This is a peek into my life as the parent of three.
By far, the child with the most severe mental health issues, is the eldest who suffers from major depressive disorder, general anxiety disorder, ADHD, and body image issues. He’s been in and out of therapy since he was 13, but has refused help since reaching adulthood. As a young adult, he’s also developed drug and alcohol addictions.
The youngest also suffers from depression and anxiety issues, as well as ADHD. She went the route of therapy — both counseling and drug therapy — resulting in an addiction to Adderall. Go psychiatry! She’s overcome this issue and found new non-drug methods for managing her issues, but has recently expressed a need to reconnect with a therapist/counselor.
Not to be left out, my middle child, a very left brain, analytically intelligent young man, has suffered at the hands of bullies for years because of his weight problems and overall size–he’s 6’5″ and 250 pounds plus. It took him until his late teens, to grasp the “ignore” feature that we all come equipped with.
It’s not always easy, but every day is an adventure.
Some adventures you look forward to, while others leave you cold inside.
As a parent of three, it’s often difficult to maintain balance between home and career. Parenting two children suffering from mental illness—after all, that’s what depression is—adds to the difficult. I’ve become a quiet advocate for mental illness as well as other hotly debated social subjects that are well outside the purview of my job/career as an administrator, but these days my motto seems to be ‘no one lives in a vacuum’. These issues are important to me and my views and opinions are my own, which is why they are a part of this website.
I offer no apologies for the issues that I side with, but offer a warning for those that may feel uncomfortable in my activism and passion for the underdog. Some of the issues that I may cover on my activism page include:
- Animal Welfare
- Arts and Culture
- Civil Rights and Social Action
- Environmental Issues
- Human Rights and LGBTQ Concerns
- Politics in general