Autumn Stringam

Trauma and Bipolar Recovery

Trauma is a dangerous thing. In a fragile or undernourished brain, the stress of big life trauma can crack you and send you reeling into psychosis, paranoia, panic, and terrifying mood swings. Healing the trauma associated with mental illness is the focus of Second Stage healing. (In spite of the anonymity in the telling of this story, I need all of my readers to know that I tell this with express permission from my friend. Owning our experiences and telling ...

Have You Hit Rock Bottom?

I know you are out there. You are the girl who couldn’t get out of bed today. The one who lay in bed until 3pm only to wake for a toilet break and stumble back to the blankets. You ate cold cereal and took a handful of meds and you wondered why you keep trying at all. The meds probably squashed that voice that keeps telling you to end it. You think about your own death once in awhile, but ...

I would never have signed up for that either, Grandpa.

I am the third generation of a mood swing mess, peppered with paranoia and salted with a stigma so smothering that it killed my mother and grandfather. When Grandpa was diagnosable, in his early twenties, America was in the shameful throws of sterilizing ‘mental deficients’ and performing frontal lobe lobotomies for mood swing resolution. I would never have signed up for that either, Grandpa. Grandpa kept his illness a not-so-well-kept secret until he finally, in an act of shame and ...

To Honor My Mother

What good can come of a suicide? None. Even so, I wrote this article in honor of my mother and all of the good we have tried to create in the wake of her terrible death. Did you know Debbie? She was a dedicated mother and a loving wife. She was the kind who sang her heart out in the kitchen, worked in group homes for lost and lonely teens, volunteered in schools, and every once in a while, started up a little ...

Just Another January Sunday

Last January, I stood in my art room for days on end painting a portrait of my mother. It’s  a school photo taken the year she met my father for the first time… She was only fifteen. Try as I did, I could never get her eyes right, her eyes were haunting things, all hazel green and blue and dark around the edges. They were full of pain and full of hope all at the same time.  Yesterday I spoiled ...

Get Smart About Your Health

Forrest Gump’s momma always said, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Okay, she’s better known for “life is like a box of chocolates…” but we’ll save that one for another blog. I woke up this morning thinking about how “Stupid” is only as stupid as what Stupid does and realized the same goes for “Healthy”. Healthy is what healthy does. Or Crazy is… Can I go there? I know, I know… It wasn’t a choice the first time unhealthy came knocking. ...