Welcome to Wonderland:)

but i think thats not bad. my dad has wanted to be a musician forever, and hes rly pretty good. but then he joined the military to get away from an abusive family, and then he got married, and then he got divorced, and a lot of horrible shit HAPPENED. he has ptsd and severe anxiety and he could never really get back on the horse. and he never made it as a musician, and now hes 53

but i grew up in a house full of instruments, and he can play all of them, and some of my earliest memories are of him playing guitar on the front porch and me thinking there wasnt a better musician in the world. so. even if you dont get to the stars, exactly, what you do isnt worthless. its not a waste of time if life is difficult and you cant make it, or if you arent famous, or if your work doesn’t influence thousands of people. it will influence someone

“On Nov. 8, the first results of the Pfizer-BioNTech study came in, showing that the mRNA vaccine offered powerful immunity to the new virus. Dr. Kariko turned to her husband. “Oh, it works,” she said. “I thought so.”

she is recognized more than

she currently is.

but we also have mary. and what i often don’t see is talk of her, despite mary being one of the most important female figures in islam, despite mary being one to lead souls into paradise, despite the qur'anic story of the birth of jesus coming from a chapter named for his mother. and i think we should talk about mary more.

the qur'an tells us not just about mary as a single woman giving birth to a prophet, but as a woman who was once a little girl, who was once a surprising answered prayer from allah. mary’s parents were old and childless when her mother hannah saw a mother bird feeding her babies. the sight awakened a desire in hannah to have a child, so she prayed for a child, and as you may guess, allah granted her request and when hannah became pregnant, and her husband died before the child was born, she prayed again.

“Allah listened when a woman of the family of Imram said, ‘My Lord! I do hereby vow to you what is in my womb to be dedicated to your service.’…But when she gave birth she said, ‘My Lord! I have given birth to a female,’ and Allah knew best what she had given birth to, and the male she was thinking of was not like this female she had brought forth. ‘I have named her Mary and I commend her and her offspring to your protection from satan, the accursed.’” (3:35-36)

basically, hannah had expected a boy, and so promised that he would be raised in the service of god. so when she turned out to have a daughter, she went, “uhh, god? you gave me a girl,” and allah was like, “i know what i did,” and hannah said, “well, okay! i named her mary and i’m gonna follow through of my promise even though it’s gonna be kinda weird. please protect her and her future children.” so mary grew up in the temple under the care of the prophet zechariah.

and it was obvious that mary was blessed.

“Every time Zechariah visited her in her chamber, he found her with provisions. He said, ‘From where do you get all this, Mary?’ She replied with all conscientiousness, ‘It is from Allah. Allah provides whomsoever he wills without measure.’” (3:37)

and mary’s righteousness caused zechariah to pray for a child for himself and his wife elizabeth, despite his old age and her infertility, and the child they were blessed with was yahya, aka john the baptist, a prophet like his father.

and when an angel appeared to mary in the form of an attractive man, she immediately called out for allah to defend her from this strange man, bc women have always had reason to be afraid when finding themselves alone around men (and in one translation she says, “make him leave me alone” which i love for obvious reasons), but the angel reassured her, bringing her the message of the child she was about to conceive.

and mary did not have a joseph.

and mary went off into the desert all alone to give birth to jesus, and delivered her son under a dried up dead palm tree, and wished aloud, in her physical and emotional pain, that she had died before all this happened to her, before she would have to endure single motherhood, before she could experience the agony of labor, before she would have to cope with how her family and friends and society would treat her when she returned as a still-unmarried young woman with a baby.

and mary, hungry and dehydrated and without a support network and now with a newborn, wished that she had been utterly forgotten.

but mary would not be forgotten by allah, for after all, her mother had prayed for her protection, and for the protection of the child she had just given birth to, and allah listens to all things.

“But he called her, ‘Do not grieve; your Lord has provided beneath you a stream. And shake toward you the trunk of the palm tree; it will drop upon you ripe, fresh dates. So eat and drink and be contented. And if you see from among humanity anyone, say, ‘I have vowed a fast to the Most Merciful, so I will not speak to anyone today.’” (19:24-26)

and so mary did not have to answer to anyone who would speak out against her when she returned home with an infant, defend herself against any name she would be called, because she answered to allah alone.

and - my favorite bit of all of mary’s story - is this:

“And remember when the angels said, ‘Mary, indeed Allah has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above all the women of the worlds.’” […] And remember when the angels said, ‘Mary, indeed Allah gives you good tidings through a prophetic word from him about the birth of a son, whose name will be Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary - distinguished in this world and the hereafter and among those nearest to Allah.’“ (3:42, 45)

and mary was chosen twice.

and the story would not be told casting her as mary, mother of jesus. no, it was and is mary’s story. and jesus, one of the most important prophets in islam, would be called, son of mary.

There are two fundamental problems with this attitude. One, it's incorrect to assume that trauma is the only reason a young kid can be mentally ill. Two, trauma is more common than people think. I'll be covering the first problem in this post through the lens of my particular experience.

Where I live, you can be diagnosed with bipolar disorder at 18 years old. You cannot be diagnosed with bipolar disorder as a minor. This poses a problem because my age of onset was in first grade, roughly six years old. Because of the fact that I was very young and new to the world, this was also the age of my first suicide attempt. Thinking I wouldn't be able to pass a spelling test genuinely felt like something worth trying to die over. So, I ate some hemlock, since I'd read about Socrates being killed with it. Luckily, I ate western hemlock, an unrelated species, and just felt kind of sick.

I'm not recounting that for fun or pity. I'm recounting it because children with mental illness are in genuine danger because they have little to no experience with managing their emotions, have little to no concept of the idea that their life can change and improve, and are dismissed by adults. I told a teacher that the test made me want to die, though not that I'd attempted to, and it was brushed off as little kid hyperbole. If I had used a method that was effective rather than one I thought would be, I would have been dead at six years old.

I would not receive medication that worked even a bit for another two years. I would not receive treatment for bipolar disorder specifically for ten years, and that required my PCP fudging the reason for the medication because she was afraid I would die if she didn't, and diagnosis was still two years off at minimum. I received a formal diagnosis at age 19, thirteen years after onset.

But surely that's uncommon, right? This story is a huge edge case, right? I actually have no idea, because age of onset and age of diagnosis are massively conflated for most disabilities. Policies like the one in my area that restricted bipolar diagnoses by age can artificially raise the age of "onset", in my case by thirteen years. The general idea that children are somehow immune to mental illness can also delay diagnosis by several years, perpetuating the idea that young children can't be mentally ill. The data on when people start experiencing mental illness is inherently skewed upwards, and I frankly don't have a good estimate on how bad that skew is. If anyone does have that data, please chime in.

Listen to children. If they're saying they're sad all the time, that they don't care about anything, that they don't see a future for themselves, those are signs of depressive symptoms. If they say that tests make them feel sick, that they can't do anything because they're scared, that they can't breathe and freeze up, those are signs of anxious symptoms. Many children talk about imaginary things, and that's just fine, but slip in a question or two about them to make sure that the kid is just playing, and not experiencing psychosis.

Even making this post, I honestly didn't expect this massive of a response

But the minute you’re a teenager, even though you haven’t changed, suddenly they expect you to have a handle on these behaviors and emotions? To just suddenly be able to function beyond all of these issues, despite no one ever acknowledging your illnesses, much less treating them or helping you to cope?

Oh, and gods forbid when you grow up you hint at the idea that you may have anxiety or mental illness of any sort to your parents, now or in the past. ‘Tis blasphemy of the highest order and they won’t stand for such insolence or lies. Don’t say such things, Child, you’re an “old soul”, there’s nothing wrong with you.

I know there is a lot of discourse (tm) around this right now but listen to me

If I were lean down and say “unfortunately the big beach ball for some reason fills you with such an unadulterated rage that is beyond human comprehension that you scream until you pass out, so mama had to remove the beach ball from the premises until you can better regulate your emotions” she would simply stare at me like I had 3 heads full of equal betrayal.

-Advance Paycheck Loans are a SCAM

-Rent-a-Center and rent-to-own stores are a SCAM

-The lottery is a SCAM

Meghan was a working actress for decades. She was a working royal for 18 months. She benefits massively from her show reaching syndication. She stands to lose depending on how Netflix negotiated residuals for Suits with it being out of cable reruns now.

Meghan knows what it’s like to scrimp and scrap for years. She was a working actress doing bit parts her whole 20s!

The fact is that honestly if she didn’t marry Harry, Suits might have been her biggest hit and again residuals would have a huge impact on her. She completely has a leg to stand on joining this fight. Just like she had one speaking up for BLM.

In fact, A-Listers NEED to be using their spotlight to highlight the strike and the working actors who make up the bulk of Hollywood who don’t make millions per movie. It’s important that people like Meryl Streep or Jennifer Lawrence or Matt Damon or Margot Robbie join the strike. A-list talent walking off set and refusing to take part in press and promo is part of what gives the Union huge bargaining power even if those elite actors are not necessarily hurting financially. But also, a lot of A-Listers also have huge stakes in the fight because it’s also about control of their image and their long term financial profit, too.

Meghan is a producer now with a new production company. If she wants top talent on her productions she needs to be ten toes down in solidarity, too.

Tales of Angela Landsbury insisting ageing stars get roles on Murder She Wrote so they could retain their medical insurance.