Coming out of the closet...

Bet that got your attention, I'm coming out of the closet ladies and gentleman. Yep. I'm laying bare that big, ugly secret I've been keeping for ages. It isn't what you think though. I'm not exposing my sexuality folks, sorry to disappoint. But I am exposing a part of my life that I never thought I would. You see, I shared on Facebook that my daughter attempted to commit suicide this past Monday. It was one heck of a post too, let me tell you. It was a post that made me run to my bathroom, spewing the delicious Blue Apron gourmet meal I had just previously prepared after I put that tidbit of information out there into the world.

See said shocker here: https://www.facebook.com/christina.henry.71/posts/10155656172974582.

It doesn't just end there my friends; I also proceeded to inform the whole social media platform normally used to share those photos of the family you just couldn't resist purchasing (even though you had to take a second mortgage out on your house to actually be able to afford them) and to fanatically rant and debate every single issue and travesty this society of ours creates, that my sixteen year old is also suffering from mental illness. Bipolar disorder to be exact.

Why are we so scared to talk about it? Mental illness? Haven't we all experienced heartbreak? The loss of a loved one? Been diagnosed with a life-altering diagnosis or known someone close to us who has? Experienced some sort of trauma like PTSD? Let's be real here, we've ALL been "mentally ill" at some point in our lives. Listen y'all, I cannot tell you the mornings I have forced my two feet out of my bed and onto the floor. Heck, I can't tell you the times my feet never hit the carpet and my body stayed cocooned in my nice warm blankets, refusing to see the light of day. How long are we going to make this such a taboo subject? If you ask me, it should be the most talked about topic of our times.

Are we really seeing social progression here? Social progress is defined as an increasing capacity of a society to meet the basic human needs of its citizens, establish the building blocks that allow citizens and communities to enhance and sustain the quality of their lives, and create the conditions for all individuals to reach their full potential. BAM. ALL INDIVIDUALS. You read that, right? Not just the individuals who are able to live a "normal" life, going to school or work every day, with no interruptions from an unwell mind that completely disables a flow of function and reason. The basic human needs of all of society's citizens are not being met, by far. As far as quality of life is concerned, my sixteen year old decided that because no one will accept her in all of her unique and remarkable form, that she would ingest enough medication to make her expel everything in her stomach in an unresponsive state. How's that for quality of life? And she is not the only one.

This blog won't always be so dismal and dark. I have been urged to start a blog many times in my life and I was either too lazy or too scared of the world outside of my protective little bubble to do so. I will tell you that I will talk a lot about mental illness on here. I've been called to do something to change the way the world, or at least how my part of the world, views these disorders that "happen to someone else". To be clear, it's so much more common and widespread than we imagine it to be. One in five adolescents alone have a diagnosable mental health disorder and only 50% ever receive the help they need. I can tell you our system is broken and no, I don't have the answers quite yet as to how to fix it, but I have vowed to stay committed to finding them.

I hope you will subscribe and stay with me. We'll share some laughs, most likely have a lot of water leak from our eyes, and we'll also celebrate some victories too. I will always end with a motto I can't get enough of...

Constant Kindness Can Accomplish Much