Tag: disability
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A Dedicated Husband in the Face of his Wife’s Multiple Sclerosis
by Andriel Scharff, one of Erin’s best friends, on how a dedicated spouse helps us when we live with chronic ailments…: Recently I had the pleasure of traveling with my better half, Scott, to visit family. I currently live on Guam. While back in the States, I noticed how each home we visited had unique…
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The Haters
There is a lot of wonder I have right now at how my life is playing out. I’m really grateful. But I’m also thinking about how neuroatypical people shame people like me, and how people like me tend to be writers or artists of myriad types of others who don’t fit in. Mental illness is…
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Watching my wellness with Kay Redfield Jamison
The hardest thing about mental illness is the beginning of life with it, which for me took place in my late 20’s. The issues stem from this, and Kay Redfield Jamison talks about this in her book An Unquiet Mind: when we get well again, we don’t realize that we can also get ill again,…
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Jealousy
Jealousy doesn’t happen often for me anymore. I’ve made my neuroatypical life so unique that it is really unusual for me to hear about someone and to then be jealous of them. But it finally happened. I discovered a bio online of a professor around my age, who has the same research interests as me,…
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Reading about Schizophrenia
I started suffering from schizotypal symptoms in 2011 after being traumatized by a man who was in authority over me. I didn’t realize that trauma could form such a lasting and hidden wound as delusions, which hide their medical reality from the sufferer and seem like life is something that it is not. That you’re…
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His Hands and Feet, but What if We Can’t Go There?
My mentor Dr. Rick Steele at SPU, is a professor of moral and historical theology. For several years he acted as my second father until we outgrew the relationship, but I still write him once a month to let him know what is new. He’s a great guy. He was able to be such a…
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A Relief: the Decline of American Exceptionalism
Ten years ago at this time I was living in Russia, the result of my having won a Fulbright to study in Moscow and learn about Russian culture and perfect my language capabilities since I was teaching Russian at UC Davis. It was relaxing in Russia. The plants seemed softer, the light more vibrant and…
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Re-learning Tact
I can remember when I first began slipping how what I would say would still be politely framed, but it would be said at an inopportune time and would be repeated unnecessarily. My mind was literally coming undone. I became dependent upon whether people responded or not to my emails and read into it unnecessarily…
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Exhaustion and COVID-19: Carrying on Anyway
Having a mental illness is already isolating, and so in many ways I am more prepared for the COVID-19 social distancing practices that are being implemented around the world. Somehow the community that has always surrounded me, feels more real and accessible. For once, there is a sense of us all being in this together,…
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Contribution: Is it Possible without Consistency?
I read something recently that said that to be a meaningful contributor you have to be consistent. This is certainly true to a point. But I think it is important to realize that if you try your best, and make it clear up front that you have a disability that keeps you from being consistent…
Erin Michael Grimm 