mental health
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And They Say Chi City …
Some people just aren’t built to be rock stars. The big audiences, the grueling travel, the long stretches away from home, living out of suitcases and a new city almost every night … it takes a lot out of the most stable among us. In the early 2000s, I was touring with the national company…
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Dirty, Pretty Things
Often, after an intense therapy appointment, instead of sitting in my car, folded across the steering wheel before I have the strength to face the rest of the day, I make a detour to the T.J. Maxx on the way home. I don’t always buy anything; I just wander the racks and flip through organized…
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Medical Examiner Rules Death of Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam a Suicide
Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam, who had the distinction of being the first African-American woman to serve on New York’s highest court as well as the country’s first female Muslim judge, committed suicide by drowning in April, according to the New York City medical examiner. The coroner’s office confirmed its findings in a statement Wednesday, the New…
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For Colored Girls Who Don’t Know They’re Struggling
“It looks like melanoma,” my dermatologist said casually as she biopsied a mysterious scar that had developed under my left temple. I was unmoved. I cried when my hairdresser found a bald spot the size of a silver dollar in the middle of my scalp while roller-setting my tightly coiled curls a month before. I…
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When The Person Who Prevented Your Suicide Dies By Suicide
Linkin Park saved my life. I attempted suicide at 14, and the gnawing feeling to try again did not subside easily. I’ve lived with depression for the last 20 years. It was extremely hard to find the words for most of my life that could reveal the pain I was in daily. Especially during my…
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Don’t You Know That You’re Toxic?
Editor’s Note: Trigger warning, this post talks about the subject of suicide, and was written before the death of Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington. It can be time-consuming, this constant calibration of moods. I can’t predict when it will hit me, when my lungs will close and the room will begin to spin. When I feel…
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NYC Will Pay $380,000 to Family of Rikers Island Inmate Who Hanged Himself Days After Being Taken Off Suicide Watch
In more terrible news for the embattled Rikers Island jail, New York City (really, taxpayers who live or work in New York) has agreed to pay out $380,000 to the family of a 24-year-old housed at the jail who hanged himself shortly after being taken off of suicide watch. The New York Daily News reports…
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When Vanity Is Self-Care
The salon was busy when I walked in. There was the chatter of stylists gossiping with clients, the whirl of hair dryers and the receptionist laughing into her cellphone. She paused the conversation to ask if she could help me. Before I could respond, the stylist I’d come to see noticed me and waved me…
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Maia Campbell Declines Help From LL Cool J
They say you can’t really help people in crisis unless they really want help. This past weekend, a video of former actress Maia Campbell made its way to social media. Campbell, who starred on LL Cool J’s show In the House, was seen disheveled at an Atlanta gas station, missing a tooth and begging for…
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Anxiety Is All in Your Head
The last few weeks had been good; the fog that spent the last year following me had risen back into the clouds, and the unsteadiness of anxiety seemed less promise and more memory. I was lulled into a comfort. Good news had begun to flood my life, and instead of questioning my worthiness or turning…