It happens every year. As I watch the first golden leaves fall from the oak tree outside our house and listen to the sound of the cicadas ushering in autumn, my anxiety spikes. I used to think I was relapsing into depression, but having been through this year after year (and documenting it in my...

There comes a moment in every person’s life when she realizes she has just entered the second half of her life. With the average lifespan of a woman in the United States being 81, I technically crossed that line three years ago. Yes, that’s when my waist disappeared and the pregnancy questions started; my squiggly...

Being sick is no fun. We all know that. But being chronically ill while maintaining a pleasant disposition is a daunting task even for the Greek gods. Every biological response in your body wants to lean into the creeping despair you feel. But by doing that with regularity, soon you will find as though you’ve...

In her final installment of the “Going Off” series, New York Times columnist Diana Spechler listed 10 things she’d tell her former (medicated) self. I must confess. I was prepared to hate the list, as I disagreed with much of what she wrote about in the previous columns, like choosing between medication and creativity. As...

This blog post is painful for me to write because I have been an avid swimmer since the age of 5, when I took the water wings off and made it to the other side of the pool on my own. As I wrote in my post 10 Things I Do to Beat Depression Every...