%20Devine%20Cover%20Art%20%E2%80%94%20Recovery%20Diaries%20in%20Depth.png)
Recovery Diaries In Depth
Welcome to Recovery Diaries In Depth; a mental health podcast that creates a warm, empathic, and engaging space for discussions around mental health, empowerment, and change. Executive Director and podcast host Gabe Nathan brings a unique combination of lived experience with mental health challenges, years of independent mental health and suicide awareness advocacy, and an understanding of the inpatient psychiatric millieu as a former staff member at a psychiatric hospital. This extensive background helps him navigate complex and nuanced conversations with a diverse array of guests, all of whom are vulnerable and engaged; doing their utmost to eradicate mental health stigma through advocacy, storytelling, and open conversation.
Guests who have previously contributed a mental health personal essay read their essays aloud during the podcast and then chat with Gabe about what has changed in their lives since their essays were published on the site. By engaging in deep discussions with people living with mental health challenges like bipolar disorder, trauma histories, addiction issues, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive or eating disorders, Recovery Diaries in Depth further carries out Recovery Diaries' mission to #buststigma by showing people that they are not alone, instead of just telling them. This mental health podcast features guests from all over the world and, while their own personal experiences are unique, the human experience is what unites, inspires, and connects. Subscribe, like, share, and enjoy!
Recovery Diaries In Depth is supported in full by the van Ameringen Foundation.
Recovery Diaries In Depth
A Vibrant Voice with DID Explores Trauma through Writing | RDID; 123
Elizabeth Ann Devine is a non-binary author living with ADHD, PTSD, OCD, and dissociative identity disorder. They have been twice published on Recovery Diaries, and we were delighted to welcome them onto Recovery Diaries in Depth to share their powerful journey of using writing as both survival mechanism and healing practice.
From early childhood, Elizabeth found sanctuary in libraries, using books and later their own writing as ways to process trauma and family dysfunction. "I probably write more than I live," they admit, highlighting a compulsive creative practice that became essential when other avenues for support proved inaccessible or harmful.
Their essay "The Plight of the One-Person Mental Health Support System" offers a raw, unfiltered glimpse into living with complex mental health challenges while navigating family relationships shaped by generational trauma. "It's like popping a zit" Elizabeth says about writing, and some of its consequences of breaking family cycles of secrecy, including estrangement and lost relationships.
"I'm compulsively honest," they say about themselves. Elizabeth has chosen to share their experiences publicly not just for personal healing but to create connection points for others facing similar struggles. The conversation touches on how broader political contexts impact mental health, particularly for marginalized communities, while still finding ways to choose "hope over fear" through daily practices of self-care, creativity, and helping others.
Elizabeth's essays are as creative as they are brave, and we are honored to have them as part of our community of mental health storytellers. Subscribe to our podcast for more conversations that illuminate the complex, challenging, and ultimately hopeful journeys of recovery.
Conversations like the ones on this podcast can sometimes be hard, but they’re always necessary. If you or someone you know is struggling, please consider visiting wannatalkaboutit.com.
Hello, this is Recovery Diaries In-Depth. I'm your host, gabe Nathan. Thanks so much for joining us. We're very happy to have you here. We are so happy to have as our guest on Recovery Diaries In-Depth today Elizabeth Ann Devine. They're a non-binary author, diarist and poet. They're also a model actor, filmmaker and paranormal investigator on the autistic spectrum. Thank you, hunger Crawls Through Me, a Moment of Living with Familiar Rejection and DID. And the piece Elizabeth is going to read today the Plight of the One-Person Mental Health Support System.
Speaker 1:Each week we'll bring you a Recovery Diaries contributor folks who have shared their mental health journey with us through essay or video format. We want to see where they are on their mental health journey since initially being published on our website. Since initially being published on our website, our goal is to continue supporting our diverse community by having conversations here on our podcast to follow up and see what has shifted, what has changed and what new things have emerged. We're so happy to have you along for this journey. We want to remind you to follow our show for new and back episodes at recoverydiariesorg. There, like the podcast, you'll find stories of mental health, empowerment and change. You can also sign up for our mailing list there so you never miss a new podcast episode, essay or film, and you can find this podcast pretty much anywhere. You get your podcasts. We appreciate your comments and feedback about our show. It helps us improve, make changes and grow. And, of course, make sure to like, share and subscribe. Elizabeth Devine, I'm so delighted to have you here. Welcome to Recovery Diaries In-Depth.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Diaries in Depth, thank you. Thank you for having me. You are so welcome, and I want to start by thinking back to 2022, when I received your first submission to us, and it's called the Plight of the One-Person Mental Health Support System, which we're lucky enough to be having you read aloud on the program today in just a little bit. So stay tuned for that. You're not going to want to miss that, and I read everything that comes to the site, all the initial submissions, and people come to us from all over the world right To tell their mental health recovery stories, and not everybody who lives with mental health challenges is a great writer and that's just a fact. You are, oh thank you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I was really just blown away by the uniqueness of your essay, the creativity and the way in which you use words and there's like a vividness and electricity in the way you storytell. And electricity in the way you storytell and I just want to know, yeah, what is your, what's your background in writing and your experience, and how did you get into writing?
Speaker 2:It was first an obsession with reading really early on, and then I became a compulsive writer. So it is actually the way in which I held on through everything. Um, I've written. I've lost more than um, you know, I've uh, I used it as a compulsive form of coping mechanism. It might even be related to OCD, because I have to write a certain amount, and then a certain amount, and then a certain amount before I can do anything else with the day, but, um, I spilled everything out all the time in journals and reading.
Speaker 2:Reading is what got me through school and writing is what got me through life, dissociating from a lot of what was going on around me. So it just it's. I probably write more than I live.
Speaker 1:Who were some of your favorite authors growing up?
Speaker 2:Oh, I have a lot and a lot of poets too, and a lot of songwriters. Lorena McKinnett as a songwriter. I'm trying to remember Maya Angelou. I love Maya Angelou's poetry. I don't know, oh, the Giver, the story of the.
Speaker 1:Giver.
Speaker 2:Lewis Lowry. That one, a fifth grade teacher, let me steal Because the rest of the class didn't want to go through it because it was more complex. Fiction kept me going a lot, imagining a world other than the one that I grew up in. Yeah, but my grandmother was also a poet and the first published poet of my family and my mom made sure to make sure I was obsessed with reading very early on and I just dissociated from the school around me and from life around me and that's all I did. And you know, I'm just now kind of learning to live like step outside of survival mode. But I use um writing and the works of others to cope. And, yeah, I have so many great influences, I've had so many great influences. The library is what kept me going. I grew up in libraries more than I did in classes or even at home. So, yes, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:My mother was a public librarian and I would say that I grew up in a library too, because I would go there after school but I didn't read. I would just sit in the back and listen to the librarians gossip and bitch about patrons, or about each other patrons or about each other Um, and I would play with the typewriter. They would have typewriters in the back, um that they would, you know, type on the library cards, um, uh, and back when you know they used those, um. But I look back on that and I'm like God, I really should have been reading when I was spending all that time at the library. How different my life might have been.
Speaker 2:But you absorb a lot of the atmosphere in libraries too. Each library is such a magical atmosphere.
Speaker 1:And yeah, and enjoying all of the librarians and you know, even just the smell of the books, I mean I still remember it. And the library had a little library pet. They had a guinea pig. His name was Portia. You know, it's all of those memories. It's very immersive.
Speaker 1:But I want to ask you about this notion of writing. But I want to ask you about this notion of writing, and so, as someone who runs a mental health publication, obviously I love writing and I love creative expression and I've been writing all my life. But there's this notion of and you kind of touched on this using writing as a coping mechanism, or this idea of writing as therapeutic. And I've I've heard people talk about writing as therapeutic. I've heard of people talk about writing as cathartic. Um, and I felt that too, like when I've sat down and I've just like I've been feeling something and I just push a personal essay out and it's like an hour at the keyboard and it's like out into the world and you feel different afterwards, maybe a little bit lighter, maybe a little bit more hopeful. But I'm curious to hear from you what your thoughts are. Do you view writing as therapeutic? Do you view it as cathartic? What is the experience like for you?
Speaker 2:It's pain. It's like, after the beautiful way you described it, honestly, in some ways I almost think of it as popping a zit. I'm with you. It as popping as it. I'm with you because it's like there's just this you know, there's this tremendous amount of pain and you're like okay, I need to start writing now and I'll start, and I do 10 minute timers first because I don't think about what I'm writing.
Speaker 2:I just you know, that's the editing part. I just get out whatever is going to float to the surface and it hurts. Whatever it is, it hurts and it hurts, and it hurts and it hurts, and then the timer goes off and it's like popping a little bit.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm curious too about. I mean I'm trying to get through the visual imagery which a lot of people love. I mean that people love watching that Dr Pimple Popper on.
Speaker 2:TikTok mentally.
Speaker 1:That's my life there's something there, but, like, go back to what you were feeling when you wrote that that initial essay for us. Did you? Did you fear sending it? Uh, is this? I mean, is this the first time that you've written publicly about things like this? And we're going to get into what things like this are when we talk about the essay and when you read it. But it's incredibly vulnerable, as all of our essays are, I think, to varying degrees, but this one in particular. So what was the experience like for you, writing it and also thinking about sending it, sending it, waiting for the reply, if you can remember.
Speaker 2:It's always an exercise of show up afraid, be afraid, do it anyway, of used to the be afraid, do it anyway, because I've been sending stuff off sometimes ridiculous stuff since I was 16. And I accidentally kind of got a poem published at 17. So I'm like, okay, I guess I'll keep doing it, but yeah, I'm obsessed with the writing part. It took a lot. I'm obsessed with the writing part. It took a lot, it takes a lot to get up to actually sending it to someone. I have to look over it to death and then I'm still like, no, but okay, there it goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's very different to be writing a work of fiction, for instance, um, then writing about your own life, and I think there's a lot. There's a lot at stake, and you know you could make a decision to keep all of this private, to just journal, and you know we hear so much in the mental health sphere about journaling and how journaling is healthy, and you know journaling is lovely and you should journal every day, but there's nobody out there really going. You should really be writing about your life and send it to an online publication so that they can put it out into the world for anybody to see. So what? What was it in you that made you want to not just keep this private, not just keep this close to the vest, but to put this out there?
Speaker 2:Compulsion. I grew up. You know, in one evaluation I had it said extreme likelihood of autism. But I could have told you that. And the thing is I don't have that filter, I've never had that filter and it got me in trouble and destroyed so many of my relationships. And they're also the ones that kind of had to go if they can't live up to honesty. I just kind of I'm compulsively honest, like when people say, hey, I'm going to tell you a secret. I'm like are you sure that's not? He's like I'll be your friend, I'll be there for you. Um, but I don't. I don't take people's secrets anymore because I had too many, there was too many growing up and I don't know. I compulsively share knowledge. It's. If this is what I have, then that's what came out Great.
Speaker 1:And I'm just along for the ride. Yeah, I resonate very much with this idea of growing up with too many secrets, and it is definitely something that um compels me to write, uh, to write about my mental health, to write about my family, uh, as an act of. I don't know if it's rebellion, but it's. I think it's very similar to when you have a child, uh, and the parents are very either like super religious or just super conservative or super controlling and restricting the child's movements and what they can do and what they can't do, and eventually the child is going to act out against that, and I think the same is true. You know, I tell people I came from a, we don't talk about that family, um, and when you're raised that way, eventually you're going to talk about it, um, and I wonder I mean, I just want to hear some of your thoughts about that, about the, the, the consequences of secrets and what that does to a person.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I think people like us, who you know, we talk about the things in the family that nobody does. It's like a built-in pressure valve. Eventually it's got to go somewhere. It's like nature will evolve a mouth that will tell these things. If you don't, you know nature will give you, will give you one who does. Um, and I think you know a lot of society is built on secrets and secrets and there are consequences for sure for telling them, for being a pressure valve. Socially there are consequences, but it's Go ahead.
Speaker 1:I was just curious if you could talk about some of those consequences for yourself.
Speaker 2:Well, at least one half of my family doesn't speak to me anymore, which, when they did, it was all manipulation and things like that. So, okay, a lot of people fall off. Um, a lot of people fall off like they, you know, there's I've had to let go of a lot of people because I would have a lot more writing out if I hadn't, and some also some secrets other people are not meant to keep for you, like when you give someone a secret, you've got to understand there's a level of burden, especially if you're giving one to your kids or your grandkids. It's like that's a burden.
Speaker 1:He's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, that's for you, that one's for you, that one's for you, and it's such a weighty thing to think about and consider breaking the thing, because keeping a secret holds a bunch of things together, right, and they're not always healthy things, but they keep everything on the even keel, which oftentimes is what family structures are built on. They're built on this very fragile, very tenuous thing that if you tell, if you talk, the house of cards comes down and of course you're the one who's going to pay for that, because keeping up appearances, that veneer of family, it's just so precious and so important to people, and I think people will do almost anything to protect that um, and oftentimes what they're protecting is very shameful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's um, my, I know my mother didn't know how to cope with it or doesn't know how, um, and then you know her having kids too much. They're like. She broke some cycles, which is a great thing, and she continued others, like the weighty demands on the uh, you know the eldest. I have eldest daughter syndrome essentially, but she also did her best to protect me from some experiences too. The problem is I had to go to psychology classes to figure it out, the way that you can layer the family trauma on people. It's a process of just slowly taking that off and understanding okay, this piece came from here, that piece came from there. What in all this is actually mine, what in all this is actually my? And you know, when you're full of the little secrets, then you get a writer in the family, you get someone in the family with a big mouth. Stuff's going to come out.
Speaker 1:A big mouth and a lot of talent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1:You're far more than just a big mouth, but you know talking about your mother.
Speaker 2:Well, she shared too much information.
Speaker 1:Right. Reconcile the damage that was done to you by her with the good things, with the ways in which she protected you or tried. What do you, what do you do with all of that?
Speaker 2:um, I, I, you know that's a good question. I went through a lot as a kid. She would remind me how much she went through as a kid. There was just it was always too much, it was always too much. There are some things that you just don't deal with. They just float around the surface and eventually you might find like journaling or free writing or art or poetry or whatever you use to just kind of, you know, process the memories.
Speaker 1:Was therapy part of that for you?
Speaker 2:It's very difficult to find therapists when you have the kind of damage that you know they write in the warnings and stuff. But then you know you spill out on the first assessment and they'll say we're, I'm not qualified for you, I need to pass on to someone else, and it's like dude, I'm just trying which has to feel great to hear oh yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, but you know it's been a difficult journey in that regard, so I had to turn to writing. I had to turn to other things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there comes a time when you just have to help yourself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one person. I called a emergency line in California. You know one of those for A crisis line. Yeah, and you know she asked me what was up.
Speaker 2:So this damn broke and I started cussing out all these people, none of which were her, by the way right right but she hung up on me wow yeah, and then I called the same crisis line back and you know, I asked for a supervisor and I'm like, hey, I wasn't cussing at this girl, I was just cussing in general because everything is you know. So she stonewalled me. She pretty much said that she had the right to hang up on me because of, you know, bullying, language or whatever, and she just stonewalled me until I hung up. So I was like no, you don't work at a crisis line if you can't stand some guessing. What puritan nonsense is this?
Speaker 1:People in crisis are going to be crisising. Right, they're going to say crisis things.
Speaker 2:They are going to be crisis-ing, right. They're going to say crisis things.
Speaker 1:They are going to say crisis things. That's an awful experience. I'm sorry that you had to go through that because, also as a suicide awareness advocate, and as someone who encourages people to reach out for help.
Speaker 1:I know how hard it can be to even get to the point where you pick up the phone to call and for some people it takes years to work up the courage to do it and to then get someone on the line who can't hack it, who's just like nope, bye. What a rejection and what a sense of abandonment. Um, so I'm sorry that you had to go through that who you gonna call, not them no, apparently not.
Speaker 1:Um, wow. Well, I would love to, at this point, move into your essay, um, which I'm so proud to have on our site, and we have another one up there, a more recent piece, but this one, uh, was written in, published in 2022 and it is called the plight of the one person mental health support system and, whenever you're ready, love to hear you read it.
Speaker 2:The expectation is still there that my mom can keep talking to me about men who have abused her in detail, sometimes including her pedophile father and my drunken one, like she did when I was a preteen and teen. Those things haunt my sexuality, so I shut myself off to hearing or feeling her pain or allowing her to share it with me, because it all hurts and I associate her with sexual assault and sexual victimization, which is an awkward feeling to have about your mother. According to her, when I was really young, I once saw her raped by a security guard from the tech firm she worked at. I don't remember that specifically, but I do remember at that age seeing sexual violent scenes in movies because they were everywhere, like Clan of the Cave Bear, one of my mom's favorite movies. The only counter-influence I found that empowered women instead of harming or diminishing them, was Catwoman from Batman, with her whip her claws, her powerful moves and absolutely no tolerance for aggression, domine, whip her claws, her powerful moves and absolutely no tolerance for aggression, domineering or violence from men. I would only later come to realize and appreciate that my mom was a cycle breaker, fleeing both her family and the other half of mine in order to keep me away from the violence, so I didn't grow up with the constant presence of it. So I didn't grow up with the constant presence of it. I think we need more cat women. We don't have a choice, with the country falling into the hands of men who think that and legislate so women can't make their own choices and who make medical calls for women when they know nothing about female anatomy, medicine, pregnancy, birth risks, birth control, etc.
Speaker 2:I keep saying that, yet keep hiding away, locked in my room in the dark, typing like mad and smelling myself the tang of my feet and the crotch of my pajama pants because I stayed in bed for a day. I collapse inward when the world becomes too much. And yet I've written more than ever before, every day, timed. This is a 30-minute timed writing exercise in which I won't allow myself to stop, no matter what I write. No time to pause and think, because that's a job for editing. Get it out. Get it out the words that shout between your ears and burn holes of anxiety in your gut. Words were the original magic, the true magic the privileged men always tried to take away from others. Don't let someone read, speak and orate. Then you don't let them, think and express the world around them the injustice of their experiences.
Speaker 2:I may have to run for office, but it haunts me. If anything, I want to take all forms of power so I can destroy them. There might always be leaders and followers, but there's no legitimate authority unless consented to. It makes it difficult to seek help for my mental health when I don't trust the sanity of trained professionals. After all, they probably believe in a number of mass delusions money, authority, borders, nation states, the veracity and validity of their training, gods. How can I ask a person like that for help when anything I say might be considered the symptom of an illness or a disability? I've certainly tried, gotten a few diagnoses and a lot of hemming and hawing about a boatload more for my troubles, and I discovered that most therapy programs are built by and for cognitively normative individuals who can do things like get presentable, to be around others every day and show up to a thing on time every week or every other week and remember appointments and things, people who don't lose days at a time. Is it too much to ask to have the same walk-in hours that aren't just for signing up, or having some walk-in hours that aren't just for signing up.
Speaker 2:It's freezing today. The porch covered in a blanket of faded orange and brown leaves, water in a discarded plastic container has frozen at just the first centimeter of surface. The air bit at my fingertips when I went out there. Even pads of my feet are already cold. When I went out with tennis shoes, but sockless, all five chickens were clustered inside the spare board house. So I said goodnight and closed the door, slipping the wooden brace on top over it.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I sing the sleepy chicken song, but I was in haste and it was already dark, so there was no concert. I was shocked. I could step outside when PTSD usually chokes my bravery. And it was already dark, so there was no concert. I was shocked. I could step outside when PTSD usually chokes my bravery to wander from the house at night, unless it's someplace brightly lit or sparsely populated at any hour. Now it's time to shower.
Speaker 2:No kidding, my God. You smell like a zoo animal's vagina. I don't want to know how you'd know that I don't. I was just calling you a zoo animal's vagina. I don't want to know how you'd know that I don't. I was just calling you a zoo animal and pointing out the smell wafting up from your Tinkerbell pajamas. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't a day old.
Speaker 2:All right, this is getting mean. How did we get here again? I have no plans, but too too many. They swap my mind when I don't take my adhd meds. Maybe I just have too many people inside, each from their each with their own tastes, preferences, triggers and ambitions for life.
Speaker 2:Primarily, we want to write, but there's also the actor and the conqueror of man. There's the queer one who breezes through life and different states without a plan. There's the one that wants to work with corpses, ancient or fresh. There's the one that wants nothing to do with anyone or any mess. How happy to see them. Sometimes I am At least. We all like to write every day thousands of words. So that could be a plan. We need to because there's no way for us to function without it. There's a difference between someone who wants to write and someone who needs to write. Both can become good writers, but the one who needs to write, they can't function without it. My verbal communication breaks down and the words become a spiraling vortex turned into a knot of anxiety in my chest, my gut, my heart that races when I first wake up if I don't release them all. It's too much, but I need it. We all do. None of us are ourselves without reading and writing.
Speaker 2:Without reading and writing, my mom paces around the kitchen near my bedroom door, a blanket, and I sit in the dark in front of my screen because I need to, but also to avoid her. When you associate your mom with abuse and sexual abuse that she experienced, every interaction can become squeamish and uncomfortable. I guess if she wanted me to spend time, she wouldn't have spilled the encounters with her dad and my father to me before I was 13 years old and on and off since, or insisted on moving in with me and my boyfriend, the first man I ever found, with either no ego at all or not enough for me to destroy. No, I don't know how I'm even a little bit straight either. It might help a little that he's on the submissive side. I hurt when my mother hurts, so sometimes I slam down the walls in my empathy around her so I won't hurt. But then she's all alone, very few friends, just my younger brother, dustin, in his room playing games all the time Alone in the smallest room in the trailer with smoky air and a bed filling most of it she sits and stares and shows on her computer and makes a database to track all the lottery numbers, as if there was a way to predict random, which she believes after 20 mostly unsuccessful years. But who knows, maybe there is. She used to help build satellites.
Speaker 2:I sigh in the dark, hunched over my knee, my feet are freezing blocks of ice. I should consider putting exercise on the list and wearing the fuzzy slippers. Someone recently gave me Leopard print with red bows, so hideous but useful. Considering I'm wearing black pajama bottoms with pictures of Tinkerbell on it that my mom bought me for Christmas, I don't think I have much room to complain about ugly slippers. To complain about ugly slippers, I don't care what people think of my appearance, because people dictating what is appropriate for me to wear is just another way to wrestle control from women via manipulation.
Speaker 2:I'm a model slash dom slash wrestler who doesn't want to be anymore. I don't want to hear one more word about what men want. In all my fucking life. They filled me to the brim with their desires, made me dress up like they wanted for money I needed, filmed me making a fool of myself Even if it wasn't nude or porn, it was still me, diminishing my intelligence and betraying who I am so that they could jerk off. I still do it sometimes when I get desperate for money, which is all the time, because my symptoms of illness and incompatibility with people whose worlds are upheld by mass delusions are so extreme that I can't go near people I work with after a few weeks, and my independent nature and demand that no one, especially men, give me orders about where to be, when, what to wear or how to act, will assert itself. Even if I need the check or cash.
Speaker 2:Writing is the only chance I have, or I might as well roll up my life and smoke it like hash. There's nothing for me but the word, not a religion, but a magic practice of mixing and matching, making sense of the senseless and senseless stories to appease me, not the masses. No one need demand it from me, because it's the thing I do without being told, the thing that holds me to the world, just because it's so damn fun to do. If I return to the ooze or the atmosphere, how long would it be before I grew fingers again? I'm hungry, my stomach hurts. My stomach burns with it. I'm also too lazy to leave the keyboard. My ADHD meds usually help me with that, but lately I've been counting the hours I've had for myself and wanting nothing but writing for them and realizing through my writing that I have some serious problems to deal with and or seriously need to escape my situation.
Speaker 2:Problems to deal with and or a seriously need to escape my situation it's a family tradition to run away. My parents, my mom and stepdad, ran from Philadelphia to Arizona, to Alabama, to Georgia, to Florida, back to Georgia again, and never managed to escape themselves, at least not until my stepdad died of brain and lung cancer a few months ago. At the same time I've tried to root in one place on the front lines of misogyny in the United States, and coming back to Georgia and coming back again and again has just felt like an inability to leave a bad relationship. To be honest, I wish I knew the way from here. I wish the many memories I have of trying to find help in the world of the blind had been filled with kindness.
Speaker 2:The beginning was, I think, mrs Estes and Mrs Green, who pulled me aside in a school in Tuscaloosa, alabama, and got me to talk, which led me down a long winding web of trying to find more help and encountering misunderstandings common of the disabled. Help and encountering misunderstandings common of the disabled and misunderstandings of reality. We all run into our own cycles and beliefs in which we cling so many unnecessary boundaries through policies that make getting help and staying in a program so difficult, such a need for personal boundaries at home in ways that go beyond just running as fast as I can. That was seven years ago. That was the beginning. You need to see the problem before you come up with a plan.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for reading that. It's wonderful to hear it in your own voice. It's wonderful to hear it in your own voice. It's such a powerful, strong piece and there's so, so much in there. It's fascinating how much you're able to 2022, and now we are in 2025. And one of the things that is quite different just not on a personal level, but on a national level is politics. And, um, you know, a lot of people say, oh, don't, don't get political and don't mix. But I think that's such bullshit. You can't divorce something as as huge from mental health or women's rights or LGBTQIA issues, and there's just this full-on assault against everything and everyone who isn't a white, straight, christian male, and I just want to hear from you about how you're coping with what's going on. I don't even want to say his name, but you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:What has this been like for you, and how are you keeping yourself together?
Speaker 2:I am definitely. Do you mind if I move this for better light? Because I've, I don't mind at all.
Speaker 1:Do whatever you need to do.
Speaker 2:So I wouldn't exactly call it coping. That was. You know, the reelection was possibly one of the worst nights of my life, but so coping hasn't really been a thing. I've been trying to find places, pockets in the world that are a little better. Uh, you know, whether it's Pennsylvania or New York. You know I'm trying to to find how bad Georgia got. Okay, let me backtrack a little. I actually wrote the essay closer to, probably, 2016. Then I finally got it out into the world in 2022.
Speaker 1:Things had been bad even way back. Then it had been a few way back then. Yep, it might have, because that was Trump 1.
Speaker 2:It had been a few years. Yes, yes, it was. Yeah, it had been a process getting it out into the world. But yeah, mental health is completely political, because what is going on in your world is pretty much the first step to figuring it out. I mean, there is what's going on within yourself, but there's also what's going on in your world and it's always, you know, a balancing act. You can't balance with fascism, like there's no balance there. There is no balance there whatsoever. Um, especially especially when you have neurodivergent people, we have, you know, uh, the, the, what is it the? Uh, pattern recognition. You know, like, the pattern recognition qualities. So you know what's going to happen, years before it actually starts happening. And you're telling everyone, hey, this is bad, this is really bad. And they're like nah, nah, it's fine, we, we can't live there, it's like, but you do, you do live there. That's exactly the planet you live on.
Speaker 1:See, see, this one it's still, it's a journey it's a journey and and I I tell myself that it's it's a pendulum and that it's swinging this way and that there is going to be a revolt against it and it's going to swing back and there will be some amount of normalization. I think so much damage is is not going to be able to be undone, but some can. Um, and I just tell myself, we just have to hold on and get through this, um, and and we also have to do the swinging yeah that's what we're doing.
Speaker 2:It's a lot to think about because, but at the same time, I choose hope over fear, and that's all it comes down to is like what can I do today? I choose hope over fear. I have to take care of myself, I have to create something and I have to maybe do something for someone else, and those are kind of my three, you know, major goals in the day, because I need to take care of me, I need to create something and I need to help someone.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know what You're doing.
Speaker 1:All three of those when you're writing, and the two essays that you have on OC87 recovery diaries, are helping yourself. They are creating and they are helping other people, and they're helping other people who you don't even know, um, because these essays are getting clicked on and they are getting read by people all over the world. Um, some of these people are struggling with things that you are living with, with DID or OCD or ADHD trauma. Some of them are people who are supporting people who are living with these mental health conditions, and they need help too and they need hope too. I think that's something that we sometimes forget about, like caregivers, whether they're clinicians or people living loved ones, spouses, partners, children of people living with these mental health challenges. They need to know that there is hope, that things can get better, that these mental health challenges are not death sentences, um, and so you, through your creativity and through your bravery of being public and putting things out there, um, you're making art and creativity that's helping others. So I just want you to know that.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and I really appreciate you providing a platform for stories like this, because if you can imagine people going to mental health hotlines and getting hung up on, how often do you think that happens with publishers?
Speaker 1:it's like thank you, but no, that's a bit much well, we don't hang up on anybody here, um, and everybody's welcome here, as, as you know, and these, these stories are for everyone and we want people to know that these are real human beings writing these essays. This is why we have people use their names. This is why we have people give us their real photographs. Um, you know, we don't use like stock images. We want people to know these are real human beings, because there's real human beings reading this. So we want that connection and it's such a joy to know that you're part of this community. I'm really grateful for you.
Speaker 2:Thank you. I'm really grateful for the community. So thank you for building one. It's a good one. I like it.
Speaker 1:It's a pleasure and a privilege, and I so enjoyed spending time with you today. Thank you so so much for being here with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. It's a great honor. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Thank you, elizabeth. Thank you again for joining us in conversation today. It's beautiful to see the progression of our contributors. Thank you so, so much to our guest today, elizabeth Ann Devine, a non-binary author, diarist and poet. They live with ADHD, ptsd, ocd and DID dissociative identity disorder. You can read Elizabeth's writing on their website, eadivinecom, and two of their essays on our site. I'm David S videos and content about mental health, empowerment and change. We look forward to continuing to grow our community. Thank you so much for being a part of it. We wouldn't be here without you. Be sure to join our mailing list so you never miss a podcast episode, essay or film. I'm Gabe Nathan. Until next time, take good care.
