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Refreshing
We won’t know if CABF has won the grant until January 3, but as of 11:35 PM EST last night, we were in second, which is good enough for the grant. Lots of people worked tirelessly for the last 60 days to get this grant from Pepsi – this is sort of how we looked…
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Help CABF Help More Families
If you read my blog with any frequency, you know that 2-3 times a month I blog for the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation. CABF is in the running, right now, for a Pepsi Refresh grant worth $250,000. I can say, will all sincerity, if it wasn’t for CABF and their volunteers, staff, and services,…
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We Walked!
It was a beautiful day last Sunday in Chicago for NAMIWalks. I was the captain of Team BringChange2Mind / CABF. Our friend ImpassionedCat shared some great photos she took of the walk and the team. Thanks for sharing them with us, Catherine!
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An Open Letter to Judith Warner
Good Morning: I’m reading your book right now, “We’ve Got Issues“. It was recommended to me by my friends Susan Resko and Nanci Schiman who run the Child and Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (I’m one of the volunteers who helps moderate their twitter account and writes a weekly post for the bpkids.org blog). I’m only about…
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Teachable Moments
Someone praised me recently for being so understanding and patient with Tim and all of the symptoms and behavioral issues that go along with a diagnosis like Schizoaffective Disorder. I was not being modest when I replied that I’m anything but. Read the rest at CABF.
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Summertime
When I was a kid, summer was the time of year I most looked forward to. Does it get any better? No school, lots of daylight, warm weather, and little structure. I ran around like a banshee as a young child, hung out with my friends at the beach or the mall as a tweener,…
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Write It Down
When we were working on getting Tim admitted to his RTC (residential treatment center), part of the paperwork requested was a chronology of development, treatments, diagnoses, and medications that had already been tried. I presented them with nearly 30 pages of information that detailed his history, from first diagnosis at age four to the weeks…
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One Level At a Time
In 1943, a psychologist named Abraham Maslow published a paper on his theory of human motivations. My wildly over-simplistic explanation of his theory is that people will pursue meeting the most basic human needs before moving on to fulfilling more complex needs. We hunt and gather before we desire interpersonal relationships and professional respect. I…
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Hope is Real
I had the immense pleasure this weekend of having dinner with several folks of BringChange2Mind. They’ve all changed my life – our family’s lives – in some way. The CABF team helped pull us out of the fear and confusion we felt when Tim was first diagnosed. Susan Resko, Executive Director of CABF – without…
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Body and Mind: Taking a Break
I’ve mentioned in a previous blog post that my son Tim is in long-term residential treatment. He was admitted last August, and right now, his estimated discharge date is sometime during the summer of 2011. It’s incomprehensible to me that he will be gone from our home that long. I can only digest it in…