General News

Recovering from Trauma Links

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This list provides links to my most popular posts about recovering from trauma. If you find it helpful, please consider supporting me. Thanks!

Dissociation Links

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I used to live with severe dissociation, learning what it was and how to work with it took many years. I suffered a great deal during that time, which is heartbreaking, because dissociation can be so positive, such a blessing, and so responsive to the right approaches!

I also run a worldwide network called the Dissociative Initiative, visit that website for more information, links, and free resources: www.di.org.au

This list provides links to my most popular posts about dissociation. If you find it helpful, please consider supporting me. Thanks!

Psychosis & Voice Hearing Links

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I have personal experience of psychosis as well as experience in supporting others personally and professionally. I’m navigating psychosis with a minimum of fuss in my own life, and find that it’s a valuable gift, part of my arts practice and my connection to my inner world. That doesn’t always make it easy, but I’m glad to experience it and no longer afraid of it.

I also founded the SA Hearing Voices Network which has more information, links, and free resources: www.hvnsa.org.au

This list provides links to my most popular posts about psychosis. If you find it helpful, please consider supporting me. Thanks!

Bodypainting self portraits & performances

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I use face and body paint as artworks in self portraits and as part of performances, usually involving poetry readings.

Dark Body painting self portraits

  • A series painted and photographed by me during a psychotic episode which was safely – if unusually – managed at home with support from my partner.

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Body paint & poetry

  • Performance of poems of Love and Madness for the Opening Night celebrating our short film Regeneration being selected as the winning film for a drama under 10 minutes by Picture This Film Festival and toured around Canada.

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Multiplicity Links

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I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (‘multiple personalities’) in 2007. I am still multiple but now live well, no longer impaired or distressed. As a result, I don’t fit the DID diagnosis any more. We don’t have a language established for people like me, so I’ve developed my own.

I run a worldwide network called the Dissociative Initiative, visit that website for more information, links, and free resources: www.di.org.au

This list provides links to my most popular articles about Multiplicity.

I’m finally, really awake

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I’ve arrived in Whyalla. I’m missing my love, I have a poem called The Voice by Hardy in my mind…

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me…

I’ll be gone for 10 days, the longest we’ve been apart since we first met. I packed a grounding kit to share with others as needed during the hearing voices training and mental health conference. It has items for taste (gummy bears. , salt and vinegar crackers), smell (perfumes, essential oils, hand cream, facial tonor), sight (colourful silicon balls, bracelets) , sound (shells that chime together, a bracelet of bells, a toy car that winds up), and many textures for touch, as well children’s toys, cuddly animals, puppets, fiddles, textured books, and colouring in pictures and crayons, pencils, and textas.

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I’ve found my room in the student dorm, it’s stormy and solitary, just the way I like it. I’ve showered and eaten a little and made my bed.

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I guess that’s the funny thing about having been homeless, it’s so easy for me to feel at home here. I need so little. I’m so proud of myself for making it here, alone and a long way from home. A few years ago I could not have managed this emotionally. Now look at me – so connected to such a big tribe, and so free.

I have bookings for talks coming out of my ears. Everything is taking off. I’ve brought the network postcards with to share – there are new newsletters full of information and links out for both of them now:

HVNSA
The DI

I’m meeting with brilliant, passionate, inspired people who are desperately interested in human rights and social activism and full of amazing information and contacts. My mind is so clear and so full of ideas I’ve given up trying to write them all down. I can’t even talk fast enough to keep up. I’m just trusting that’s is going into the memory somewhere, and that the interested bits will get triggered and brought to mind again as they need. My brain whirls, I’m just along for the ride.

Everything is connected, everything means something, every person fascinates me. The colours are richer, the sky, the sky, it’s like I’ve never seen it before in my life. It’s so utterly beautiful. For days now I find myself just marvelling at it when I drive. The colours! The depth! The brilliance of it, a kind of sublime majesty that takes my breath away… I’ve been asleep all my life, and I’ve known it. And now I’ve woken up. I’m awake. I’m alive, and I know it. I’m outside my culture. I’ve broken the programming. I’ve torn the fences out of my mind. I’m running free, breathing free air, seeing in colour again.

I have never valued my life so highly, been so careful. I am so aware of my vulnerability, how naked I feel on the road with the huge trucks passing me. This could all end today. But, oh, how blessed am I, to have reached this place! All my life I’ve been trying to wake up, fighting to reach the surface. And I would too, for a little hour here or there, at 3am. I didn’t even know it was possible to be awake like this in the daytime, to see the sky as it really is, all those colours to fall into, so utterly vast and uniquely arranged with cloud each day. I didn’t know life could be like this.

I’m awake. And I’m in danger of becoming insufferable. My mind soars and I miss the nuances of relationship I’m usually so attuned to. I struggle to show down my speech instead of interrupting. I dominate, without meaning to. I dazzle and overwhelm people so they walk away dazed, thrilled, but bewildered, their thoughts in disarray, no clear idea of anything I said. I’ve never in my life had to figure out how to be gentle with hurting people when I myself am not hurting. I’ve always been right alongside them in the pit. I’m fumbling. I’m alienating, accidentally.

Rose keeps my heart safe. She whispers my mortality. She’s developing signs for me – the gentle hand flutter that reminds me I’ve sped my pace of speech up so fast no one can follow me. Sometimes that makes me cry. I’ve so much passion is bursting out of me and I’m having to learn to hold it back most times. She coaxes and forgives and holds the string of my kite, keeping me linked to the earth.

All my friends do, with their grace for my bumbling enthusiasm, my awkward passion, my startling health. I’m giddy with flight and I can’t help but lift off at every opportunity, never mind that my wings don’t fit the room and I’m knocking everything over and beating them in their faces and about their ears. I’m blessed by such friends. I’d be insufferable without them. I’ve very much offended several lately, quite by accident, and I’m glad they’ve put up with my inexperience, explained their position, allowed me grace to undo my folly. These are the roots that hold me to the earth, that give me strength and feed me on black soil and cold water.

So this is what it is to be really alive. It’s worth everything I have ever experienced, every hour of suffering. Every night of screaming until my throat was hoarse. The hundred thousand billion tears I’ve wept. I’m finally awake.

Running away and coming back

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I am so busy I hardly have time to sleep. So I ran away last night and slept in my van down the beach again. It was glorious. Rose is fantastic, she packs the van with me and makes me food and helps get me out the door… Once out my heart sings! It rained on and off, so beautiful. Rose and I found a mattress on the side of the road last week so I slept on that on the back seats all laid out, and it was so warm and cosy and wonderful… I’ve found my hospital at home, my respite, my sabbatical, my quiet place. I’m committed to visiting every month. Its the most wonderful thing.

I sat in the morning and listened to The Carpet People on audio book. I made an ink painting. I wrote a few thousand words about suffering and love and what it is to be human.

Home again, happy, exhausted. I need more rest. Gearing up for a week away at training and a conference in rural SA. Life is moving fast. Nights like last night it all gets very slow for a moment, thankfully. I’m learning.

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Death Wish Repository Workshop

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

If you’re in SA, and a writer of any kind, you really need to check out the SA Writer’s Centre. They run wonderful workshops and have all kinds of fantastic resources. If you’re somewhere else in Australia, there’ll be a centre for you too.

Today I went off to sit in a cemetery and participate in something called a Death Wish Repository Workshop. It was wonderful. It was moving, confronting, gentle, personal. I was so glad to be part of it and I’m so excited about this kind of work – bringing people together, creating a space to talk about the unspeakable things. We each wrote in response to many prompts. One of them was all around the details of our own funeral! I have come home with deep food for thought. Just the depth and pace I needed after the mania of the past month.

Here’s something I wrote about, that I think you won’t find particularly confronting. It’s not about death directly, but rather, my thoughts when prompted to think about my very first experiences of mortality. For me, this is when I was around 3 and 4.

I am three. I have learned about death from many places; the rabbit babies stiff in their nest, the flies on the windowsill. I have learned about Heaven and Hell from Sunday School, and night after night I sob in your arms for the people in Hell. 

When I think of that story now, its not for the reasons we’ve told it before – not as an illustration of precociousness or an indictment of a spirituality, but is it of you I think: your hands, every night, turned the brown and orange pages of the little paper tract explaining God’s love. Your hair falling around your face as you bent over me, trying to fold your body around mine again, to protect me. Hands trying to soothe me as I wept, to pat me quiet again. All those parts of the world that tore me apart; learning of atrocities in China, the history of the martyrs, massacres and executions. And always, it was you in the late hours, in the dark. While violence and madness wracked me, you were there, trying to give me what answers you had. Against all the evidence, trying to help me believe in love. 

Joyous Contentment

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My semester is finished! I have handed in everything and I am now on holidays. I am definitely able to confirm that being under pressure can keep you in crisis mode, living every day half in the now and half scanning tomorrow for impending disasters that must be foreseen and managed. This morning I slept in until nearly midday, then spent an hour in the bath re reading all my journals for the last year. This is what I need – time for quiet and stillness, time for reflection. My heart is singing.

I’ve put on one of my prettiest velvet dresses and then cleaned the kitchen, washed the dishes, scrubbed the stove top, folded all the clean laundry, and started listing all the most urgent tasks and admin that I’ve had to push away over the last couple of weeks. I spent a glorious evening last night with my love, watching ‘Wish I was here’, talking about the future, and eating freshly cooked waffles with banana, cream, and maple syrup in bed.

Our home is so beautiful. We are so broke but spent every spare cent this fortnight restocking our larder and washing all the dirty clothes. I have just enough silver coins to put a skerrick of fuel in the van and return the movie – hired on a $1 special and considerably less distressing than ‘The Imitation Game’ which I hired on the same deal as a reward after a rough day on Tuesday… Brilliant, but a terrible choice in hindsight which added fuel to an already building exhausted hysteria.

I am going to cook Arroz con Leche with the tin of sweetened condensed milk I have been saving for months, and try to clear out some of the hardware space on my primary drive before my computer goes into melt down. It’s a beautiful day! 🙂

Coming home

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A conference is like a theatre production. A marathon. A community event. A childbirth. Moving house.

Rush and noise and excitement and energy and frustration and new people and hard work. Adrenaline and boredom and getting lost.

Stray dogs, gas leaks, brilliant observations, clasping hands with strangers, insomnia, homesickness. Sensory overload. The musky smell of strangers, the way his coat feels against my ear, the speckles in her eyes and how she hides her face in her hands in embarrassment when someone compliments her about them.

Writing brief descriptions of people on their business cards so I might remember who belongs to which when I get home. Worrying they might see them and feel hurt by being reduced to a brief reference “black hair, laughs a lot”,  “husband and wife team, he’s a sculptor”.

Facial blindness making it difficult to find the speaker in the crowd afterwards to say hello or thankyou or I liked this point or that idea. Anxiety that I’ll shake the wrong hand and launch into an idea from the talk leaving a trail of baffled non-speakers wondering who this strange person was and what they were taking about.

On the train home now. Bus, train, train, bus, flight, friend in a car. I yearn for home. I want to see my loves, smell familiar smells.

I’m tired. My eyes are hot and heavy, my voice husky. I feel content. A completed thing. It’s done and was worth all the effort. I’m bringing gifts home with me, new knowledge, new ideas, new connections. New friends, new opportunities, new networks. Ideas challenged, or deepened, or spoken of in a different language with its own nuances and perspective. Great richness for me, and great richness I hope for my networks, my family, my arts practice, my communities.

Thankyou for all those who have supported me to get here, and once I was here, and getting home again, with food, transport, donations towards the costs, conversation, hugs, kindness, and caring for Rose back home who had been extremely sick with bronchitis and asthma. Your kindness and faith in me is so appreciated. I hope I have represented you well. I am not alone but part of a tribe, many tribes.

Flying to Melbourne

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

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On the flight now, about to take off! Delivered my talk on psychosis this afternoon, feedback was excellent. So tired, so excited, somehow still on my feet. Life is fantastic.
8am tomorrow morning the ISPS psychosis conference begins. Can’t wait.

Need sleep, downtime, rest, hugs. I’ve brought Blood Moon by a favourite author Jackie French, a notebook for ideas if I need to get anything out of my head, and Hershey’s chocolate almond kisses courtesy of beloved Rose.

Still on my feet…

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

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I worked on my psychosis talk until 5am last night, got up at 10 to keep working on it, ran off to at history class at 1pm, hauled books home from the library, ate breakfast, finished working my talk, and I’m just sitting down to dinner now…

Then I’ve got to skim through this stack of books and write an outline for my art history essay that’s due in a week. Oh boy. I’m really not sure how I’m still on my feet. And I’m really not sure about my crazy plans for more time spent in higher education! Oh boy oh boy.

Squeezed

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Oh boy.

I’ve just done all the laying out of what is due when… things were tight but manageable until I took on 2 face painting gigs. my talk on psychosis, and stuffed a quick trip to Melbourne for the amazing looking ISPS conference into next week. I’m also going to duck into the Careers Expo this weekend to talk to Torrens University people about the possibility of taking on a Masters in Public Health.

I have 2 essays, 3 art projects, and 3 journals all due the following week, and I’m starting to think I was crazy. 70% workload!

On the other hand, I’ve just got an Art History essay back with a high distinction. All my journals have been approved by the relevant tutors, and the art projects are part done and going well. My sinus infection is improving.

I can do this, I think.

Don’t talk to me, anyone, for 2 weeks, maybe 3.

One happy artist

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

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Took this photo in the bathroom at college today when I realised I looked like a green haired Marge Simpson… I’ve been working on a lathe and other equipment where dangling hair could get me scalped, so I put my dreads up them covered them with this gorgeous yak wool beanie from Nepal. When I put my dreads right up on the top of my head like this, I’ve got quite a bit of height going on!

I’m into the last 3 weeks of this semester. I have 2 essays, 3 artworks, and 3 journals due. It’s packed in and needing my total attention. I’m flourishing. I’m hitting my stride and finally finding my feet. I’m also rapidly recovering from my sinus infection, which is fantastic. I was told, after the surgery, I’d still get them but likely get over them fast, (previously they went bacterial then crashed my immune system so I got everything else too) and that’s holding true so far… Fingers crossed it still works for me over winter.

Working hard and learning many new skills. Can’t wait to show you, I’ve got a handmade art book, a wooden doll, and a tactile rain stick in development. I’m so content to be developing as an artist. I’m home, I’m home, I’m home. I can be what I really am and still make a difference in the world, still be an ethical and responsible citizen, using art as a language to say the things I want to say, using it to keep me sane and keep me mad in ways that don’t destroy my life. Keep that spark alive.

I wanted to go out to the post card fund-raiser for NePal tonight after college but my mind and body were saying ‘home’. So home I came. I’ve cut the dead roses back, done some weeding in the soft wet soil, planted out a rose I gave to Rose for Mothers Day, put out the bins, and cleaned something pink off the car. (did someone throw a drink over it? No idea) Rose and I are cooking pasta and waffles for dinner together and then cleaning the kitchen.

There’s a purr of happy contentedness in my chest. Is this what learning your own rhythms feels like? Tuning into the language of body and brain? It’s the most wonderful thing. It feels like I’ve finally learned how to follow the steps of a dance I’ve been doing wrong all my life and now it just… Flows.

Moving between worlds

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The days start pretty well, working from home.

I’m somewhere between hitting my stride, mad obsession, and betting kicked in the head by another sinus infection. Last week I worked all day every day on business and networks – which are growing at a phenomenal rate as all kinds of things are clicking into place about marketing, communication, and finding a language for what it is I do. Changing gears or taking time off is somewhere between very difficult and completely impossible. I had my first migraine in years the other day and had to stop everything and go lie down in a dark room. For me these have only ever been drug allergies… was it a food allergy? Driving home through incredibly bright afternoon light in the hills (if you haven’t experienced Australian evening light when the sky is clear, try driving with a industrial spotlight in your face)… or trying to stop the cascade of information in my head? I don’t know. If it happens again I’ll know more, but one incident is not a pattern.

I am drafting policy documents for the networks and not for profit. I don’t mean to be, but I can’t stop it. Things that never made sense to me are making sense, and in this clarity everything I’ve ever thought, read, or experienced, comes rushing into view… a new perspective. I’m finally learning a new language and everything is translating itself into and out of it. Art and mental health are sparking each other in a continuous loop in my mind. The tip of my index finger has now become permanently numb from writing.

I need to get college homework done. I have 3 artworks and 2 essays due soon, and work do do on 3 journals. It’s almost impossible to make time for it. But I will. Last night I set myself the task – no business or networking work at all until after 5pm today. At all. Even returning a phone call or an email. I don’t have the control to just do one thing, so it needs to be a closed door. Panic and frustration screamed inside me. So then I did whatever I had to until the screaming quieted. I set up my work table. I cleared away all network and business paraphinalia. I checked my do list and updated my post it notes so I wouldn’t forget anything important – and didn’t have to waste mental energy remembering it. I got out my papers and sewing machine and library books and notes and journal and all the inspiration and trappings of one of the art projects I need to work on. I could feel the screaming settle inside and my mind change focus, start to pick up the threads of this project with keenness and interest, start to knaw at the problems and muse about the possibilities. I went to bed with the art project brewing and my mind mollified, like taking a toy that needs washing off a child and giving them a different, but still interesting toy to investigate instead.

Today I’m up. I’ve slept, I’m rested. My sinuses are horrible but I still have half a box of tissues so I don’t need to go anywhere. The lounge is set for art. I’ve filled two buckets with weeds and rose trimmings from the garden – starting by getting my hands in soil. I have water to drink and Radiohead playing. This is how I cross the threshold and shift my focus – I change the environment. I’ve always known this but not known what I was doing. The artists in my system have turned up, like wolves sniffing the air. Something for them. The papers and inks call to my hands. A language of their own.

Out in the yard, I’ve set the sprinklers as the garden was dry. It’s easy to miss that during the cold months, but here in South Australia just because it’s cold doesn’t mean rain has fallen. You need to walk in the garden to notice all the little signs of stress in the plants that ask for water. And I think to myself – that’s another language, of a kind. All these different languages the world speaks. All these different worlds, nested alongside each other. And here’s me, changing shape, colour, name, and mother tongue. Figuring out how to open the doors and cross the thresholds and move between the worlds.

In the grey light, the water drops hang silver on the plants. The garden is strewn with pearls.

Zoe is all grown up

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

She recently turned 3! That’s about 28 in dog years for a medium size dog like her. She is SO much better than she was as a puppy… never again do I want a puppy! I’m so glad we have her. She’s still a pain around the cats and full of beans but we can hang washing on the line and she doesn’t tear it off. She doesn’t chew shoes. Or the couch. She’s loyal and very desperately loving and sweet. She also makes us feel very safe. So glad she’s part of the family. Happy birthday Zoe!

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Exuberance: passion, mania, and self hypnosis

/ Sarah K Reece / 3 Comments

Things are still wild here. Poor lovely Rose was up half the night vomiting bile. We think she might have food poisoning, and we’re going off to see her doctor soon. Around 4am she finally stopped long enough to keep an anti-emetic down, thankfully, and has only vomited a couple of times this morning.

I’m sleep deprived but still good. There’s been a fair bit of plans going astray and wheels falling off and last minute shocks lately, but after the inital feeling awful and hopeless I seem to be bouncing back incredibly quickly. My mind is still clear, and still going a million miles an hour. I actually have a callous on my fingers and a permanent numb patch from writing so much lately. I can barely keep up, ideas are flowing through me like a constant sleet of inspiration. I’m having to work thoughtfully to find ways to calm my mind enough to focus on driving – I’m constantly having to pull over to write things down – and sleeping. Last night I was writing after waking up with Rose sick – she went back to sleep but my brain woke up and began to spit an entire theoretical framework for mental health service provision at me. I wrote and then put the pen down and turned off the light and after 10 minutes gave up and turned the light back on to quickly capture the next few ideas spilling into my brain, then turning it off again. I did that for about an hour as the pace slowed down. Finally there was only a trickle, and then a pause. I had the sense that in that pause I could tip the balance – in one direction I would go back into intense idea generation. In the other, I could close the valve gently and let all the ideas spin and burn safely in my subconscious. I gently learned in the direction of the closed valve and instructed my mind “No more for now, we must sleep and rest, let all the ideas keep going in my subconscious, but do not allow any more to come up into consciousness”. I also used an energy visualisation. I saw and felt my energy as light and buzzing and whirling, currently in my brain. I gently moved it down from my brain, into my body. From there, I moved it out of my body, into the room, changing from a whirling ball and into a peaceful, illuminating soft light, the gentle touch of awareness. I immediately felt my mind and body settle and calm. I felt a sense of connection with my surroundings, a kind of mindfulness that was highly aware without being alert. A kind of resting state that was still aware – possibly the same state hypnotists help people access. And then sleep came deeply and peacefully and I slept in through the morning to catch up.

Today it’s back. I cannot keep up with the ideas. Inspiration is everywhere. There are connections in everything. Profound realisations happen every hour. I’m constantly writing. I’m a prolific writer and blogger anyway, but I’ve never experienced this level of output before. It’s phenomenal. It’s still – to use Kay Redfield Jamison’s delineations in her book Exuberance: The Passion for Life in the territory of Exuberance rather than mania, but it’s pretty mind blowing. A short quote that sums a lot up from this fantastic book:

If exuberance is the champaign of life, then mania is its’ crack cocaine.

I have astonishing resilience at the moment – there have been some major setbacks this month and they still impact me and knock me over – but I bounce back like I never have before, within hours, strong and calm and ready to deal with it. My fibro is lesser than it’s been in many years – in fact I don’t think I’ve been this physically well since I was about 9 years old. It might not last, but it doesn’t have to. I’ll use the time I have.

Everything I’m learning about theory and history in my Visual Arts Degree is having profound implications for my mental health work. I’m learning more about the history of psychiatry and the developments of the science/humanity split in our disciplines than I ever did in my time trying to do my psychology degree. It’s so pertinent and explains so much about our current models, how we’ve developed them, the context we were responding to, and the losses that have happened along the way. I feel absolutely vindicated in my school time stress at being required to choose a stream when actually I love both science and humanities. They have so much to offer each other and so much to learn from each other, especially in a field like mental health that needs input from both to function – the rigor and research metholodoly of the sciences, their morally neutral assessments of ‘madness’ and hope for restoring health, and the human skills of connection, relationship, rapport, communication, and bringing hope. For the first time I firmly believe that I have made the right call to train in the arts while working in mental health. I am learning unique skills and insights that are essential to my work in mental health – which is so surprising and unexpected! I do not want to be a psychologist or a counsellor or a psychiatrist or a social worker – not because I do not value those disciplines but because that is not how I want to practice. I want to be a peer, a communicator, a community hub person that is friends with people and helps to connect them with the resources they need. I want to collaborate with the mental health disciplines and form alliances with them and work along side them, but as who I am now and the roles I naturally play best – artist, entrepreneur, activist. We need people like me in this field, we just hadn’t realised it before. So I will work as a freelancer and build the role around me and my skills – just as many others have in the past. We will bring new voices to the conversation and champion inclusion, community, and hope.

And I will do more figuring out how manage this exuberance, to shepherd it wisely, and to calm my brain and sleep.

Celebrating my Blog

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

I’ve just given this Blog a facelift. I’ve changed to a new theme, created a static front page, shifted to endless scrolling and a more mobile friendly responsive layout, killed the ads, and generally shined her up. Why? Because I’ve now passed 1,000 posts on this blog! What a labour of love it has been.

My first ever post on this blog was back in August 1, 2011: What am I up to at the moment? I rapidly realised it was an ideal platform to share mental health information – 4 days later I wrote my first mental health article Managing Triggers, which is still viewed nearly daily.

Crunchy numbers

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 25,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 9 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

There were 337 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 29 MB. That’s about 6 pictures per week. The busiest day of the year was August 3rd with 290 views. The most popular post that day was Fat Shaming.

Most Popular Posts in 2014

I’ve been working hard on my websites lately. My Business site is also much cleaner and easier to navigate now, and today I’ve added a new service to those I offer: Professional Writing. I wrote up some of the feedback I’ve been given for this Blog over the years and it was… beautiful. Clarifying.

“Your writing is beautiful, evocative and inspiring—thankyou!” -NGO Supervisor

“Your articles… have saved my life. My partner and I cannot thank you enough.” – Peer

“Sarah… has improved my knowledge and understanding enormously… my everyday life with my partner, and my ability to work with people from right across the mental health spectrum.” – Carer

“A brilliant emotional description, clearly showing the possibilities of being in charge of your psychosis, understanding it and working through, real recovery in action” Ron Coleman

“As always, your writing captures the depth of suffering and brilliance of madness” – Transactional Analyst

“It was worth dealing with 20 yrs behaviorism in the UK to (find) your writing.” – Social Worker

I’m actually starting to take some positive feedback on board for the first time since I was a child. I can see clearly what I’ve been doing all these years with this work. I’m ready to launch myself out there in a bigger way, so I’ve been sharing my upcoming talk about Psychosis widely and reaching out to organisations to arrange talks with them. The networks are also growing, I’m not holding back anymore, not bewildered and confused about where I’m going and what I’m doing. It’s all come clear in my mind’s eye and I’m exactly where I should be. I am so full of urgent life right now, I write notes for books while parked at traffic lights, I carry college journals with me to sketch designs in waiting rooms. I am so brimming with life I can’t contain it, there’s a joy in me, a bubbling laugh that just spills over and carries me along with it. Tamlorn has died and yet somehow the world is the most beautiful place. I feel like I went down into death with them and now I’ve been reborn, full of urgency and clarity. I am so proud of my work and so passionate about my future! I drive so carefully because no one else can write these books that are bursting out of me and I’m desperate to get them written before I die. There’s so much to do and learn and experience. And so many amazing projects to grow. I’m so proud of this Blog. It’s a beautiful, intimate account of my life, far beyond the stereotypes of mental illness, poverty, or disability. This is my account, my voice, my own perspective. Pieces of myself I have brought out into the public to say such simple things: that people with multiplicity are still human, that artists have important contributions to conversations about mental health, that psychosis does not have to be only terrifying and destructive. That we are never alone, not even in the deepest experiences of shame or pain. That life is horrific, and it is also beautiful.

So, I’ve tidied up the frame in which I hang these words. It’s pretty and clean and shining and simple. Because I’m finally realising how beautiful this thing I’ve created really is, and how glad I am that, come what may of all my other dreams, these words at least will last.

Mother’s Day

/ Sarah K Reece / 4 Comments

 

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Love to all mothers, to those of us with hearts brimming over and those with hearts tattered and battered and torn. To those with hearts broken by yearning and sick with unrealised dreams. Love to those grieving, to those mothers who can’t or won’t use the word mother, who fall through the holes of our language into a silence, those who love dead unborn children, who mourn children lost, who love children they have no claim of flesh and bone and law to but love them anyway. Love to all women who love and give life to and grow something more than themselves.

Love to all children, to those of us with hearts brimming over and those with hearts tattered and battered and torn. To those with hearts broken by yearning and sick with unrealised dreams. Love to those grieving, to those children who can’t or won’t use the term mother for a woman who once bore them but did not love them well, who fall through the holes of our understanding into a silence, those who love dead mothers, who mourn mothers lost, who love women they have no claim of flesh and bone and law to but love them anyway. Love to all children and once children who love and are brought alive by and grow because of or in spite of a mother.

(thanks to Ellie Hodges thoughtful facebook post for the image)

 

PJ Day!

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

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When you get around the blocks to self care; the self hate, the horrible spiral of no energy to do it and therefore no recharging to get more energy, the cultural conditioning that tells you its selfish, the tendency to try to use it to suppress unhappy feelings instead of giving them space, the inclination to bounce between self deprivation and self indulgence in a way that decreases your self respect and energy…. Wow, is it great.

Today I’ve been in my PJ’s all day. I started with a cup of Rose Tea.

Yesterday I hung out with my sister all evening. We cooked fudge raspberry brownies and played Diablo 3. This whole ‘coming out of a high state gently’ thing has a lot going for it. I slept peacefully last night and slept in this morning and I feel awesome. 🙂

Tonight we have dinner planned with rocky road ice cream, the couch is ready with blankets, the heater is on, and The Cat Returns is the movie choice of the night.

Tomorrow I’m doing art homework with a study buddy and admiring their studio.

Sunday Rose and I are keeping our heads down and planting Tamlorn’s peach tree out the back.

Life is damn good.

Glorious stationary

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

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I treated myself to some new stationary to help organise my admin. It’s wonderful. My desk has looked like this for weeks now. I can find things. I have folders with tabs and colour codes for different information. I picked up most of these as slightly damaged seconds. Love the rainbow of colours!

Clearer working spave and clearer thinking are working together to help me zoom through admin and make sense of complicated paperwork with a minimum of stress. I’m grateful! Will buy a few more folders and magazine boxes when I next can. I’m managing it all at last (except the ongoing debt saga). I’m finding my feet with it.

So pretty. Stationary is awesome. Officeworks is my kryptonite.
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I’m Burning

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I’m flying. I’m strong. I take up the space I live in. I have a voice. My mind is clear. I look after my body. I look after my soul. I’m learning how to do the things I need, what strange food and drink I must live upon: like sleeping under stars, running away from home, breaking the routines. It makes me strong. It makes me fly.

I have the most incredible life.

Today was amazing. I did things, with this fierce roar in my chest. I did difficult things, without anguish. I walked a long way through the autumn, wind blowing through my heart, feet kicking up leaves. I made soup, for dinner, with my hands, and felt connected to the simple needs of a body. I met with people and made plans and did needful things for home and business and networks and through it all I was bold and attuned. I gave out a lot of energy and did a great many things.

I’ve been finding what I need. Rose has been helping me so much. Lost in her own grief as she is, she has been so faithful. She’s organised and arranged each of the three trips we’ve taken since Tamlorn died. And with each, my head has become clearer. She’s cooked countless meals when I didn’t feel like eating, done hours of shopping and bought home treats to tempt me. She’s the beloved heart of my world.

My world has been kind. My friends give to me, in many different ways, so generously. I have a tribe who love me. My tutors are giving me room to breathe at college, to find my feet, to ask the questions I have to ask and find some end to the tangled thread I can follow. I have been very fortunate in my pain. I have been well loved.

And I am thriving. I’m bursting with energy and passion. I know this place, it’s intense. I’m in a state of growth and output. Full of courage and strength, I could uproot trees and dig lakes with my hands! It’s fierce and magic. I have to care for myself so it doesn’t burn me out, doesn’t wear me to the bone, doesn’t eat me from the inside like fire. I have to rest, to listen for strain and exhaustion, take days off, allow downtime. There are seasons in all things, including this. I will use the energy while it is here, build new things, tear through the obstacles that were defeating me, move my whole world. And I will listen for the tiring, the turning away, the winter settling in. I will slow and be still, retire, meditate, listen to the earth, when I need. And I will grow peacefully, the small things each day; the dedication of farmer tending crop and shepard the flock. Each season in turn.

But gods, it’s good to burn again. The Roar in me still ringing. This is life and I will suck the marrow from it.