parenting

Hope for Troubled Minds: One Mom’s Journey from Chaos to Hope

Randye Kaye is the author of Ben Behind His Voices: One Family's Journey From the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), and Happier Made Simple: Choose Your Words. Change Your Life (Front Porch Press, 2022). She's also an actor, voice talent, radio broadcaster, audiobook narrator, teacher and speaker. She co-hosts several podcasts, including Schizophrenia: 3 Moms in the Trenches. She lives with her husband in Connecticut, and her children and grandkids live close by. Her dining room and living room are full of toys. Dear Ben, Life has not turned out to be what any of us imagined, hoped for you, when you were a little boy. You: so bright, so sweet, so enthusiastic, so loving. So many friends, so many talents. The future, so promising. And then came schizophrenia. The great thief. Oh, the symptoms presented in many forms before we - or at least I [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds: One Mom’s Journey from Chaos to Hopetonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:21-04:00

Hope for Troubled Minds – Dreams Deferred by Mary DiNardi

Mary was born and raised in Boston. She moved to Florida in 2008, where she worked in the hospitality industry and as a Victim Advocate. In May of 2022, she and her husband retired, with lots of travel plans! She now volunteers as a Victim Advocate for a local Police Department. For the past several years, she has worked on obtaining Mental Health resources for her community and in raising awareness for the Suicide crisis. Mary wants you to know her son is more than his diagnoses. Justin is extremely bright, funny, and strong. She is blessed to be his mom. Dear Justin.. I recently found the journal I kept while I was pregnant with you. I cried reading it. I never would have imagined how hard your life, our lives, would be. Our journey is not the one I wrote about in that journal. The hopes and dreams [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds – Dreams Deferred by Mary DiNarditonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:21-04:00

Hope for Troubled Minds: A Daughter and Her Parents Express Gratitude

Dear Mom and Dad, Thank you for loving my battered soul and caring for me when all I could do was hurt and hate myself. Thank you for the care and support. The hours of holding my hand through what we later learned were panic attacks. Thank you for taking me to the ER, and numerous doctors to try to find the cause of my unease. My disease. Which we later learned was called manic depression, or bipolar when we went to a psychiatrist. Dad thank you for the many overtime hours you worked so our family could have a stay at home mom and health care. Thank you mom for being my angel. Thank you for always offering the HOPE that life can get better and that I could be well. I now live a happy healthy life in marriage with a family of my own because of your [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds: A Daughter and Her Parents Express Gratitudetonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:22-04:00

Hope for Troubled Minds: To My Special Husband, from Your Grateful Wife

from the author: "I am happily married to a hard-working and loving husband. A homeschooling SAHM to three beautiful children, one with autism, one with ADHD, and one with both autism and ADHD. A follower of Jesus. On a journey of maintaining my own mental health through it all and sharing my experiences in the hopes of spreading awareness and encouraging others along the way. You can follow me on Facebook or Instagram @lifewiththecouches" Dear husband, Living with depression and anxiety is like a constant battle with myself. The continuous flow of conflicting thoughts and emotions is exhausting. On the one hand depression makes me lethargic, grumpy, depletes all motivation and makes me not care about anything. On the other, anxiety makes me fidgety, unable to sit still, and all the emotions about everything flood in at once and it's s too much to bear sometimes. Feeling these two things [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds: To My Special Husband, from Your Grateful Wifetonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:22-04:00

Hope for Troubled Minds: KyLee and her mother’s love.

When I was 17 years old, I delay enlisted into the Air Force. I had known at a very young age that I wanted a life devoted to the service of others. I was the oldest of four and already knew what sacrifice was or at least I thought I did. I enjoyed my time in the Air Force and short stint in law enforcement, but chose a different path because I felt I was too optimistic and in law enforcement you were always waiting for someone to make a mistake. Instead, I chose to go to college and work as a paralegal. Divorced young, I learned sacrifice as a parent. I was a single parent for 16 years. Sometimes I worked two jobs and went to college full time. I had aspirations of going to law school and making a real impact in the world. Then, two months shy [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds: KyLee and her mother’s love.tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:22-04:00

Hope for Troubled Minds: Compassion Amid the Chaos

These letters are written by Vikki Plessinger. Vikki is Christian data clerk who hopes to retire in 7 months. She enjoys family vacations & get-togethers, gardening, fishing, hiking & puzzles. I am a mother of 2 children with brain illnesses. One is trying so desperately to save his life. The other seems determined to end hers. My son has a very rare, Central Neurocytoma tumor in the 3rd ventricle of his brain with malignancy. And my daughter has a 17-year drug addiction that has led to psychosis. We'll start with my son. My first-born baby. He had a fall and hit his head & his symptoms led to a CT scan which has led to 8 months of appointments, scans, diagnoses, surgeries & gamma knife radiation. He has lost cognitive abilities, memory, and well, a lot of his life. Justin, This current journey of ours is so very difficult. [...]

Hope for Troubled Minds: Compassion Amid the Chaostonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:27-04:00

Out of the Darkness by Laura M.

I have a horrible confession, an unthinkable thought. At one point, I thought about ending my life. Why? Well, I’d just had a baby and my husband of thirteen years had been constantly on my case, during my whole pregnancy, about what a horrible person I was, what a failure as a mother I was, and how I cornered him with this pregnancy. What was the point of my being here then? It never occurred to me, until later, of course, that those feelings were a mix of sleep deprivation, of not having the medicine I needed to heal, of postpartum depression, and that my husband was abusive. I was breastfeeding our child and his tummy was not filling up. Plus, he was a newborn with his days and nights mixed up, and was busting out of his swaddles like Hulk Hogan. All I saw, instead of those logical [...]

Out of the Darkness by Laura M.tonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:32-04:00

A Child Will Be Born: Pregnancy & Parenting Thoughts by Katie Dale

by Katie Dale (bio below) Among the busy-ness of life, I’m burned out. Not to mention…pregnant! For someone diagnosed with bipolar disorder, you may be wondering how safe it would be to get pregnant with a Severe Mental Illness. I consulted with my last psychiatrist and current psychiatrist and maternal prenatal doctor, and based on their direction and guidance regarding the medications I’m taking, supported me in remaining on my meds while trying to get pregnant. Both psychotropics I’m prescribed (Abilify and Wellbutrin XL) are relatively normal risk (3-5% typical risk of defects as normal) to the baby while pregnant and breastfeeding. I discussed the risk/benefit with all three docs and my husband and it makes more sense to stay on the medications. I know what it’s like to go off…and that would be more risk to me and baby than if I stayed on. In late August last year, [...]

A Child Will Be Born: Pregnancy & Parenting Thoughts by Katie Daletonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:53-04:00

Is Depression ‘of God’? – Leanne Sype

In 2013, I partnered with Leanne Sype to begin the process that led to the publication of Delight in Disorder: Ministry, Madness, Mission. I was thrilled with her work as editor, a crowdfunding consultant,a spiritual adviser, and friend. Here is some of her story. *** I have depression. It’s called “situational depression” because it was induced by the situation of both my kids being diagnosed with mental illnesses. My son has ADHD. My daughter has depression and anxiety, which, for her, include symptoms like self-harm and thoughts of wanting to die. Over the course of navigating treatments, advocating for academic accommodations, and engaging in the bulk of the emotional support for each kiddo, I felt depression slowly weigh down on my chest. *** I once had a Christian friend tell me that anything with the prefix de- isn’t “of God.” Depression fell into that category in our conversation. Whether that [...]

Is Depression ‘of God’? – Leanne Sypetonyroberts2024-08-26T13:03:57-04:00

Postpartum Psychosis by Bipolar Mumma

I can remember quite clearly the moment that I realized that I might have had postnatal depression. It was in the middle of a Canberra winter; cold grey skies, it was windy outside and I was stuck inside with newborn. I had tried everything to get my child to go to sleep. I had rocked him, bounced him on my exercise ball, walked laps around the house, I even pleaded with him in case that might have worked. But nothing was going to get my child to go to sleep. I ended up placing him carefully in a pram and rolling him over the ledge between my carpets and flooring, over and over again. I was crying as I was doing this. Pleading with myself that this was something that most mothers went through. But what most mothers did not go through was voices in their heads. I heard a [...]

Postpartum Psychosis by Bipolar Mummatonyroberts2024-08-26T13:04:06-04:00