a warped view

I have always been fiercely protective of the people I love, sometimes to my own detriment, sometimes more than those people want me to be. I have never let my sex, my age, my role or my place in the world stop my for standing up for someone. This is particularly true of my mum. She is a strong, independent, smart, wonderful woman, my role model in most things. Growing up there was mostly just her and me. I say that but we had a very close relationship with my grandparents, my cousin lived with us for almost 10 years and my (half) sister from my dad's second marriage spent an inordinate amount of time with us, but in my mind and my heart, when I think of my childhood I think of the two of us together against the world. She raised me to be strong, to stand up for what is right and just, to treat all people equally, to be kind, compassionate and giving and that above all else, family comes first. She also taught me that friends can be our family as much as those we are bound to by

Twice in the last couple of weeks I've had well meaning people tell me that I shouldn't be taking anti depressants as there is nothing wrong with me. I mean everyone feels a bit sad sometimes right? That doesn't mean they have one of those mental illness things. Neither of these people meant to be offensive, I'm pretty sure that they both quite like me, they just don't understand and belong to a way of thinking that is full of stereotypes and misinformation. Neither of them has any experience dealing with mental illness, neither of them know what it's like to have a constant black cloud hanging over you. Sadly, they are not the only two people who think like this. Despite the struggles for greater awareness, understanding and acceptance, mental illness still has a very special stigma all of it's own. "Normal" people seem to believe that only specific personality types suffer from depression, that depressed people are lazy, that they want to b

First of let me say that I have no training other than my almost 14 years of being a parent. I do not hold any sort of qualification that makes me an "expert". Now we've got that out of the way, here's my tips. 1. Love your child(ren) - this one seems pretty straight forward and easy but sometimes it gets forgotten. There are many definitions of the word love (and obviously I'm not referring to sexual love here!) but for me this means to have affection, warmth, fondness towards your offspring, to like them, to be interested in them as a person. 2. Make sure your child(ren) know that they are loved - loving them is all well and good, but if they don't know in the core of their being that they are loved then it's kind of irrelevant. 3. Give yourself permission to make mistakes - this is one that I'm not very good at myself but that I consider to be very important. We are each of us only human and we are going to cock things up at one time or another in a