note to self: depression is a liar

So many things she says reminds me of myself. I never share the hundreds of notebooks filled with words. I hope someday I will find the courage. Everyday that I don’t let myself give in counts as a win, everyday that I wake up after a long night of fighting my demons counts as a win.

hpwritesblogs

My New Year’s resolution this year was to let someone read my writing. Aside from my articles and editorials from high school journalism, I’d never let a single soul read a creative writing piece penned by my hand. When I made the resolution, I assumed I would let one or two people read my writing. My sister, my boyfriend, my best friend, or someone who I knew wouldn’t make fun of me if the writing was terrible or the prose lackluster.

When I shared my blog post to Facebook, I assumed the same 60-100 people who regularly see what I’m up to would read it. That was a scary enough step.

Now, 7 million views and counting later, I can safely say that I have fully achieved my NY Resolution.

I never expected the response I received from my writing. Depression has a way of making you feel that you…

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the semicolon project

This gives me hope for all those who like me carry depression with them but don’t let it weigh them down.

hpwritesblogs

Today I went to a tattoo artist, and for $60 I let a man with a giant Jesus-tattoo on his head ink a semi-colon onto my wrist where it will stay until the day I die. By now, enough people have started asking questions that it made sense for me to start talking, and talking about things that aren’t particularly easy.

We’ll start here: a semi-colon is a place in a sentence where the author has the decision to stop with a period, but chooses not to. A semi-colon is a reminder to pause and then keep going. 

In April I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety. By the beginning of May I was popping anti-depressents every morning with a breakfast I could barely stomach. In June, I had to leave a job I’d wanted since I first set foot on this campus as an incoming freshmen because of my mental…

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The Cost of Telling Your Truth, Publicly

Love her honesty, definitely putting her books on my too read list and I rarely read nonfiction.

Longreads

Sari Botton | Longreads | June 2015 | 8 minutes (1,858 words)

 

In her first memoir, Some Girls: My Life in a Harem, Jillian Lauren held back pretty much nothing—about her eighteen months in the harem of the Prince Jefri Bolkiah, playboy brother of the Sultan of Brunei; her substance abuse; her time as a sex worker.

She didn’t stop there. Lauren also revealed some of the less idyllic aspects of life in her adoptive family, such as her father’s violent nature—a choice for which she paid dearly when her parents stopped talking to her.

In her second memoir, Everything You Ever Wanted, released in May, Lauren depicts the very scene where her parents cut her off, after a family therapy session in which she tells them she won’t be deterred from publishing Some Girls.

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Poles Apart

Love the approach he takes to photography

What makes a Hero?

Everyone is weighing in on Catilyn Jenner getting some kind of award for bravely stepping out as a transgender woman. I suppose I should put my two cents in also on this topic. Do I believe it was brave for her to step up and say ‘Hey look I have always been a woman but my body and had been taught different.’ Yes that was very brave but was it any braver than the dozens even couple hundred people who could say the same thing?
Honestly, I know very little about this award and for most part i try to ignore the news all together because to me our nation has become a pale shameful shadow of the one I grew up in.
I applaud the unique and differnet because what kind of world would this be if we all lived a life like ‘I love Lucy’ or ‘Leave it to Beaver’. Our word has been built upon strong people willing too stand up and say ‘I’m different and if I cannot conform I will make a world of my own.’
What i don’t understand is that now that a known celebrity steps out as transgender it is so brave, but what of the men and women who came before her and paved the way and made her transistion so easy compared to those that came before. It isn’t brave when the way was well paved for her and what was once something people would turn their noses up at is more common and in some circumstances accepted. I just don’t believe that a person is brave for doing something that is already accepted into society. Honestly there isn’t much in our society of late than could be called brave or commendable.

Community Pool

Yes could really use some pointers, I am completely new to all of this.

The Daily Post

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Body Modification

Something came to mind when I was stretching my ears for the next size up gauge. I realized this too has become an addiction for me. It makes me wonder if its like that for everyone that alters their bodies? Sure I have two very small tattoos, my nose, tongue, ears pierced and did have my lip pierced also for a time but that just did agree with  me. I’m not trying to dis or make fun because I know I seem like a want to be with my little gauges and tattoos. I am slowly working on showing on the outside what hides inside me. I’m a freak and I don’t see that in a bad way, everyone seems to need a label and that’s mine and I try to own it. So what I am saying is this an addiction or just self expression? I know I have crossed that line in my life and I don’t plan on going back. I finally feel like I am myself its sad it took so much sadness and grief to find the courage to let it out.

The Rise of ‘Mama’

I’m a very proud stay at home mama. Never saw myself in this role as a kid but I have to say its the most fulfilling thing in the world to me. I have my son and my fiancé, I don’t over parent my son and stepdaughter I really believe in letting them figure out the world for themselves.

Longreads

Elissa Strauss | Longreads | May 2015 | 15 minutes (4,006 words)

I first noticed “mama” while pregnant with my son in 2012. I was browsing on the internet—familiarizing myself the different types of mothers out there, trying to figure out what kind of mother I might become—when I noticed a number of alternative moms who referred to themselves as “mama.” This was the radical homemaking, attachment parenting, extended breastfeeding bunch, and “mama” was right at home with their folksy, back-to-the-earth approach to motherhood.

This use of mama can be traced back to women like Ariel Gore, who began publishing her alternative parenting magazine “Hip Mama” in 1993. Inspired by her experience as an urban single mom, the magazine became the source of parenting advice for riot grrrl types, tattooed and pierced women who wanted to find a way to embrace parenthood while simultaneously rejecting much of the bourgeois accouterment…

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Musings of a Book Addict

I feel the need to update everyone on the series I am reading at the moment; which is the Rangers Apprentice by John Flanagan. This is a favorite of my fiances which is how I got ahold of them. I have read one through five and the first four were great and I had them read in three days but the fifth one slowed me down some. Let me start with a general recap of the series. Will which is the apprentice is an orphan taken for an apprentice by Halt a lengedary Ranger. Rangers have a long history of in the kingdom and keep to there selvez and are given wide berth by the common folk rumored for having magical powers for the hard one skills they train hard to master. In one view they are spies for the king keeping an eye on the fiefs in the kingdom. The first four books are of Will learning about being a Ranger and it has Halt who has a very sarcastic nature to him that gives the books a lot of humor. That’s lost in the fifth book where Will finally a full Ranger is sent of on his own this first mission of his has run over into box six which I hope to dive into soon.

Very first post

This is my first time trying out a blog and I have to say it is way harder than it looked at first glance, but I am glad to be stepping out of my comfort zone and open up to the big world outside my small Arkansas hometown. I hope to talk books, hobbies, and parenting, hopefully meet some new friends along the way.