This is a bit scary, but I'm walking to support the Schizophrenia Society of Alberta on Saturday September 22, 2012. Please consider supporting me by offering a pledge at my personal page. Any amount would be welcome and any pledge over $20 will be issued a tax receipt, so be sure to include your name and address for that.

If you like, I'll run part of the way! It's for a great cause!

Schizophrenia

It's a scary word. Conjuring up media images and phrases of "former mental patient" and always with a violent context.

Lighten up, guys. High five to those of you who shoulder through the hype and misunderstanding.

I've written a book called The Insanity Machine. It's suitable for professionals and therapists (a lot of research went into it), also for intelligent and thoughtful voyagers on this strange and wonderful journey.

Austin Mardon co-authored it.

No publisher has taken us up on it yet, although I submitted it to a publication which specializes in information about schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, and other mental illnesses.

Time to get off my rocker and send it to those I think will be enthralled, as well they should be, because it's been estimated that 10 percent of the population in every country has this life changing illness.

We're not necessarily hidden, just ignored, labeled, and misunderstood.

We need a Martin Luther King for mental illness, someone who isn't afraid to get up and fight for us. Someone who tackles the tough questions and is intelligent/insightful enough to realize that yes, we can be difficult, and yes, we are our own worst enemy at times.

I recommend you read Jeff Emmerson's blog. He's fantastic, not so unusual in many ways, brave and insightful. Intelligent and articulate and cusses a lot, ha. Don't be offended, he talks like I think sometimes.

Jeff Emmerson is not schizophrenic. He's been through rough times, however. I think he's indicative of those of us who can truly be called survivors, warriors, and happy.

Nick - "I am happy"

"I love living life. I am happy." A man with no limbs recovered from bitter to better. What about you?

Am I more creative with Schizophrenia?

Back of black tee from Schizophrenia Society of Alberta

Tee shirt from the Schizophrenia Society

I wonder if schizophrenia enhances my ability to write creatively? I thought creatively before the diagnosis in 1978, but my experiences as a result of mental illness took the stuffiness out of writing and honed the more bizarre thoughts and emotions.

As a consequence, I'm now writing Sci Fi, fantasy and horror with sometimes equally bizarre characters. It's a lot of fun and I enjoy it.

My experiences as a result of the illness also gave me a lot more to write about first hand that many people never even dream about. I know what the Devil looks like and acts like due to my hallucinations and delusions. Of course, I don't really know. It's pretty real to me, though.

I also think I'm a special agent of God. I think I've been playing in a sandbox for 40 years and everyone else is taking care of me, sometimes sticking me with pins to see if I'll jump, sometimes whacking me across the head with a 2'x4' to get my attention, but most of the time seeing to it that I'm well looked after, I don't want for anything, and my friends and family are sometimes proud of the kid in the sandbox.

Now I'm out of the sandbox. We're all sons and daughters of God, my fundamentalist friends notwithstanding (e.g. one of them told me I'm not a Christian because I believe Buddhists will go to heaven, lol, her interpretation of her scriptures is a bit suspect and lacking in the milk of human kindness, methinks).

Two things I write about:

• Creativity (music, art, literature, independent thinking, science)
• The world is a global village  

With a tip of the hat to Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian educator/philosopher who proposed such a thing as "the medium is the message" and "global village" in the wild and woolly and unforgetable 1960s, which I lived through as a young woman, a young bride, and a young mother. No hippy me back then, perhaps now?

I remember the drug induced books like Travels with Don Juan. I don't need drugs, have never needed drugs, although I medicated myself with alcohol for many years from 1978 - 1993.

I have my own altered reality, thanks to this wonderful mad mad thinking which brought me to my knees on many occasions, made my teachers, friends and family despair of me, and finally gave me a gift of compassion, tolerance, and understanding as well as a lucid and creative mind.

Thanks, Schizophrenia. I couldn't have done it without you.

Remember that, Professor who thought I was half cracked up. I was wholly and completely cracked up. Hands off, watch me fly!

Bring your own flowers and forget the despair

 

I read two different blogs this morning, one about despair and one about hope. I chose to believe the words of hope, joy, and love.

We all have a choice. We choose every second, every day, every year our thoughts and actions. If we don't choose for ourselves, if we galumph through our own beautiful gardens with someone else's borrowed dirty boots, life chooses for us and swamps our birthing song with bitterness and death.

I choose to move on. My thanks to Joy Bing Fleming for the hope I borrowed from her this morning.

Interview with Stephen King

I've been wondering how and why normal, nice people write horror. Like myself. I've just finished a horror anthology and will submit it to a publisher in a few days. Then I came across this interview with Stephen King.

The woman across the table from him asked if he'd ever seen a Psych, intimating there's something wrong with an author who writes horror. She snickered when he said he'd never read Jane Austen.

Is there something wrong with uptight people who don't allow creative juices to spatter their shower curtains?

Change and orchids and coping with delusions

I'm quite determined to continue changing but this time the change won't be forced on me from outside. Not that forcing change ever worked, ha ha. 

But I've found a clever way to seek help for my delusions. I call them delusions. That prevents the long arguments about whether my ideas are factual or not. I readily admit they're not. Then I can talk about them and sort them out with my psych. 

I'm here to help and take care of someone who's very fragile at times yet astonishingly strong. She looks a lot like me. I will let her lead so she may stoop to conquer.

I'm like a peacock. I like bright colors. Yet white is restful and soothing, and the color of most miniature orchids. This is a miniature orchid. Some like this are colorful and called a Peacock.

This is a bee. I wrote a book called the Jive Hive. It's coming out in summer/fall 2012. Look for it. The bee likes the orchid.