Broken mirrors

"She always did put too much of herself into her creations..." My name is Lavender. I'm chronically ill, neurodiverse, a geek, a sometimes comedienne (intentionally or otherwise), a foodie and I (burnout aside) care a lot about social justice. And the WordPress community. I used to know how to talk about trauma. And, I will …

Fandango’s Flashback Friday: Messages in a Bottle #21 Meteorologic Misanthropy Miniseries Intro flashback

Fandango over at This, That and the Other has come up with a fun challenge to expose readers to some of our earlier blog posts they, "May have missed." Re-post a post from this same date (September 17th) in a previous year. This turns out to also be an excellent excuse to keep posting something …

Trust in Mental Health Systems #8/ Messages in a Bottle #20: OB-G-WHY?!-N

CW: Discussions of the experiences of one person who has a uterus (aka, me) attempting to receive gynecological care. I never exactly intended to write an entire series on why I joke in my Glossary of Terms that “I know trauma-informed care quite well – in the sense that the ‘care’ I have seen has …

Brevity Is The Soul Of Apathetically #11: Work Burnout

Ugh. The never-ending lessons in how to create a 'trauma-informed' and 'anti-racist' workplace that somehow manage to involve folks having to relive their own personal trauma(s) continue. (Or, as my Partner succinctly sums them up each week: "the beatings will continue until morale improves!") I'm not even just talking about me feeling work burnout in …

My ‘River of Life’ is the River Lethe

Hi all, Eek! I realized today that even though it feels like just "a couple of weeks ago" that I last wrote a blog post, it has actually been a full month! ADHD: it means all time is either "now" or "a couple of weeks ago." I think I alluded to the fact that my …

Pot Meet Another Kettle

Last time I wrote, I promised an honest review of adult psychoactive recreational substances as a solution for election-night anxieties. My review sums up to: I'm not "recreationally" affected, but they do make for slightly less unsettled sleep. My longer report is as follows: "Being the irony magnet scientist that I am, I have had …

Seeking Asylum in Faerun

11/7 Update: I formally welcome Pennsylvania back into New JersMaPennsRicutaware. Thank you. That is all! (For now!) My husband's first cousin - one of the ones we just don't speak to - got covid recently. He's younger than us, and he worked in a physically demanding job and was proud of the physical condition he …

Patience is a Mental Health Challenge

Partner (detaching a cat from his shoulder after she had climbed him, lost purchase, and ended up digging in her claws to stay on him at all): “Trauma Kitty, you were doing so well just sitting in my arms. But, for some reason, you have the instinct that when things are scary you need to …

Brevity is the Soul of Apathetically #9: Out of Context

The first session of my mini D&D campaign went well. Work, on the other hand, was fairly stressful this week. Because I have an annoying habit of dramatically announcing things that I probably am not entirely prepared to talk about in the most random circumstances possible at that workplace. Because somehow those personal things that …

It’s Not Delivery. It’s Depression Pizza!

CW: Discussions of the lingering relationships between food and life events. No specific mentions of disordered eating, but please use caution if discussions of food and/or emotional eating are potentially triggering topics. All descriptions of the related life events are in the past, though they are mentioned in the context of eating those same foods …