Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

I am starting a new Category here at Finding Your Marbles called “Signposts,” where I will be featuring people who have overcome mental illness in their own lives. Some of these stories will be very sad, and some will be terrifying, and some will be filled with desperation, but they all have the same ending; they all end in freedom from mental illness.

These are all regular people like you and me. They are not stronger than us, or smarter than us, or richer than us. They were just as scared, depressed, anxious and lonely. And one day, they decided to recover.

There’s no secret to recovery. Recovery is as simple as deciding that you want to recover, and then trying to find out how. It isn’t an easy thing to do; we all have our own paths to recovery, and some of them are very difficult. My recovery took years of hard, frustrating work, and in some ways I am still recovering. However, it can be done. Mental illness can be overcome.

The people that I will be featuring in these stories have discovered their own path to recovery. They have agreed to allow me to share their stories with you, in the hope that they will help you find your way along your own path to recovery. Think of these stories as signposts, put there by other travellers on the path. And remember, that no matter how hopeless it may seem, you are not alone.

My first “Signposts” story is about Wendy Piersall. Wendy is an Internet entrepreneur, and she runs Emoms@Home, which is a website for work at home moms (and dads), with business advice, tips for bloggers, etc.. It’s an excellent site, and if you are just starting out with a work-at-home business, then you really should check it out.

I first met Wendy when I was starting Finding Your Marbles, and we hit it off. Wendy has been serving as my mentor, and she advises me on the “business” side of FYM (yes, there is a business side, more to come on that in the near future). Wendy and I have exchanged hundreds of emails, IMs, blog comments and phone calls. She really is the angel on my shoulder.

However, around a month or two ago, we were talking on the phone, and she mentioned her “personal” blog, Wendy Piersall.com. After the call, I went and checked it out.

Here’s what I saw:

Depression. Bulimia. Homelessness. Pregnant & Single. Addictions.

You would think a person with this much to overcome would have given up.

I almost did.

But somewhere along the way, I heard a little whisper. It was a tiny voice amid the screams and shouts of “You’re not worthy!” and “You’ll never be loved!” and “You will never be enough!”.

That little voice said, “What if my life could be better?”

Wow. Sound familiar?

I realized that Wendy had been through a lot of the same things that I had, and that Emoms@Home, besides being a self-help website for entrepreneurs, was something much more. It was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to Wendy Piersall.

I will leave it to you to discover Wendy and the rest of her story. In among the tips on increasing blog traffic and designing smart online ads there is hidden a lot of wisdom. You won’t go wrong reading her blog, and if you are searching for the keys to recovery from mental illness, you will find some of them there. I’ll give you a hint, the whole thing starts here:

The Biggest Blog Post of My Life.

Thanks, Wendy, for everything.

Signposts

This entry was posted on Friday, May 11th, 2007 at 10:44 am and is filed under Signposts. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your site.

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