I’m not a mental health professional. I’m a hope builder. I feel like that, more than anything else I do on this earth, is my purpose. Because hope, when you really think about it, is the only thing you need to get better (besides lots of drugs, exercise, fish oil, probiotics, friends, self-help books, doctors, sleep, therapists,...

Six weeks ago I woke up tired and depressed, like I have so often in the last year. All I wanted to do is go back to bed. The negative intrusive thoughts began before my feet touched the floor. You are so lazy, I thought to myself. You could never hold a REAL job. You...

American poet T. S. Eliot wrote: I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without...

I’m usually pretty good at hiding my tears from my kids, but lately I’ve been busted a few times because they come so frequently and don’t go away. How do I respond when my grade-schoolers ask me why I’ve been crying? How do I explain this insidious illness to them? Two years ago I wrote...

Anyone who has struggled with insomnia knows that the harder you try to sleep the more likely you are to stay awake all night. There have been stories of folks falling asleep in the chairs outside the emergency room of a hospital because it is there that they must do the opposite — stay awake...