Six or seven years ago, three Bellingham Police Department units pulled into a parking lot behind my Jeep and I didn’t even notice them following me. They didn’t take me to jail. They took me to One Central. That psychiatric hospitalization was a single link in a chain of events that stretches back to the…
3.5 years. Two hospitalizations. One note that said “Get help” on an empty bedroom door. This is the story of my estrangement from my daughters, what I had to burn down to become someone worth coming back to, and how I found my way back to them. This is not a highlight reel. This is…
A 12.8-mile photo walk through Bellingham became more than a color study in orange, it became a marker of recovery. Long-distance walking helps regulate my nervous system and acts as somatic exposure therapy, keeping me engaged with the world instead of retreating from it. Thirty days ago I threw away my cannabis, and I’m about…
Six years ago, that smile wasn’t real—I was flat, numb, and buried under a stack of psychiatric medications that dulled everything human in me. I was surviving, not living. Hospitalizations, psychosis, loss after loss followed. Then, unexpectedly, a research trial changed the trajectory. A Vagus Nerve Stimulator didn’t save me overnight—but it gave me a…