Hi Reader, I felt my breath be taken by this line in Julia Tannenbaum's newest essay on Recovery Diaries, "As the people around me fought to save my life, I fought to stay sick." When I talk about the vulnerability and insight our writers bring forward when they write about their issues with mental illness, this is what I'm talking about. I think it's very hard for people who don't understand mental illness to get their heads around the idea of someone fighting to stay sick, and this is part...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Every time we receive a piece where someone is speaking up and out about their life with borderline personality disorder, a lump appears in my throat. This is just what we need as a society, I think to myself. Everyone is clamoring at the gate to speak and write about anxiety and depression, but borderline personality disorder is still shrouded in shame. They are the people you stay away from, the people whose emotional instability will bust everything apart. But that isn't true....
14 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, At the advice of a friend, I reached out months ago to dog whisperer/trainer Casey Buckley to learn about the world of service therapy dogs and found out that, yes, there indeed is a world that I needed to be educated about. I learned that service dogs are indeed amazing, trained to alert and assist with so many aspects of life—medical emergencies, balance and mobility, and psychiatric service work. To show the dog’s remarkable impact on the quality of life of a human, Casey and I...
21 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Casey Cannizzaro is a mental health and addictions clinician and three-time Recovery Diaries author, but he's far, far more than that. Casey's writing on our site—we encourage you to voraciously devour each of his essays, findable via the links to come—is exhilarating; his voice is unique, roving, insatiable, and unlike anything else we've published. Casey is just like Recovery Diaries itself: the perfect antidote to AI slop and Chat GPT sterility. His writing will knock your socks...
28 days ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, "Why do you do that?" It's a question that anyone who lives with a mental illness, particularly OCD, has heard—probably more than once—at some point in their life. It's maybe only a shade less intimidating and hurtful as, "What's wrong with you?" Rosie Phillips' roommate didn't mean it to be hurtful, but Rosie couldn't help feel like an intense interrogation light was placed on her, while she thought she was just settling down and getting comfortable to watch White Lotus. But...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, As a self-proclaimed "recovering theatre major" who has a vast interest in mental health, I was so excited to receive an email containing an essay from Dr. Yazan Bader, a researcher in theatre arts specializing in psychodrama. Dr. Bader, currently living in Beirut, Lebanon, is the author of the newest essay on our site; a beautiful and compelling thought-piece on alienation, transformation, and healing that will be certain to move you to think, feel, and change. Please read and...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, Natalia Aiza, LPC, is the founder of Kairos Wellness Collective in Boulder, Colorado. She is educated, well-informed, articulate, empathic, and aware. She's just the kind of person you'd think would be perfectly well-suited to quickly identify and address a mental health challenge in herself, right? Well, not so fast. Natalia believes now that she was living with OCD since age seven, but she didn't recognize it for years; even while training and working as a therapist.Natalia...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, We know that the kitchen can be a place of great connection; this was certainly some of what we learned from the extraordinary and hopeful human beings featured in our film, Abbey's Bakery: Grief into Hope into Action. This notion of the kitchen, baking specifically, is back again in a very different way with our newest, beautiful essay by Dayna Altman, a ceaseless mental health advocate, speaker, cookbook author and, yes, baker. Dayna lives with an eating disorder and OCD, but she...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hi Reader, They thought she was "just an anxious kid" growing up—that, other than that, there was nothing really "wrong" with her. But writer and translator Giovanna Errore was suffering in silence; trying like hell to be a functional teenager and then young adult while something was happening in her body and her mind that she didn't understand. She was masking, feeling psychic and physical pain and, finally, a fibromyalgia diagnosis turned the key and unlocked the door, helping her heal....
about 2 months ago • 1 min read