Minds

The first time I remember learning what a safeword was, I was sitting in my college dorm, devouring blogs about kink and BDSM. It all seemed so foreign to me, a teenager who couldn’t imagine real people doing any of the taboo things these blogs talked about.

I never used to think my eating or weight fixation was that weird...I just thought I was a health nut.

Validate my pain. Acknowledge my suffering. And know that, for me, it’s very real.

I never used to think my eating or weight fixation was that weird...I just thought I was a health nut.

"The worst part is that I internalized those messages."

When we make medications seem like a failure rather than a simple necessity, we make the people who take them feel like failures, too.

I firmly believe that every person on the planet could benefit from therapy. I myself have been going to therapy every week for about four years and don't plan on stopping.

When I left the hospital the night that he was admitted, I sat in the parking lot gasping with big ugly sobs and looking for someone to blame — beginning with myself. I'm his mother, and I'm the only consistent parent he's ever had. As I finally made my way home, with tears streaming down my face and my mouth open in a silent scream of pain, all I could ask myself was "what have I done?" How could I have allowed my son to be hurt so deeply, and in so many ways?