Recently, someone directed me to this article on parents who give up custody to get help for their mentally ill children. It hits hard now, as I live in a state that is about to vote on its own renunciation of the so-called "Obamacare" plan. We celebrate people living with deadly diseases and chronic conditions, and great strides are being made toward prolonging and improving their lives. But we still vilify people who live with psychiatric illnesses? Am I the only person who thinks this is a problem?

It's Summertime, and the livin’s...easy? Maybe not. It used to be, until I became the parent of a school-aged "MI" child.

As I consider posts for this blog, I keep asking myself, what do I call our kids? I’ve never been one to adhere strictly to politically correct terms, but I do want a term which accurately identifies our children as a specific subset. Bob’s “official” diagnoses are early onset bipolar disorder and ADHD.  I don’t like to say he’s “bipolar” because I don’t think of him that way—he is not bipolar, he is a kid who has a lot of positive qualities and also has bipolar disorder. That said, I’m lazy. It’s admittedly easier to just say “my kid is bipolar.” Which omits the ADHD part entirely, but “my kid has bipolar disorder and ADHD” just takes too much air for me.

When I began my journey into this wild terrain called “Motherhood,” I thought I knew what I was doing. After all, I was a 28-year-old, soon-to-be college graduate with three younger siblings. I had years of babysitting experience and the gifts of critical thinking and research in my arsenal. Having a child surely couldn’t be any more difficult than having a puppy, right? That was almost nine years ago. Boy, have I learned a lot.