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Are you on SSDI and coming into inheritance? Special Needs Trust: a must read

If your parent or parents pass away and they own assets, possibly a home or investments, all this makes up an estate and goes into their wills. If your folks leave you assets and you don’t have a Special Needs Trust in place, you will be forced to spend down all your inheritance so that you can re-qualify for your S.S.D.I. monthly benefits.

A Trans Woman’s Open Letter to Her Dad

Hi Dad,

It is time to address the last sticking point in my transition. I don’t need to remind you that I am making the single biggest step in this journey in three weeks (and yes, I’m absolutely certain). If required, I will go into greater detail, but you don’t want that and I’m not excited to have to.

When a Friend Threatens to Commit Suicide (Trigger Warnings)

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Self Harm, Relationship Abuse

It is three-thirty in the morning here and over the past twenty-four hours I have learnt a harsh lesson. It is a lesson that has left me feeling tired and drained, vulnerable and hurting, awful and selfish. Around twenty-four hours ago, a close friend (an online friend if you feel the need to know) threatened to commit suicide. She posted in a group saying that she could just not handle life any longer, that it was too much and that she was going to kill herself.

A Different Approach

Once upon a time, there was me. I was a drunk. I wanted to die. I couldn’t handle the way I was living anymore. So I went into a recovery house. I failed. I went to another one. Three years into sobriety I had a mental breakdown. Things have been fucked ever since. But through it all I’ve also had this eating disorder, see. So it’s not enough to try to get my life back from mental illness. I’ve got an eating disorder too.

My Experience with Detox and Outpatient Rehab

My alcoholism reached a head in spring of 2013, brought to desperation by the death of my wife and my subsequent despair. By this point I was drinking from three pm onward everyday, first wine and then vodka, whiskey or rum. Nothing would bring her back, but I could annihilate myself. It was starting to dawn on me, though, that this was making me nothing but miserable. I wasn’t going anywhere or doing anything. I wasn’t socializing or running errands. I could barely cook. Being on disability, I wasn’t working. My full-time job was getting to the bottom of the bottle.

Too Big to Fail

You probably know my name, my face, and my story. You may at some point looked up to me. That’s fine. I sought out a role as a leader in the community for a reason. I thought I could help, and people tell me I have succeeded. Researchers tell me their studies keep coming back with the same result; study participants keep saying the group that I somehow ended up leading saved their lives.

My Tricks For Easing Anxiety Of All Sorts

I was diagnosed with anxiety/panic disorder at the age of seventeen, though my anxiety has been around for far longer. I am now twenty two years old, a caregiver, a partner, and a writer. So it has been shown to me through my own approaches to my anxiety that I have got some hang on myself. I am no expert. I am my own person who has lived with this mental illness my whole life, so I can only speak for myself and my approaches to easing the ever looming anxiety monster and hope that these tips some how aide in the anxiety of another.

Fighting for Responsibility of Ourselves

I would like to welcome the newest member of our writing team, Kaity Marie Baldwin. In her first post with us, she talks about taking responsibility for one’s own mental health. Thanks for sharing with us, Kaity!

It took me a long time to realize how lucky I was: a psychiatrist, a therapist, medication. All of these arranged in my life to provide the support I so desperately needed but wished I didn’t. Who wants to see a psychiatrist for the rest of their lives? Who wants to need therapy sessions? Support can sometimes be a reminder of why you need it, and it makes you feel so helpless.

Staying In vs. Coming Out

I have no beautiful words to share or anything to make the pressing issue of coming out an easier one. I have nothing to offer but the advice I have been given and continue to follow in protection of myself.

It is very much okay to stay in. It is very much okay to find safety in the proverbial closet. Staying in, is in itself, sometimes needed for survival. It is okay to keep your sexuality/lack thereof, gender/lack thereof, tucked away and safe within your chest.

Pro-Anorexia Websites and Recovery

In a recent article in Time magazine, Maia Szalavitz suggests that “Pro-Ana” blogs and websites can actually help some anorexics. On the periphery of Szalavitz’s argument, I can agree with much that she says, however when it gets to the core, I have to disagree with the fundamental principles of what she is suggesting.