For the sake of your future self (and those around you) — Have you ever noticed how many people are stuck in their pasts? How many people live as though they have a foot in the present and one way back there, years behind them? Particularly when these are negative experiences — being caught in a loop of talking about past positive…

It’s easier to blame the one with the emotional trauma symptoms than tackle societal symptoms of rape culture head-on — When you think of Freud, what’s the first thing you think of? Is it that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, or that he thought all boys wanted to kill their fathers so they could marry their mothers? If you’ve ever read about the history of trauma in Western…

Or, Book Lover Doesn’t Want To Discuss Books — I was happily enjoying my lunch break, eating pasta as I do almost every single shift, and reading a book on my Kindle. It’s an excellent book, Katherine Blakeman’s The Summer We Had, so I was enjoying it a lot; you’d think I want to shout about it (and online…

So well-made and acted that it’s difficult to watch — So many shows and movies are described as ‘hard to watch’, and often that appeals to me, for dramas anyway. It’s a sentiment I rarely agree with, and prior to I Am Ruth the closest to genuinely difficult to watch was Requiem for a Dream. Now I’m confident I could…

Way to prepare yourself for a potentially difficult time of the year — December can be a very mixed time of the year, and you never know if people you know will be all in on the excitement, or praying for it to be over quickly. It can be a difficult time for an assortment of reasons; it might be due to negative…

Allies don’t have to be loud to be significant — Two weeks ago, my wife and I got married in NYC. We stayed at an Airbnb in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where we had a complete ground-floor apartment to ourselves. The owners, a lovely older couple, live upstairs, and one of them was there to greet us when we arrived. We’ve…

or, The British Autistic Lesbian’s Guide to an NYC Wedding at the Clerk’s Office! There are so many blogs and articles about how to get married in New York as a foreign citizen, and they all helped me immensely; that being said, I feel like there are some bits that…

Chatting with others going through similar difficulties can be immensely helpful — What do you picture when you hear the term ‘support group’? Is it a minimally decorated, slightly bleak room, with a circle of people in the center? If TV and movies are all the experience you have with them, then it’s understandable if that’s all you imagine. Thankfully, there are…

They can feel unbearable at times, but with the right tools in your toolbox, you’re stronger than they are — Intrusive thoughts are like glitter, they’re small but get everywhere, and when you get rid of some, a bunch more show up where you least expect it. They’re also a little like a tooth or ear pain, something that fills up your whole head and you can’t get away from…