hey. guess what?

you’re so close to surviving 2020

keep going

i’m so proud of you

Some important reminders ✨

The kind of potion we all need right now

I promise you do

Mental health is so important. Prioritize your personal wellness. Take time to nurture yourself. Don’t do things that you’re not happy with. Don’t rush your healing. Relax. Don’t judge where you’re at or where you think you should be. Just be kind and patient with yourself.

Please take a few minutes to take care of yourself during these horrible times

Sending love and strength to everyone around the world

mental–healthawareness:

Invisible disabilities are just as real and valid as visible ones.

I’ve been AWOL for months now, and there’s one simple reason for that: no sense in running a dog blog when you don’t have a dog. 

Christmas is fine–he’s doing great actually. He is in Switzerland with a backyard several acres large, another Samoyed buddy, and five people in the home with him all day long. 

Giving him up was an intensely personal decision that I didn’t particularly feel like discussing publicly at the time, as I wasn’t ready to deal with the potential conversations that often come up when you re-home a dog. 

I miss having a dog, and I miss blogging about dog training and life with dogs, but I’m not currently in a place where I can have one, and I don’t know when that will change. 

I could go into all the reasons I ultimately made the decision to give Christmas a better life with someone else, like how foolish it was of me to think I could handle having a dog on my own in a city while working 10 hours a day, or how I wasn’t ready to deal with a breed so very different from Daenerys, and how helpless and bitter I felt sometimes when he didn’t bond with me like a shepherd dog would. 

At the end of the day, however, it came down to the fact that I couldn’t give Christmas the life I felt he needed to suit his personality and breed type. So when he was 6 months old, (a little over a year ago) I got in touch with his breeder, asking her what I could do, and she offered me an out, I took the out. 

A good friend of hers had recently lost one of her Samoyeds and was looking to fill the void, and Christmas was just the kind of puppy she was looking for. I follow his social media account and love seeing the updates (not a fan of his new name, but couldn’t very well expect most people to appreciate the uniqueness that is Christmas), and as much as it’s a kick in the gut sometimes, I know I did the right thing. 

There’s a bit of a stigma when it comes to rehoming dogs, and I wish there wasn’t, because honestly I should have rehired him months before I actually did. We weren’t a good fit, and we both deserved better, and I should have made that call for him earlier than I did. But, of course, I was afraid of the potential backlash. “You should have done your research” and “dogs aren’t toys for you to chuck when you’re bored”. 

But keeping him out of guilt over what society might say is bullshit. I wasn’t doing him or myself any favours. Sometimes it doesn’t fit. And as long as you do the research and make sure that his next home is a good fit, you are not abandoning your dog, or betraying him. You are making a responsible choice to ensure that his needs are being met and that he gets the life he deserves. 

Christmas has a great life, and as sad as I am that it isn’t with me, I’m glad he’s with someone who can offer him everything he needs and loves him unconditionally. 

Someday I’ll have a dog again, but I don’t know when the circumstances will allow it. Maybe I’ll find a way to work with dogs as a hobby in my free time so I can still blog and get my daily dose of dog, but it’s all a bit out there right now. A lot has happened in the last year, and I’ve been uprooted and tossed into limbo more times than I care to count. I am not where I thought I would be, and I still need to find my bearings. 

All that to say: it’s okay to re-home your dog. It’s not okay to abandon them, and it’s not okay to toss them out because you’re bored or tired of them, but it is okay to recognise that things aren’t working out and to find a solution that puts their needs above yours. 

Don’t stick with a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it. 

tikuri:

fibrefox:

me-and-my-disabilities:

Stop saying Narcissistic when you mean abusive!!

ID: Stop saying OCD when you mean organised. Stop saying depressed when you mean sad. Stop saying ADHD when you mean easily distracted. Stop saying traumatic when you mean inconvenient. Stop saying anorexic when you mean skinny. Stop saying phobic when you mean uncomfortable. Stop saying bipolar when you mean moody. Stop saying schizophrenic when you mean unpredictable. Stop saying psychotic when you mean irrational. Stop saying sociopathic when you mean cruel. Stop saying autistic when you mean foolish or strange. Stop saying triggered when you mean upset or offended. end ID

People who have rare developmental disabilities are often misdiagnosed with autism.  This happens in part because a lot of disabilities look similar in early childhood. When kids with undetected rare genetic conditions start ‘missing milestones’, they are often assumed to be autistic.

When people are assumed to be autistic, autism stereotypes get applied to them. They’re often assumed to be uninterested in people and communication, and they’re often put into ABA programs prescribed for autistic people. They face the same kind of degrading and damaging misunderstanding that autistic people do.

When advocacy organizations address the issue of misdiagnosis, they tend to say some form of “It’s important to distinguish between autism and Not Autism Syndrome, because demeaning autism stereotypes only accurately describe autistic people.”

Here’s a Rett Syndrome example: 

“The child with RTT almost always prefers people to objects, but the opposite is seen in autism. Unlike those with autism, the RTT child often enjoys affection.”

And a Williams Syndrome example:

“Unlike other disorders that can make it difficult to interact meaningfully with your child, children with Williams Syndrome are sociable, friendly and endearing. Most children with this condition have very outgoing and engaging personalities and tend to take an extreme interest in other people.”

Statements like these suggest that the problem with autism stereotypes is that they’re applied to the wrong people. The thing is, demeaning autism stereotypes *aren’t true of anyone. We all have feelings and thoughts and the capacity to care about things and relate to other people. Accurate diagnosis matters, but not as a way of sorting out who is and isn’t fully human. We’re all fully human, and no one should be treated the way autistic people are treated. We shouldn’t pass around stereotypes, we should reject them.

Hashtags or cash bags?

“Let’s Go Mental” comes the rallying cry, not from a bunch of lads about to head out on a so-called ‘mad one”, but from the Irish Government as gets behind another mental health hashtag campaign on Twitter. You might have spotted one or two of them around before, back in the days when Enda Kenny’s #littlethings caused quite the storm on Twitter. “We need to talk about mental health” they say, but…

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Professional?

I know I’ve shared this before but I’m not scrolling through my archives to reblog it it was quicker to just make a new post. I’m going to be sharing a few poems from my Vocal page.

Vocal has made a few updates, they’ve introduced a little feedback thing you can give to writers at the bottom of our pieces but they’ve now also made commenting on peoples work available. So if you like my work of have feedback or anything on it feel free to leave a comment or feedback. You can also give it a heart/like if you wish although idk if you need an account for that tbh.

Vocal does also have an option to leave a tip which is never expected but always appreciate or if you prefer I now have tipping on tumblr as well as my Ko-Fi which I have the link to on my Vocal and there you’ll also find access to exclusive poems for supporters.

in the wake of the Depp/Heard trial’s presence becoming a nearly inescapable anywhere on the internet, please try extra hard to be kind to yourself. if you know that it’s bad for you to keep reading, please keep scrolling & block any tags people are using for this garbage. i’ll be leaving this here then disengaging too.

last night i reached a breaking point after accidentally getting into a conversation with my roommates about what purpose it serves as a publicized event. people either seem to be taking sides in what they see as a soap opera or taking the “mature, detached” approach of denouncing any real-world effect. this isn’t just celebrity drama. this is something that will deeply effect the way we look at both domestic violence and mental health. after years of academic research on personality disorders & years of following the personal experiences of people with personality disorders, as well as learning to manage my own bpd symptoms, reading the misinformation that’s being reported is so heartbreaking

here’s what happened & why it’s scary:

•mental illness has once again been used in a court of law to not only support abuse accusations, but also to delegitimize the opponent’s testimony

•the specific mental illnesses in question are all Cluster B personality disorders (BPD & HPD for Amber, NPD for Johnny), some of the most historically misunderstood & stigmatized disorders in the entire field of psychology

•it’s already very difficult to find professional help that isn’t dehumanizing - it just got harder (therapists often flat out refuse to treat people diagnosed or suspected of having a personality disorder)

•this is many people’s first time hearing these terms - abusiveness is now an inherent connotation

things to remember:

•throwing around the words “borderlines” or “narcissists” instead of “people with BPD/NPD” reduces a person to a diagnosis & reinforces stereotypes

•turning psychiatric terms into adjectives & using them in phrases like “narcissistic/borderline abuse” is the same as describing someone’s behavior as “bipolar” or “schizo” when it negatively affects you - it’s demonizing & ableist

•linking a particular style of abuse to a mental disorder allows anyone to look at an abuser and diagnose them with a mental disorder

•it also allows anyone to look at someone with a mental disorder and assign them the status of an abuser

•people (not diagnoses) are responsible for their actions & the effects of those actions

•diagnoses do not dictate personal ethics

•no one is a bad person because of their diagnosis or a good person despite it

•any type of abuse can be perpetrated by anyone, neurodivergent or neurotypical

•every person is different - celebrities in a disturbing legal battle are NOT the faces of personality disorders or really anything else that the general population should relate to

•this will continue to be an incredibly triggering topic for some people with a history of abuse, people with a personality disorder, & especially people with both

•people with personality disorders are much more likely to be abused than neurotypical people (certain symptoms + neurodivergence in general put us at greater risk) - not all of us are victims of abuse, but the majority are (sources below)

•please be sensitive & respectful - we’re humans too & feeling like our existence is being criminalized is really upsetting

•please educate yourself before you speak on the experiences of neurodivergency - bias is nearly unavoidable but it’s also pretty easy to detect even if academic resources are too dense for you

sources:

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Stigma and all that

Speaking up about mental illness is of course very important to make it a less taboo subject (which it shouldn’t be in the first place) but personally all i got was “oh… well did I gotta pick up something at the mall wanna come?”

There’s nothing really wrong with this answer it’s okay not to know what to say but maybe a little follow up? a text maybe? no apology needed just a simple “how are you doing, is there anything I can do?”

fandomsandfeminism:

Target Accused of Selling ‘Silence = Death’ Shirt Without Permission

God dammit, Target. Wtf.

Corporations are fucking eeeeeeevil