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Apr 4Liked by Caitlin Dewey

Don’t want to be all #notificationsquad but omg this is epic!

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Apr 4Liked by Caitlin Dewey

I’m amazed, but grateful, that more of these aren’t from Thought Catalogue. My only addition would be story on Babe (?!?!) from that woman who had that terrible date/encounter with Aziz Ansari. AND Jezebel’s response, which was somehow worse!

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Holy cats, Caitlin. I'm having some major massive feelings about this list (I love it btw)! I think I've spent the last hour reading all the links. I have bipolar one (mania) and reading the story by Liza Long about her son hit all the parts of growing up with juvenile bipolar. (I was diagnosed at 17 but I've chronicled symptoms as far back as age 11.) Having a mental illness, especially one like bipolar, is frustrating because of not only how it treats you but how it is also perceived. The rage states, as Long's son detailed, are places I would wish no one else to go. About a decade ago, we did a med swap because my current cocktail wasn't working and that turned out to be a huge mistake as I threatened my husband with a butcher's knife. I had a breakdown several months later and was in and out of mania for nearly a year while trying yet another med swap. (I'm better and stable now. Yay drugs!) Anyway, I'm rambling but my point is what Long's son says: treat those with mental illness with kindness and patience. We don't get enough of that. I would also implore your readers, if they can, to donate to the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance (https://www.dbsalliance.org/). They do great work. (And the woman who wrote that oxJane article about her friend and her mental illness? She can go jump off the deep end.)

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Thanks for these but many of the links didn’t work.

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First thank you for this! Second, Sarah A. Chrisman lives rent free in my head and I even read one of her books (FYI the Brooklyn Library had an ebook at least a few years back). My favorite was when she got kicked out of these historical gardens I think in Canada because they don't allow "costumes" and revealed a tendency to comparing her experience to being trans.

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