You Don’t Have to Suffer for Your Art
You don’t have to suffer for your art. You don’t have to prioritize your creativity over your health. You don’t have to destroy your life because of a lie stigma wants you to believe.
Topic: anxiety
Working It: Joel Leon on Using Storytelling to Cope With Mental Illness
Writing has saved my life more than once. It has allowed me the space and room to heal and to learn, and to also let go of the pain and hurt I may have clung to from my past. It doesn’t have to be New York Times worthy either—just something to help loosen the illness’ grip and get the clouds out of the way.
Working It: Vivian Nunez Shares the Importance of Challenging the Lies You’ve Told Yourself
Running my own business and going to therapy are two things that my family never expected from me as a first-generation Ecuadorean-American.
To Hope Is to Fight
My name is Michelle and I have Major Depressive Disorder. It’s severe and it’s recurrent. But I am not my depression, and my depression is not me. MDD is a part of my story, but it isn’t my identity.
Working It: Hannah Brencher Uses Her Story to Inspire Honest Conversations About Mental Health
My first run-in with depression was my first year after college. I was living in New York City and, at the time, I had no idea what depression was or how it could affect me.
A Safety Plan for When Life Gets Rough
We need to learn how to create elbow and knee pads for our mental health.
A Veteran’s Truth About PTSD
It was devastating, in a single moment I felt that I had lost everything. Never in a million years would I have thought that I’d suffer from such a diagnosis.
Working It: How Whitney Fenimore Balances Her Mental Health and Being a Contestant on The Voice
I stopped music, stopped working out, stopped doing all the things I loved to do. I hit rock bottom. I thought, 'this is the end for me.'
Working It: Zan Romanoff Proves Treating Depression Doesn’t Mean Compromising Your Creativity
I wrote my first novel when I was relatively mentally healthy, and pretty much immediately after I finished it is when I started to get super depressed.
The Day My Anxiety Began
As we struck the final chords of our set, and the last lyric closed out, a heat washed over me unlike anything I had ever experienced.
What Depression Looks Like When You’re a Mom
High-functioning depression is a slow-burn, invisible but powerful. I can be all the things everyone expects me to be. At the same time, the fire inside will eventually consume me, if left to its own volition.
The Art of Recovery: A Close Look into Healing, Quesadillas, and Mattering
My story is only one story, but it’s a story that matters—as does yours. You are me and I am you, if in no other way than that one. And I can tell you with the most genuine of hearts that I want you to live.
