Dancing in the Rain

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Fashion ultimately can’t cure an actual disease–if it could Kate Spade would still be alive.

When life isn’t going your way, when a setback happens or it takes longer to get what you want: I say do what makes you happy so that you can feel good.

The solution to experiencing a setback might just be to shift your focus and do something else. Or to change the method you employ for achieving your original goal.

It’s ironic–and sad more than anything–that Kate Spade could design pocketbooks that put a spring in women’s steps when we carried them. Yet she didn’t feel the same joy in her own life.

Was she 55?

I’m a 53-year old woman who hasn’t gotten what she wanted: a boyfriend and a book contract.

The quote gets it right about learning how to dance in the rain instead of simply waiting for the storm to pass.

I recommend that all readers–men as well as women–do what gives you joy.

Readers: dressing in style has been my way to dance in the rain.

This is what I’m saying: that at 53, at even just 22, at whatever age you are:

I submit the goal is to feel good about yourself and your life.

For one person, singing in a choir might make their heart beat. For another, running a 5K marathon might keep them smiling.

The pursuit of happiness is not a frivolous endeavor.

I regret there’s a backlash against the positive psychology movement that Martin Seligman started years ago.

If you ask me it’s imperative that we find out what makes us happy and go do that.

The beauty is that the older you get you can discover new gifts and passions that will bring you joy.

It’s not ever too late to make a change for the better.

The rain can end at some point. For some of us it might continue. That’s when having a fallback option makes sense.

Years ago I went back to school to get a Masters degree. That was my Plan B.

Choosing an alternative path to go down isn’t settling for less. It’s being realistic when it turns out the umbrella you were holding up has broken.

There is always going to be rain. While most of us prefer the sun the rain might serve a purpose too.

Learning how to dance in the rain sure beats being afraid of the thunder.

Kate Spade – An American Tragedy

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I’m going to cut-and-paste here in this blog the entry I posted just five minutes ago in the Left of the Dial forum.

Today Kate Spade–the designer of iconic handbags–took her own life.

She had everything going for her in terms of external success.

It’s a tragedy that inside at her core she wasn’t doing very well.

A year or two ago in this Flourish blog I wrote about the phenomenon of “smiling depression.”

Women are suffering all alone because no one takes them seriously.

“How could you be depressed when you have a great life?”

“Just pray and go to church and you’ll be fine.”

“Get married and have babies and raise a family.”

That last sentence contains actual words a young woman was told years ago.

The other two sentences are oft-repeated ill advice that women are given too.

I remember vividly when I was going on a job interview in the 1990s.

I rode the elevator up to the office with another woman. She held a Kate Spade tote against her shoulder. I coveted that Kate Spade pocketbook.

It wasn’t until this spring that I dared splurge to buy myself a Kate Spade pocketbook.

I bought it at a reduced yet not cheap cost at an off-price discount retailer in New York City.

Kate and her husband sold their company years ago. Yet American women have coveted the Kate Spade handbags since their first creation.

Disability is no joke.

Mental health issues strike everyone from all walks of life.

It’s a tragedy that Kate Spade and hundreds possibly thousands of nameless faceless individuals feel the only way out of their pain is to end their life.

What if Kate Spade could’ve gotten treatment? What if she had bipolar or another mental health issue that wasn’t diagnosed?

A part of Kate Spade lives on in the pocketbook I bought this spring.

Yet that’s no consolation for the fact that another human being’s life ended in tragedy not recovery.

God bless you Kate Spade. God bless everyone living with a mental health issue who suffers. You are not alone.

The Suicide Prevention Helpline can be reached at (800) 273-TALK (8255).

You can use the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

Please. The pain you are in can be healed. People care about you. Help is available.

There is a way out of the pain that will enable you to live a better life.

There’s no shame. What you feel is real and true. What you feel can be healed

Breakfast Recipes

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You can’t go right with boxed cereal.

Most cereal has too much sugar and natural flavors which are really fake chemicals. The government allows companies to hide the chemical names of ingredients by using the term natural flavor or natural flavors on the food label on the product.

Remember: Natural flavors are fake chemicals. They’re no friend to your waistline or your health. It’s simple and quick to make healthful breakfast choices that don’t include chemical-laden frosted flakes or healthy-in-name-only cereals.

Remember: any product name that makes an emotional appeal to you as being healthy for you most likely has these chemicals and other not-good ingredients lurking in their contents.

Trust me: I’ve read an article in a women’s magazine that purported to give you quick-and-easy breakfast recipes. Only those recipes didn’t seem quick and easy to me when I read them.

Here’s the deal: eggs in moderation are OK. Avocados have heart-healthy fats. Allegedly people who eat a lot of avocados are skinnier if this is something that might interest you as some kind of fact. This seems far-fetched to me.

I’m going to give you here two recipes I found in reputable books.

Misty Copeland in her book Ballerina Body has a rolled oats snack recipe. I haven’t created this yet I’ve bought rolled oats to make for breakfast.

Instant oatmeal isn’t a healthful choice. It takes mere minutes to boil the water and seconds to swirl the water in the oatmeal. Yet it isn’t the greatest health option.

20-Minute Rolled Oats Breakfast Recipe:

Bob’s Red Mill Rolled Oats

Maple Syrup

Nuts or seeds like slivered almonds and pumpkin seeds

Boil 2 cups water.

Add 1  cup rolled oats.

Lower the flame.

Heat 10 to 20 minutes linked to your desired consistency (a little mushy or firmer).

Stir the oats as they’re being heated up.

Shut heat. Mix in maple syrup, nuts, seeds, cranberries, or diced dried apricots.

(I use Coombs organic dark amber maple syrup.)

The point is taking the time to have a good breakfast is worth the 20 minutes it will take.

Egg Muffins

Scramble four eggs in a bowl.

Stir in diced or slivered red pepper, onions, mushroom, broccoli, and fresh cheese.

I used red pepper and fresh grated parmesan cheese.

Pour into muffin pan slots.

Cook for 10 to 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

The tops will rise above the rim of the pan slots.

I heated my eggs for 15 minutes.

Understand:

Grating your own parmesan cheese wedge is preferably to buying any parmesan cheese in a plastic container or in a cardboard bottle. Those kinds of cheese have unnatural preservatives that people really don’t need to be ingesting.

Fresh Direct online food delivery service in New York City will grate for you for about sixty cents extra the fresh wedge of parmesan that you buy.

Voila:

Easy to cook breakfast recipes that are better than any boxed cereal and healthier I guarantee you.

Bon Apetit!

Say Yes to Compassion

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The older I get I’m getting bolder.

I’ve learned that dwelling on what’s not right in the world–the hate and violence people have towards each other–is simply only a foolproof way to make yourself ill.

The person who is filled with hate only serves to make themselves ill. The object of their hate most likely could care less if the hater becomes ill.

Wait just a minute: there’s a better way to live and act and be: kind compassionate with joy and love in your heart.

Harboring hate well into your older years isn’t healthy.

Interact with loving people and you’ll see a difference in your own health.

This blog and my other blog are stigma-free zones.

It’s coming up on summer.

Summer is my favorite time of year for enjoying optimal health.

Meet me in the next blog entry for some quick and simple recipes to cook.

They’re healthful and easy to prepare.

Ciao.

Mother’s Day Message

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This is a Mother’s Day greeting to every women reading this blog entry. It’s thought that all women are mothers in some way taking care of other people.

My mother turned 80 this year. I’m 53 now. In 1987 when I was 22 I was diagnosed with schizophrenia. My mother had driven me to the hospital within 24 hours of my breakdown.

This greeting goes out to every mother whose adult children and or the mental health staff have blamed them for what happened to their kids.

Ever since I decided to become a mental health Advocate in 2002 – over 15 years so far – I’ve credited my mother’s one courageous act to drive me to the hospital as the number-one reason I recovered. Recovered with an ed at the end of recover because of my mother.

I will go to my grave championing getting the right treatment right away when a person first experiences mental or emotional distress.

My mother isn’t well. For 40 years she smoked two packs a day. Though she quit when she was 61 it was too late to prevent smoking-related disability. She has emphysema because of her addiction. Today she sleeps and travels everywhere with an oxygen tank.

Though I’m the one diagnosed with schizophrenia I’ve become my mother’s caregiver. Unlike how a lot of mothers are the caregivers for their adult kids with schizophrenia.

No one at mental health organizations like NAMI talk about this reverse dynamic: how adult children are becoming caregivers for their parents. Hell NAMI isn’t even addressing the mental health needs of senior citizens living with mental health issues.

What will happen after our parents are gone and we have no one to care for us?

I’m fortunate that I’ve recovered and have always been independent. I will continue to be fit and active because of my own efforts.

Yet what will happen to people diagnosed with schizophrenia who can’t care for themselves after their parents are gone?

What will happen to our parents if we can’t care for them when we’re older?

Nobody’s talking about this. Not NAMI. Not anyone else.

Over five years ago I first wrote about geriatric psychiatry when I was the Health Guide at the HealthCentral schizophrenia website.

Back then I was a pioneer in writing about this. Today I’m still a lone wolf crying out about senior citizens with mental health issues.

We need to think about the passing of this health baton. We need to get real and start talking about the services and supports available to people with schizophrenia and other illnesses that are becoming senior citizens.

We need to talk about the reality that soon those of us who are caregivers will need someone to take care of us.

I’ll end here by sending every women reading this blog entry words of compassion, appreciation, and gratefulness for all you do.

The Myth of Competitive Employment

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All authors have a curious dislike of certain book reviews we get that are less than glowing. One that sticks in my mind is the comment that most peers can’t obtain competitive employment like I did.

Define competitive employment I ask you. Tell me why you think having only competitive employment counts for a peer or for anyone in society.

We all know an MD or two or hundreds or thousands who are in their careers to make the big bucks at the expense of their patients by recommending risky treatments.

We all know high-paid politicians who make the big bucks yet only create laws benefiting corporations not ordinary citizens.

These people have competitive employment. Yet are they such shining role models of what a person can achieve? I rest my case.

Yes–I have failed at so-called “competitive” employment trying to compete with others for supervisor positions. I have failed at having insurance office jobs.

We cannot continue to insinuate that competitive employment is the barometer of a person’s worth in society.

We cannot continue to suggest that mental health peers are lacking in any way because they don’t have competitive employment.

I’ve seen that peers often have their own self-stigma in this regard, claiming for instance that one of us is “Just a janitor.” No. Change your attitude about that, I wanted to tell the woman who believed that being a janitor was a lower-dignity job.

For the record, I met an older guy with gray hair at an anniversary party. He was indeed proud when he told me he was a “custodial engineer.”

Janitor, custodial engineer–any honest job labored at with pride can give you dignity.

I’ve worked for and with a number of so-called jerks to know that a person who has competitive employment doesn’t always have the content of character to match their position.

The goal isn’t that every one of us should have or will have a lifetime cruising on a big party boat in terms of what we succeed. Frankly other people’s ocean liners don’t impress me.

The goal as I see it is to have your own version of a full and robust life doing what makes you happy.

I’ve seen in my own life that making others happy is the foolproof way to feel good yourself. Helping others is the best way to help yourself heal.

Volunteer work isn’t competitive employment in the traditional sense. Yet if you don’t have paid work experience and want to find a job it helps to list volunteer experience on your resume.

Critics and occasional book reviewers assail what peers with mental health conditions can do. They continue to perpetuate the myth that there’s not much someone with SZ or BP or DP or another mental health condition can do.

I’m done with that thinking. I haven’t believed for a minute that people diagnosed with mental health issues aren’t capable of much.

In 1988 when I first was diagnosed I dared think recovery was possible.

Now as then I believe: it’s possible to recover, heal, and have your own version of a full and robust life.

I champion the right of everyone with a mental health issue, who struggles, to find what gives us joy and go do that–whether we’re paid to do this thing or not.

Sing in a choir, bake cakes, be a CEO or not. Do whatever makes you happy. It’s all good.

Sacred Contracts

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My mentor stayed clean for decades. I think he was motivated to live drug-free because he wanted more than anything to help people.

If you ask me figuring out your Sacred Contract–essentially your life purpose–can give you the motivation to stay healthy and care for yourself.

Caroline Myss believes our sacred contracts are life assignments given to us to carry out in this lifetime.

A client of hers is quoted in the book Sacred Contracts. Liza had dreamed she was in a small rowboat going in circles. She could see an ocean liner in the distance and wanted to be on that ship not stuck where she was. Liza had been paralyzed in an accident and had to makeover her career and her life.

To quote Liza: “The key is to learn to row the boat you were given.”

I recommend you buy these two Myss books. Any kind of self-improvement project that is healthy shouldn’t be frowned on. We should only be competing against how we were yesterday–not against what other people can do today.

I say: “No thank you” to critics who compare peers to people who don’t have MH issues. The size of another person’s ocean liner shouldn’t concern us.

In a coming blog entry I’m going to talk about The Myth of Competitive Employment.

The Life Work of Caroline Myss

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Years ago I chanced upon the life work of Caroline Myss.

A book she wrote was reviewed in a women’s magazine. Archetypes: Who Are You? intrigued me after I bought and read it so I then bought her book Sacred Contracts.

Her discovery of a condition she called woundology has been accepted in the medical field. I wrote about woundology circa a year ago.

You might be skeptical of all this like a friend of mine was. I urge you to suspend your disbelief. The life work of Caroline Myss I’ve found to be as good as taking a career quiz in helping a person live authentically and thrive beautifully.

Everyone has four of the same archetypes: child, prostitute, saboteur, and victim. Each of us has eight unique archetypes for a total of 12 archetypes. You can cast a Chart of Origin where each archetype is inserted in one of the 12 houses of the zodiac.

Your 12 archetypal patterns are used to carry out the terms of your Sacred Contract. You might think this is all speculation or hooey or some kind of parlor trick.

Yet I’ve found this study to be immensely helpful. You might also think that limiting yourself this way is restrictive. It’s not because who among us would really want to spread our energies thin trying to do things we’re not suited for or that amount to busywork?

Homing in on your archetypes can actually bring emotional freedom if you ask me.

It might come as no surprise to loyal followers that three of my own archetypes are Author Advocate and Visionary.

You can go on the Archetypes website and take the quiz to discover your Top 3 Archetypes. The founder of the Archetypes website has changed around things a bit. Fashionista has been renamed Tastemaker.

So I wouldn’t rely totally on this website for an in-depth analysis of your archetypes. The woman who created the website linked to the Myss Archetypes: Who Are You? book has turned the site into a forum for selling products.

The woman who founded the archetypes website had originally founded philosophy the beauty products company years ago.

In the next blog entry I’m going to continue this talk with information about figuring out your sacred contract. This is the plan for your life’s purpose.

This kind of self-improvement project if you ask me can be an effective recovery tool as an adjunct to traditional treatment.

You can use this information along with taking a career quiz if you think it would help you.

Having a Plan B (And Plan C)

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Your life can change after you get a mental health diagnosis. I’m here to say that though your life is different it can be better.

Having a Plan B when your Plan A doesn’t work out  is critical. You should also have a Plan C and D. Heck, you can have two plans going on at once.

In my twenties I had the dream of rising up to be a corporate Executive. That didn’t happen. So I went back to school to get a library degree. Now my goal of publishing the second book is taking longer.

No one has ever talked about how to proceed after a setback when you have a mental health thing. I’ll tell you here: you have to figure out if it’s the goal itself that is not right–or if the method for achieving the goal is wrong.

A nifty way for figuring out the life path you should go down might be met with skeptical response. Yet I firmly recommend studying the life work of Caroline Myss. She created a philosophy of Archetypes and Sacred Contracts.

Like what happened when I was in my twenties a lot of us pine to be someone we’re not. No–I wasn’t cut out to be an Executive–I didn’t have that archetypal pattern.

My theory is that when a person understands how their archetypal patterns interact they are better able to figure out what the right goals are to have if they want to succeed in life.

I’m going to talk about archetypes and sacred contracts in a coming blog entry.

Casting your Chart of Origin and analyzing how your archetypes express themselves through you might just be as helpful as taking any career quiz.

You’re Not an MD So Stop Giving Medical Advice

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Chris Bruni is not an MD. I refuse to give medical advice.

Telling someone to discontinue their medication and offering a method to do so is practicing medicine without a license.

I’m not here to tell people what they should do. The story I tell–the only one I have to give–is my story. I can and will talk about how taking the SZ medication every day enabled me to be in remission for over 25 years so far.

A friend of mine who doesn’t have SZ I consider to be my soul mate. He discontinued his psych medication under supervision and is perfectly fine years later.

What gladdens me is that although he’s been successful he doesn’t give people medical advice. He thinks most people with SZ need to take medication.

My friend hasn’t attacked me–like so many anti-psychiatry folk have done–for choosing to take pills.

I want to be very clear to readers now: telling people they should discontinue their medication is practicing medicine without a license.

At this point I won’t even tell people they must take medication because as said I’m not an MD.

We can only share our stories with each other. It’s up to each of us to decide what we want to do.

If someone asked me I would tell them that I think discontinuing SZ medication is too risky to chance it. That’s my belief and my friend’s belief.

You can decide for yourself if this makes sense to you. You have the choice.

Yet I also think that choosing psychosis over health is a big mistake.

No one I know who discontinued their SZ pills got better. They started hearing voices again. (I’m lucky I didn’t ever hear voices.)

Yet even stating this I cannot tell you or anyone else what to do or how to do it.

I urge you if you’re a paid peer specialist as your job not to dispense medical advice without a license. You’re not an MD. You’re not licensed to diagnose and treat illnesses.

In the coming blog entries I’m going to talk about practical career information again.

My goal is to publish You Are Not Your Diagnosis in October 2018 which is Disability Employment Awareness Month.