HealthyPlace and Beyond

 

Last August, I got an email that would change my life, and I am still dealing with the impact. HealthyPlace, the company I had blogged for during the last 10 years, let all of us paid bloggers go. I couldn’t believe it. It was the only meaningful work I’d ever done—I considered it my career.  I had no choice but to move on.

My blog—Creative Schizophrenia—didn’t pay much, even though I had gotten raises over the years. So, it didn’t seem like a huge sacrifice to blog on my own, without pay, for my personal blog, The Light in November. I created this site decades ago as a personal blog and morphed it into a place where I would post links to my HealthyPlace articles. Now it has become a sort of Creative Schizophrenia, Part Two. And you're reading it right now!

Part of my job at Creative Schizophrenia was to post videos on YouTube. I think I was pretty good at it, but I never liked doing it. So, I don’t make videos anymore.

Now I can do whatever I want. I enjoy using my own photos with the articles. But I often ask myself, is doing whatever I want good? I feel that my blog has gone from mental health advocacy to more self-expression about my mental illnesses, which are schizoaffective disorder and general anxiety disorder. Does that help people? Do I want to help people? Yes!

I mainly saw Creative Schizophrenia as artmaking. Of course, I was happy that people were helped by my writing and videos, but it wasn’t the main reason I did it. And now I’m writing poems about my misery in my new blog. Can I call myself a mental health advocate? But self-expression is advocacy, too–a call to people to give more credit to their creativity as part of healing. 

There must be something in me that wants to help people. My husband, Tom, and I raise funds every year for the NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Walk. And I regularly reach out to my congressional representatives to save Medicaid from the current cuts in the proposed federal budget, when I’m not even on Medicaid.

However, my writing about mental illness has always been for me. It hasn’t even been for money. It’s been for me with the hope of reaching others with insights that resonate for them as well. I actually do think some people get something for themselves out of The Light in November. If that’s you, don’t hesitate to share the links I post on social media, etc.

I know it’s selfish of me to be writing for myself. But that’s the freedom I’ve been given. And it’s a freedom I accept.