From an early age, because of a rare respiratory disease that makes breathing difficult, Laurie Edwards has spent weeks of her life in the hospital and endured dozens of surgeries. But the 32-year old teacher,…

My Dad is nearly 88 years old and has been ill for some time.

Artist Dryden Goodwin is seeking to raise awareness of air pollution's dangers, especially its detrimental effects on children, with his thought-provoking film "Breathe". In London this past October, Goodwin projected his short nightly onto the facade of a hospital on London's South Bank, a site captured by Monet in his work. London is among Europe's most polluted cities. 

I've included a video documentation of "Breathe".…

Today, in Part 2 of my two-part interview "She Turns to Art to Heal", holistic nurse and artist Lisa Wayman explains why she turned to art during her late son's illness, what she learned from her art-making and how she applies her "lessons" in life and at work, and what observations she's made about art's beneficial effects on others.…

When I was a new nurse my first job was working in a long term care facility. I love older people but much of the time my heart ached for my patients, who were almost all over 90 years old and had some degree of dementia. If there could be said to be one recurring theme it was this: they all missed their mothers.

One of my patients was 107 years old. This was in 1992, so she had been born in 1885. Supposing her mother had been at least 20 when my patient was born, we are talking about…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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Don’t Fade on Me

If someone goes two days without calling me, I’m convinced that I’ll never hear from them again. It wasn’t until I first got involved in therapy that I learned the proper label to describe my symptoms. These are fears of abandonment. Establishing an indisputable reason why was difficult at first, but  I held myself up to enough scrutiny…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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For the past few months I have been very involved in the life of a friend whose health, both physically and mentally, has deteriorated. Thrice now I have taken her to the general doctor she sees. Once, at his direction, I took her to a psychiatric hospital, but they wouldn't admit her. If the doctor had only seen her that morning, in his office, he would have known she didn't need to be admitted to a hospital but rather…

Another unedited excerpt of Wrecking Ball

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A Cautionary Tale



How had this happened? I sat inside the wood paneled great room, too depressed and exhausted to leave my chair. My surroundings looked like the offices of a huge guest lodge for a ski resort, not an upscale psychiatric hospital. Fellow patients fought their own demons, seated on the chairs around me. One of them…

Me and Everybody’s on the Same Sad Team



When hypomanic (in the beginning) or manic (after I turned twenty), I often went on rescue missions. The intensity of mania increases gradually with time. Each episode ups the ante a little bit more. Behavior grows more and more outlandish. The illness overtook me, and I no longer had any control over my thoughts and how I must have come across to other people. After a time, I believed that others, those in whom I was interested,…

Another excerpt from Wrecking Ball.



The Internet revolutionized my life, as it did for millions of other Americans. In particular, it gave me access to other lonely kids looking for the same things I was. Live chats became phone calls, then became impossible, but potent crushes. I was usually too shy to reach out and flustered by girls who expressed their appreciation. It’s remarkably easy to develop feelings for someone whose face you may…

I'm writing my sections of this proposed novel non-linearly. That frees me up creatively in a way that a A-Z rendering of the facts would not.

The Nicer the Nice, The Higher the Price



It’s difficult to pinpoint my first manic episode. The most effective psychiatrist…

I've posted a compelling, insightful two-video documentary in which the British actor Stephen Fry talks about his struggles with bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression). 

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2012/06/stephen-fry-documentary.html

He dreams I died shortly after I became pregnant and that he's been living with my doppelganger or double. She looks just like me as I am now, six months pregnant. Out in the garage the corpse of the just-pregnant Lisa lies rotting, her face blue, and her limbs stiff. The double has convinced him that he needs to keep that body around, something about its presence being necessary to help the baby.

He…

Today's Wednesday Wonder is the late ceramics sculptor and teacher Pamela Mei Yee Leung for whom clay held magical qualities. I've included a moving video interview with the artist.

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2012/04/wednesday-wonder-pamela-leungs-clay.html

I've posted a new poem, "Code-Breaking":

http://writingwithoutpaper.blogspot.com/2012/04/code-breaking-poem.html

I gazed out the window at the cold blue sunshine streaming in as I sat wondering what my life might have been like. I wondered at my choice in getting married to the person that I did, I wondered about why I took a Bachelor's in Sociology and Psychology, I wondered what life might have been like were I "normal." I sat and thought about all kinds of things: why I had become the recipient of my paternal…

I am home with a sick little girl today.  She caught her daddy’s wretched stomach virus.  My hands are positively chafed from the extremely frequent hand-washings.  I hope that the preventive measures work and I don’t get what they have.

Whenever I can’t find inspiration inwardly in my writing, all I really have to do is look at and engage in the world around me and write it…