“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” is one of the worst lies that grownups tell to children. Children threw stones at me when I was a child (though they fortunately never broke my bones). But the many, many words they hurled hurt me deeply internally, rather than externally. I was bleeding inside from them, as much as I bled externally from the rocks.
Plenty of children feel the pain of words. We say, “Children are cruel” and leave it at that, or tell children to simply ignore cruel remarks. We have anti-bullying campaigns…
A Window, Biscuits, a Butter Churn, and a Mule
It was an ordinary farmhouse, located outside Beattyville, Kentucky. But there was a secret inside that we kids loved. The kitchen, of course, was the best room to be in. But getting there was even more fun. The kitchen was obviously an add-on to the house, and the entry points to it included not just a door but a window, leading from one of the bedrooms to the kitchen. Of course, we never used the door like the grownups did.
The house belonged to our Cousins Addie and Jim Mainous. They were old even when we used to visit them…
My next mental health tattoo isn’t going to be about mental health at all — except that it will be.
I have had several ideas for tattoos recently: a yellow rose for my mother (whose maiden name was Rose and whose favorite flower was yellow roses); a compass rose to celebrate my love for travel; or the constellation Orion for my love of astronomy. I also thought of getting a script “My story isn’t over,” which would, of course, be a mental health tattoo.
But what I decided on was a stack of books.
Why is this a mental health…
Last week I wrote about Kentucky relatives on my father’s side of the family. This week’s reminiscences are of Kentucky folks on my mother’s side.
Our Uncle Sam (yes, I had an actual Uncle Sam, and an Aunt Jemima whom I never met) and Aunt June lived on a farm outside of Campton, Kentucky. We took the Bluegrass Parkway, which was then a toll road, to get there. Every summer, we vacationed there for a week or two, along with visiting other relatives in the area.
We often stayed a night in Campton, where my Aunt Thelma ran a small…
Not a lot of people know it, but I was born in Kentucky and lived there for the first four years of my life. My father, who was very attached to his mother, took us to visit on school or government long weekends, and sometimes even regular weekends. Summer vacation invariably involved a trip to see Granny, Pete, and Willie; Uncle Sam and Aunt June and their kids, C.B. and Betty Sue; and Cousin Addie.
One object of all this travel and family bonding was to make sure we kids didn’t pick up “Northern” accents, which I did anyway through…
I used to have a couple of suits hanging in my closet. One was oatmeal-colored. One was blue tweed. One was rust-colored. I had a couple of silk blouses and a jacket or two that I could wear over a dress.
I called them my “Respectable Business Lady” disguises.
At the time I was working at a 9-to-5 job where the dress code was pretty casual. Fridays were jeans days, not casual days. But every so often I had to go to meetings or business conventions, and for them, I needed the disguises. …
Once upon a time, when I was diagnosed with unipolar depression, I wished I had bipolar disorder so that at least I could get things done when I was manic. Then I met someone with bipolar disorder and learned how foolish that wish was. Her manic phase led her to begin projects she would never finish, make loud, inappropriate jokes, and have difficulty with social interactions.
I have bipolar 2, and am fairly well controlled on medication, so I don’t get hypomania often, and when I do, it doesn’t usually last very long. Last month, however, I had a manicky…
When people ask how my husband and I met, I tell them the Reader’s Digest Condensed (clean) version: At the Philadelphia Folk Festival, introduced by mutual friends. Which is true, as far as it goes. But it fails to capture the essence of the experience.
I’ll never forget my first sight of Dan. He was wearing a t-shirt that said Dr. Demento (which his coworkers at the psychiatric hospital had given him) and a patch over one eye. …
My father had three names. No, I’m not talking about the three names that most people have, though he had those too: James Robert Coburn. But the names he went by were sometimes different.
He was born in Kentucky, the youngest son, so of course everyone referred to him as Jim-Bob. His relatives always called him that. In fact, when I went to his funeral service in Kentucky (he had one in Ohio, too), I had to remember to introduce myself to various mourners as “Jim-Bob’s daughter.”
When he went to work at a government job, people called him simply…
The mind and the body are inseparable, part of the same organism. You can’t have one without the other. And each affects the way the other works.
Triggers are a good example. You see (or read) or hear or smell or touch something that unlocks an emotion in your brain. You then have a visceral reaction to that feeling — sweating, shaking, nausea, panic flight, or another physical manifestation.
These reactions are most commonly seen in severe PTSD and trauma related to abuse, but they can happen in less severe circumstances as well. Even something as seemingly innocent as tickling…
Janet Coburn
Author of Bipolar Me and Bipolar Us, Janet Coburn is a writer, editor, and blogger at butidigress.blog and bipolarme.blog.
