Minds

How do you love someone who continually does things to hurt himself? I’ve been holding a phone with my stoned, sobbing brother on the other end for nearly 20 years. I keep picking up the pieces, keep having my heart break, because he’s my brother.

I never wanted children. When other little girls were playing with dolls, I played with stuffed animals. Even when I played house, my home was filled with plush puppies.

“Are you a cutter?” the medical aide asked me, gearing to strap a blood-pressure monitor around my upper arm to take my vitals at 11 o’clock one evening.

I told her in graphic detail about my binges, about the amount and type of food that I forced into my mouth long after I was full, about the lengths I went to to make sure that what I was eating was as unhealthy as possible, maximizing the damage I could do to myself.

...self-care is a process. Ideally, you treat yourself with kindness daily, engaging in acts of self care that function as either a reminder to relax in the midst of everyday stresses, part of a life saving regimen to sustain your mental well being, or a little bit of both.

Pretending you’re OK when you're not is lying — lying to yourself. And it will keep you not OK.

I don’t want your green smoothie recipe, your yoga pamphlet, or your Google search results on the meds I take.

Breastfeeding brought me back. It kept me in my body, forced me to hold my son’s body, and helped me stay connected to the physical reality of everything. What I remember are flashes of joy in the darkness, his tiny hands clenched in determined fists. His feet curled against my soft stomach. The release of the milk starting to flow. My arms wrapped up around him.