I do not sleep with a stuffie but I have several emotional support pillows, including a giant one, and I have a blanket that is very special to me, both because my MIL made it out of my childhood tshirts and also it's got the most lovely backing fabric ever. Also a weighted blanket. My sleep is pretty carefully curated.

I know at least three people who have walked the Camino de Santiago!

EMDR is eye movement desensitization something or other. It sounds like complete hooey, and it's deeply weird, but it's one of the most evidence based things in existence. To be honest, meds were not a one and done thing for me. SSRI helped but what REALLY helped was a tricyclic from the 70s, nortritptyline. There were a million variations of med cocktail before we got to this one that seems super solid though, and decades that were rocky but more or less okay for varying periods of time.

To be honest, I have never found a lot of real help from therapy. I’ve had real help from a close friend who is a pastor, who has walked beside me in crisis. But drugs were life changing. And honestly, EMDR was life changing. Despite hating the therapist and never having to talk about the issues and only having like five sessions.

You are SOOOOO not alone. My oldest is a super duper whiner/ overreactor, and there was one time we completely missed a real injury because we couldn't tell the difference between the pain expressed after the drawer fell on their foot and the general whininess. In no world would I assume a kid complaining/ avoiding walking for a couple of days that seemed to resolve would be a broken bone in the absence of other physical signs.

Okay. I am sorry. I will leave.

Try The Remarkable Retirement of Edna Fisher!

At dinner the other day, a friend’s 8 year old casually asked, “So what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” This post feels kinda like that moment. A major moment of horror, revulsion, and shame disguised as genealogy interest. It shocked me to see something so horrific asked so casually. I’m not trying to scold or criticize you. It just really took me aback and I didn’t know how to respond. My family is from the South. I’m not into genealogy but I know some people in my family are and records have been kept. I don’t know if they owned anyone. I doubt it, because both my mother and father’s sides were very poor. But I don’t know for sure.

When I was sixteen, I dreamed every single night about either the Holocaust or hell. I dreamed about aliens landing in the middle of my school campus, rounding everyone up, and assassinating 75% of us. And there were some that were far too disturbing to talk about on a public forum.

Oh please. That's NOTHING in dream logic. Sounds like your subconscious is super smart.

Prazosin is pretty amazing at dealing with dreams, to be honest. It improved my life quite a lot, and it's not like SSRIs. It's a blood pressure medication. I used to have extremely complex, deeply weird, very disturbing dreams that were terrifying and left me upset for most of the next day and really impacted my sleep. Very first dose pretty much fixed it.

Exactly! I think it’s honestly irresponsible of them.