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Create Awareness, Share Your Stories.
Demonstrate Compassion.
Empathize and Advocate.
Create Awareness, Share Your Stories.
Demonstrate Compassion.
Empathize and Advocate.
A platform for you to connect with resources, information, or something that brings you joy. Share your stories or read someone else's. We are not alone in this journey. Help me build a supportive community in this new space. Get comfortable and feel empowered by your role in reducing the stigma around mental illness and neurodiversity.
Hello, I'm Madeline Rodger. Thank you for coming by.
At 21, I acquired a traumatic brain injury in a fatal car accident. In my forties, I discovered I had been experiencing intermittent psychosis for 21 years, and episodic paranoid, delusional psychosis since 2019. I am an emerging author and advocate, raising awareness to anyone interested in learning about mental illness and the spectrum of neurodiversity. I want to get the conversations going.
After becoming cognitively disabled, I wasn't aware of my mental illness for 21 years! An arrest and involuntary hospitalization during an active paranoid, delusional psychosis forced me, and my family, to see my life as it truly is. I collected the pieces of that fragmented, chaotic experience, and after connecting the dots, finally learned about my mental health situation.
Not long after coming home from the psychiatric hospital, someone attempted making small-talk with me at an outdoor community event, "What's new? How have ya been?" And like a toddler still high from excitement after an adventure with a puppy at a candy store, I spilled. I couldn't stop talking. I wasn't embarrassed about what had happened, I was shocked. This could have happened to anyone, why would I have felt ashamed?
Then it happened. Stigma showed up and forced the person's head down, their eyes went from mine to the ground and never came back up. They began whispering in a way that screamed at me to follow their lead.
I got the message, loud and clear. They were embarrassed at the possibility of being overheard. I embarrassed them. My situation shamed them by association.
The epiphany following that crisis, shifted my shame to acceptance, recognizing the condition as a manageable health issue rather than a personal failure.
So, I went back to school to learn the art of Creative Nonfiction Writing, because this has been a wild ride that I need to share.
There is so much room under the umbrella of mental health. Key topics include: emotional, psychological, and social well-being, mental distress to diagnosed conditions like depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, and PTSD, survivor's guilt, substance use disorders and habits that affect physical well-being,...Daily life-stressors and stress management, coping mechanisms and lifestyle changes.
Anything affecting your mood, your sleep, your eating habits or your safety- if you are comfortable enough to share, you will be heard with empathy and compassion.
The struggles are universal and relatable. Let's get used to talking about mental illness and mental health, it empowers people to get the help they need and provides a path to take proactive steps toward a safer day.
Madeline Rodger is a writer, not a mental health professional.