Author: Lindsay Dianne

When I was in treatment we learned about something called Distress Tolerance. It was actually the first module of work that they gave me, I guess it was easy to tell where to start from my entrance survey or the records that my counselors had sent over. Distress tolerance is basically exactly what it sounds…

I can get swept up in stuff really easily. Good or bad, happy or sad, whatever state I’m in right now feels like that’s where I’m going to exist forever. If I’m feeling lifted it’s like I’ve never been sad before, or if I’m sad I get caught up in feeling like everything is the…

My life has changed drastically. It’s been five months of living California clean. Five months free and safe. My brain is clearer and my motives are (as often as possible) based on the greater good, or as they say, doing the next right thing. I am feeling my feelings and surviving through them, each time…

I was driving my car, listening to music when I drove passed our old home. That is to say, the land where that home once existed. The house is gone and nothing remains but grass and some uneven earth that used to be the crawlspace. I’ve driven by it before. I’ve said my goodbyes to…

I am sick.I’ve been sick for at least two weeks. Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting, bathroom stuff.Eating has become something of an adventure because I just don’t know what sets me off. Some days all I can stomach is soup and sometimes even that proves to be too much. Coffee is too harsh. Milk products seem…

Something happened to me around the middle of November. After years and years of suffering it was like a switch was flipped in my brain. I kind of feel like, having been through it and now being on the other side, there was nothing that I could have done that could have forced me to…

He started trying out new words in a whisper, as though he was shy about getting them wrong. Slowly at first but then faster, he was adding words to his vocabulary. Suddenly he started trying out stuff that was a little more complicated. Today he was confidently chattering away with more words than he’s ever…

I remember having a conversation with someone close to me a few years ago. It was when I had first started taking sociology classes and I was really thinking about the systems in place verses the ones that I believe in. This person was definitely of a different generation than I am and the conversation…

Let’s talk about the cops for a sec, shall we? More specifically let’s chat about the Vancouver Police Department specifically. These guys have been left unchecked for too long and the poorest neighbourhood in Canada is finding out what that can do to a police force. Now before we get too far into this I…

My three year old son is autistic. He was diagnosed in March at a private clinic. A doctor and a team member sat with him for a couple of hours and, using a play-based model they assessed him by looking at three specific things. They looked at his speech, or rather lack of speech as…