On Death and Loss

by Christina Gleason on May 20, 2013

My therapist asked me to do a homework assignment for him before my next appointment, which is tomorrow. So of course, I left it until today. The subject is loss, which is hard for me to talk about because I get choked up on my tears. So I write, and then we discuss. I’ve spent a great deal of emotion on this essay I’ve been writing, so I decided to share part of it with you. My memories of past events may not be entirely accurate, but this is how I remember things.

Death

I was 11 years old when my paternal grandfather died. It was February school vacation time when my dad got a call saying his dad had had a stroke and it wasn’t looking good. The cost of flying him down to Florida alone was prohibitive, so my parents decided to pack the three kids in the car and drive down together. When we got to his hospital room, we thought we had the wrong room. The man in the bed looked nothing like the grandpa I knew. I burst into tears when we learned it really was him. He was so gaunt and sickly, and he had these terrible, loud hiccups that shook his entire body. If he hadn’t been in a coma, they would have been so painful. I refused to visit him again the entire week we were there because it upset me so much. When it was time to leave for home, I did say goodbye to him.

We stopped at a hotel that first night, and my dad had to go to the lobby to use the pay phone to check in with my grandma. I’ll never forget how he looked when he opened the door to the hotel room with his face all red and his eyes streaming with tears. Grandpa had held on until we said goodbye, and then he let go. We all cried and piled onto each other in a hug.

[click to continue…]

Tags: ,

{ 0 comments }

Roleplaying in World of Warcraft as a Creative Writing Outlet: Meet Carisse Dawnfire

by Christina Gleason on May 17, 2013

I make no secret about the fact that I’m a gamer geek who loves to play World of Warcraft. It’s an outlet for many things, including a place to go when coping with my depression, anxiety, or the mental and physical symptoms of a CFS flareup. But it’s also great for my creativity as a writer; my favorite fiction genre is fantasy, and that’s what World of Warcraft is. There’s an aspect of gameplay in World of Warcraft that has very little to do with the game’s mechanics and everything to do with the world-building the creators have done. Roleplaying is completely optional, but there are entire servers (called “realms”) that specialize in roleplay, and players on these servers can really get into their characters.

I’d like you to meet my main character, Carisse Dawnfire.

Carisse Dawnfire in the Jade Forest

Carisse (kuh-REESE) is a Blood Elf mage. Back before the Catacylsm, and back before the Third War, she was Magistrix Carisse Dawnstar of Silvermoon City. But after the attack on the Sunwell that robbed her of her father and her sister, Carisse didn’t have the heart for politics anymore, and she took to traveling for a few years. Though she had a knack for it, the mercenary life was not for her. But that was how she met Elynxdria k’Shinar, known to friends as “Lynx,” and the two had remained friends even after leaving the merc company.

[click to continue…]

Tags: ,

{ 0 comments }

What Does Mental Illness Look Like?

by Christina Gleason on May 15, 2013

Mental illness looks very different not only from person to person, but day to day for each person. When you see me out and about, you most likely see me on my healthiest days, when I’m not overwrought by anxiety or depression. But I can’t always hide at home when mental illness strikes me, and then you’ll see my Brave Face, which is a mask that looks much like my Good Day face. So you may not know how much pain I’m hiding, or how much of a struggle it is to make sure the smile reaches my eyes.

Unless you read my blog, of course. I’ve been trying to be more authentic with even the ugly parts of my life. It can be therapeutic for me, and the grateful and supportive comments I get from others show me that I can help other people by sharing my own story. Let people know they aren’t alone.

So for the American Psychological Association’s Mental Health Blog Day, I want to show you what a bad day looks like for me. When both anxiety and depression rear their ugly heads at me.

I'm Blogging for Mental Health.It might start out just fine. I get up, have some breakfast, check my email, mess around on Facebook for a little while, and try to get some work done.

Only, for the life of me, I can’t focus. I’m distracted. I stare at the blank WordPress page with only the title field filled in, or I open up the Word document one of my writers finished up so I can edit it for a client… but I keep reading the same line over and over again. I get a little bit done, but it’s clear to me that nothing is going to get finished right this moment. I go back to Facebook, or I check out Reddit, or I try to do some yoga on the Wii Fit, or I start up World of Warcraft and promise myself it’s only for an hour so I can shake this…whatever it is. It could be “brain fog,” a symptom of my CFS, but it might not be.

I alt-tab back to my work. I stare at it for a while longer, maybe hitting a few keys now and then. I’m still not feeling it. Now I’m getting irritable, mad at myself for not being productive. If it’s a post for my blog, I’ll probably alt-tab away again and try to blow off more steam on WoW or /r/depression. If it’s client work, I’ll try to power through, but I’m always worried that I miss things that should have been rewritten when I’m not at the top of my game. (A client has never actually come back and told me something was crap after one of these episodes, so these fears are a combination of my anxiety-related perfectionism and my depression telling me I’m worthless.)

[click to continue…]

Tags: ,

{ 3 comments }

Kidz ZonePerfect Bars Make Tasty Lunch Treats You Don’t Have to Feel Guilty About (Review)

by Christina Gleason on May 13, 2013

There are some companies I never turn down when they approach me about reviewing their products, and ZonePerfect is one of them. So when they asked me if they could send me some Kidz ZonePerfect bars to check out and post about on here, I was excited. Why? Because with flavors like Caramel Crunch, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, and Vanilla Cupcake – I had no intention of sharing with TJ because I wanted to try them all myself! Yep, that’s right. I ate them all myself and didn’t share…although I did later buy some for TJ to have. (Psst… if you want to try them for yourself, the Kidz ZonePerfect site has a $1.00 off coupon.)

For me, ZonePerfect bars are a great way to have a nutritious breakfast without breaking the calorie bank. I know I don’t eat right, so if there’s a tasty way to cram some vitamins and minerals into my body, I’m going to do it! TJ has gotten better about eating a wider variety of foods, including trying new fruits and veggies when he buys lunch at school, but I know we could still do better at getting him all the things his growing body needs. For a second grader, he’s a bottomless pit, so we know he’s growing like crazy! He’s always asking for a snack or a dessert, and anything under the generic heading of “granola bar” falls under one of those two headings in his mind as well as ours…so Kidz ZonePerfect bars help me get some more nutritious snacks into his body.

Here’s the fun pack that ZonePerfect sent us:

Kidz ZonePerfect Pack

[click to continue…]

Tags: , ,

{ 0 comments }

Being Yourself in Blogging – An Object Lesson from Reddit

by Christina Gleason on May 6, 2013

As you may have noticed, I don’t pigeonhole myself into any particular niche here on my blog. I write about the things that are relevant to me, because I know there are plenty of people like me out there. I write a lot about Asperger’s Syndrome, depression, anxiety, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and trying to get healthier… but I also write a lot about food, parenting anecdotes, social media, and even World of Warcraft.

Who knew that writing about the game I love so much could be good for business? Take a look at my traffic graph, a snapshot I took of my Site Stats within the WordPress JetPack plugin:

Blog Stats Graph

[click to continue…]

Tags: , ,

{ 1 comment }

Pinteresting: Fun with Misheard Lyrics on Facebook

by Christina Gleason on April 26, 2013

My brother and husband and I had fun with this one… I mean, seriously? Who can understand the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lyrics to “Scar Tissue” without looking them up?

Misheard Lyrics

© 2013 Christina Gleason, All right reserved. If you do want to share this pic, you MUST link back to this page.

Tags: , ,

{ 1 comment }

Mom Bloggers Literally Turned into Caricatures Again, This Time by the WSJ

by Christina Gleason on April 25, 2013

I got all fired up in an angry sort of way when a handful of my friends colleagues shared a link on Facebook to this puff piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, condescendingly enough, The Mommy Business Trip. I knew there was going to be more of a problem when the lead sentence was this:

Katherine Stone, a 43-year-old mother and wife from Atlanta, wants to leave her husband and children.

You see, Katherine Stone is almost single-handedly responsible for creating and maintaining the largest online resource for women with postpartum depression, and other maternal mental health issues, Postpartum Progress. Her blog on Babble is called Something Fierce, because she always harnesses her ferocity to tackle things that matter. She is the original warrior mom… but the WSJ article makes her sound like a desperate housewife.

The entire article focuses on Mom 2.0 – and by extension, any women’s blogging conference – as an escape from the responsibilities of home and family. It focuses on the parties, the mini-bars, the swag brands woo us with… and completely ignores the education and actual work that gets done while we’re there. The “journalist” who wrote the piece clearly doesn’t see blogging as “work,” although I think she needs to take a good look in the mirror. Even the session titles picked out for the article grossly misrepresent the whole of the conference: ”How to Keep Blogging After It’s All Been Blogged” and “Help! My 9 Year Old Wants to Be on Instagram!”

Blogher 2010

On her trip, she will listen to panels addressing issues of concern to mothers, network with other bloggers, and stay in a hotel room that someone else will keep tidy…Event planners, networking organizations, travel agents and consumer-goods marketers are targeting these women by sponsoring conferences and conventions. They have figured out a simple way to make them happy: Give them a reason to go on a business trip.

[click to continue…]

Tags: , , , ,

{ 3 comments }

Would You Enjoy a Mrs. Fields Cookie Basket for Mother’s Day?

by Christina Gleason on April 24, 2013

I’ve just been enjoying my monthly reviews for the Shari’s Berries family so much this year. Last month, it was a Sock Monkey Easter Basket for TJ. This month, it’s a basket of Mrs. Fields cookies and brownies from Shari’s Berries! And my family does love cookies.

Ordering from the Shari’s Berries Website

For my review, I was given a gift card code and asked to shop from the Mother’s Day gift baskets at Shari’s Berries. This was the first time I exercised my freedom to order from a different page than the holiday special for these brands, because although the Mrs. Fields basket with the cookies and the muffins looked good, I wanted to order something with cookies and brownies. So after about 20 minutes of browsing my options, I found the Mrs. Fields Birthday Basket. Tom’s birthday was on April 4, so I scheduled the delivery easily on the site for April 3.

Because I’d previously ordered from Shari’s Berries, they had all of my shipping information with my login, so this was easy. They have a whole page of Shari’s Berries Coupon Codes to show you what the current discounts and promotions are that they are running. If I hadn’t been using their special gift code to order, this would have been my first stop!

When My Cookie Basket Arrived

It took everything within me not to open the basket and start eating cookies, but these were meant to be a present for my husband. So I refrained. This is what the basket looks like on the website:

Mrs. Fields Birthday Basket

[click to continue…]

No tag for this post.

{ 0 comments }

The Sad Case of Sicker-Than-Thou Syndrome

by Christina Gleason on April 22, 2013

I am very open about the various illnesses I struggle with, as well as my Asperger’s Syndrome, which is not an illness. I share my experiences in an effort to educate the unafflicted and to find camaraderie from those who know firsthand what I’m talking about. I usually get good feedback from these posts, and private messages thanking me for sharing my story when others don’t feel comfortable going public with theirs.

You Don’t Deserve That Diagnosis

Last night, my referrer log led me to the first discussion thread I ever found created specifically to bash me. It hurt. I suppose I’m lucky to have come this far without encountering this previously, but I didn’t expect people with the same diagnosis to be so judgmental.

Man with CFS, pic from the NIH

[click to continue…]

Tags: , ,

{ 0 comments }

Don’t Immerse Yourself in the Horror of Current Events

by Christina Gleason on April 19, 2013

To anyone who struggles with depression and anxiety like I do:

DON’T IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THIS HORROR.

Turn off the TV!Turn the TV off. Stop reading every little “what we don’t know” article. If there’s actual news because they found the guy, Facebook or Twitter will let you know, and THEN you can read the official news release when someone in charge makes a statement.

I learned after Newtown that I can’t let collective grief control me. I was useless to my family. I want to be present with them, so I can’t drown myself in someone else’s sorrow. Don’t get me wrong. I still care. And I’m still saddened. But I have to draw the line and stop putting myself in someone else’s shoes.

So for now, I pray for the safety of the law enforcement and civilians who are in harm’s way, and for a speedy resolution to this manhunt – whether they take him into custody or have to take him down. Let me know when it’s over, because I’m not following every “new development.”

This post was written as police were conducting a manhunt for the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, but it can be applicable in any horrific situation that draws national attention. Take care of yourselves.

Tags: ,

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries