Taking a New Turn

Recently, I've shared with you many of the health issues I'm currently facing.  There seems to be two camps in the blogging world (at least among mommy and women bloggers).  Share your lives intimately, or keep many items private.  When I first started blogging almost a year ago, I actually had two separate blogs.  One was called "Real Moms Don't Wear Gucci" which was my attempt to blog about stay-at-home-moms and the disparity between reality and the products found in many "mommy" magazines that cost more than half our salary.  Who spends $500 on a stroller?  Besides Brittany Spears.  The other blog was called "madmommy" which was to be a resource for moms with mental disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder.  The second came from my own frustration in the lack of information out there for parenting with bipolar.  Then I read a book by Tracy Thompson called  The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression, which answered a lot of my questions.  So I dropped the madmommy blog and renamed my current blog madmommy.

So I've struggled with whether or not to keep writing about all aspects of my life and realized that part of the therapeutic value of blogging is revealing myself to others, instead of wearing my mask of normalcy.  Not to mention, this is one of the ways I stay in touch with family and friends who live a long ways away.

To update my situation, I've recently started seeing a new nurse practitioner whose specialty is psychiatry.  I'm off the mood stabilizer I was taking for the last year, and on a different one without all the harmful side effects (such as massive weight gain, sleeplessness and/or exhaustion, severe tremors that made sewing nearly impossible).  It is so wonderful to have someone who truly cares about giving me the best possible medical care and listens to my concerns.

So, in conclusion, I'm going to continue to talk about my health, because I feel a responsibility to those of you out there who might be going through the same thing and are looking for help, or maybe just need someone to talk to.  Because you let me talk to you in this way, and I thank you.     

Comments

[Wendy]

I think it hurts us when we try to compartmentalize different aspects of our lives. If we want to feel like whole people, we need to act like whole people, to show ourselves as the whole people we are.

Good for you for being willing to talk about such a difficult subject. Even though it doesn't relate to my life I think it's the right thing to do.

[stacy]

Glad to hear things are going well. I agree blogging can be very theraputic!!!

[Miss Dot]

here here! if we keep talking about depression etc it helps to open the subject up to become as normal as suffering hayfever or cancer, things that people can't help having. You go girl.

[Autum]

Thank you for being real and sharing real struggles. It's courageous to put yourself out there like that in this sometimes picture-perfect world of pretty blogs, where everyone seems to live flawless lives.
What is therapeutic to you, is also helpful to so many other who have similar struggles.

[lera]

I hope your new treatment works for you, Sara.

[Melissa Garrett]

I think by being open and journaling your experiences, you will help not only yourself, but countless others who may be going through the same thing. Good for you!

[laurie]

I, too, thank you for sharing everything. It's helped me much more than I can explain. Again, thank you. :-)

[Heather T.]

I'm glad you trust that we do care about you and that if we didn't we wouldn't bother to comment and read about your life here. I've struggled with the same questions and in fact stopped blogging for a long time as you know. I still wonder if I should delve more deeply into my life but I also think the key is just doing what feels right at the time. We're listening/reading.

[Bettsi]

Yay for Sara! I have been impressed with your forthright manner since I first found your blog. Keep on sharing and I will try to do the same. Here's a (((hug))), hero girl.