It is a measure of self-compassion on this Bell Let’s Talk Day when I can slow down and remind myself of where I am and where I’ve come from. I have a long history of, and recovery from, substance abuse – chiefly, but not solely, alcohol – begun shortly after
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My journey with AIDS…and more!: The ever-present question: Now what?
I describe myself, rightly so I think, as a long-term survivor of AIDS and HIV. I offer as evidence my being diagnosed with HIV in 1989 and my long, slow recovery from AIDS-related Cryptosporidiosis in the early 90s – the effects of which shadow me to this day. Over the years,
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS…and more!: Thank you Rosemary Barton and MP Celina Caesar-Chavannes
Celina Caesar-Chavannes appeared tonight on CBC Power and Politics with host Rosemary Barton. She was there to discuss her experiences with depression, before and since becoming MP for Whitby and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Parliamentary Secretary. Rosemary’s thorough, careful questions brought out responses I could relate to in my own experience
Continue readingDented Blue Mercedes: Canada’s forthcoming “drop your pants” trans* blood donation policy
In addition to reducing the required wait time between having sex and donating blood to one year for gay men, Canadian Blood Services is poised to release its first-ever guidance on how CBS personnel should respond to potential trans* donors: if it’s in you to give, then drop your pants. While the policy has not yet been [&hellip
My journey with AIDS...and more!: I’m Thinking, “This is Going to Hurt!”: On ‘How Not to Deal with Grief’
From my friend Betty Ann on her Facebook page: “This article deeply moved me…as I suspect it will for any of you who have been impacted by the kind of grief associated with multiple loss, deaths due to overdose and or HIV/AIDS. Rather than just clicking on “like”, can you
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: International Youth Day: Youth and Mental Illness
by: Public Service Alliance of Canada | Posted Thu. Aug 13, 2014 August 12 is International Youth Day, a day endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1999 in a resolution upon the recommendation by the World Conference of Minsters Responsible for Youth. This year’s theme is “Youth and Mental Health.” The
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Another important day for self-acceptance
If I have learned nothing else about my bipolar II today, it is that I am certainly not the only one in similar circumstances who has found photography to be a healing past-time. Facebook is teeming today with some of the creative works of the bipolar support community.
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Another important day for self-acceptance
If I have learned nothing else about my bipolar II today, it is that I am certainly not the only one in similar circumstances who has found photography to be a healing past-time. Facebook is teeming today with some of the creative works of the bipolar support community.
Continue readingA. Picazo: Ending The Stigma
This op-ed appeared in the Ottawa Citizen on January 28, 2014. On Dec. 29, Christopher Peloso, the 40-year-old husband of former Ontario deputy premier George Smitherman, was reported missing. “Freedom from depression has been elusive for Christopher,” Smitherman tweeted on the eve of the 29th. “We fear for his safety.” A followup tweet
Continue readingFacing Autism in New Brunswick: Sound Advice for Autism Speaks
In yesterday’s commentary Autism Speaks Joins Drake And J.Cole In Insulting 40% With Autism AND Intellectual Disability I criticized Autism Speaks for stigmatizing persons with Intellectual Disability, particularly the 40% of persons on the autism spectrum with ID, the 40% that Autism Speaks seldom acknowledges in its promotions and literature.
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Review (and a personal retrospective) – Behind the Candelabra
With only the most scant help from Google I have been trying to remember more about my personal, professional meeting with Liberace (“Please, call me Lee.”) It was some time in the mid-1980s, while I was working at a St. Catharines, Ontario radio station, when the subject of last night’s
Continue readingknitnut.net: When words turn bad
The other day I was on a conference call and we were discussing which tags and keywords should be included in a collaborative online database. The terms “substance use” and “harm reduction” were both on the list. I suggested we add “addiction.” Some other people on the call said that
Continue readingA. Picazo: Yes – Let’s Talk
Though dismissed by some as a cynical marketing ploy, Bell’s Let’s Talk campaign not only succeeded in raising $4.8 million for mental health initiatives, but also provided a forum for canadians to share their stories, reach out for help, and address the stigma associated with mental illness. That conversation, seeing
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: There are at least a few, if not many, important people with whom I need to have my own conversation about…
…this! It’s certainly not too early to think about Mental Illness Awareness Week When I read the Ottawa Citizen article (linked above) I immediately thought, “Mom will have read that yesterday,” and what an opening it would give me to discuss my own mental health history with her. Not long
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Oh look! It’s happened again!
I’m delighted to be at the top of the list, perhaps it’s random, of 16 Five Star Rated AIDS Information Sites & Blogs – and I’ve found a few fellow travelers in the process!
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: For those who loved Kyle
I’ve been wrestling all day – less with what to write than how to write it – so I thought I’d begin with an absurd fruit-plate. Leading with humour is something I’ve done for as long as I can remember. Regardless of what was going on inside, my outside presentation
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Newspaper clipping from Mom: “A GAY JOCK TAKES OFF THE MASK”
It was on the front page of the Ottawa Citizen’s March 17 “Saturday Observer” section. The paper sat on a table beside Mom’s comfy chair, where she keeps anything she wants to pass along to me. She knows that, like Jamie Hubley, whose passing touched me so deeply, hockey stories wouldn’t
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: No sentence could undo the harms caused by Graham James
I join the outcry today over the sentencing of convicted serial pedophile Graham James to two years in prison for the sexual abuse of Theo Fleury and Todd Holt. Counter-intuitively (because I knew it would just get me stirred up) I watched the news coverage of the lawyers’ statements and victims’
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: Something that made me think “Huh?” on World AIDS Day
As I do every Thursday, I spent two hours late this afternoon with a group of gay men. We range in age from something like 35 to just over 60. I was curious, then disappointed, to see whether the subject of World AIDS Day would come up in the course
Continue readingMy journey with AIDS...and more!: There is no hierarchy in grief: Of Norway and Amy Winehouse
Please read this from Scott Dagostino, whose writing makes me admire the way his mind works. Being someone who might preemptively describe myself as naive (which endears me to world-wise friends and the ne’er do-well-alike), I must say the title …
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