation? A student taps a pencil too long.Another mutters under their breath.One rolls their eyes. And instead of stepping into the hallway for two minutes of…

  • A Conversation with That Guy in the Mirror

    There are some days — not often — when I need expert advice. Or at least someone intelligent enough to argue with me without filing a complaint. It doesn’t happen much. And I don’t usually tell anyone when it does.The last time I mentioned it out loud, I was one concerned look away from an…

  • Instructions Not Included

    Parenting might be the only job on the planet where they hand you a freshly hatched human being and say, “Good luck,” and then just… leave. No orientation. No handbook. No laminated troubleshooting card tucked into the diaper bag.  You don’t get a user guide that says: If child begins lying, press reset. If child…

  • Like Therapy – No Appointment Required

    Life is a journey—and what a messy, beautiful one it is. There are peaks that make you feel invincible, and valleys that make you question if you packed the right shoes.  Triumphs feel like fireworks; failures feel like stepping on Legos in the dark. Each stumble, each victory, leaves a little mark, whether we notice…

  • Anxiety: The Ultimate Inside Job

    When Worst-Case Scenarios Go Rogue… and Happen Only in Your Head I heard this today and it stuck….made me laugh a little if I’m being honest. Anxiety is a conspiracy theory against you… A self imposed conspiracy. That’s actually a pretty clever way to frame it!  It’s like your brain is secretly running a shadow…

  • Factory Settings: Old Model — Advanced Operating System

    I’ve mentioned my ADHD before. My over-caffeinated brain monkeys have made cameo appearances in more than a few of these pieces. For those who know me, you know I’m driven by a motor. My “slow” setting is probably illegal in at least twelve states and two Canadian provinces. To those who really know me, I’m…