Recovery Diaries In Depth

We are so lucky here at Recovery Diaries to have an international community of special, sparkly people coming to us to share their mental health recovery stories. Today's guest on the show is Nicci Attfield, who lives with anxiety and add. Nicci was born in the UK, and is currently living in South Africa. She has published two personal essays with us, (as has her husband, Jacques!) and it was a true delight to sit down with he...

Jasmin Pierre is the creator of The Safe Place, an award-winning app that offers free and affordable resources centering on Black mental health. Jasmin created The Safe Place for so many reasons-- because, when police respond to psychiatric emergencies and the person in crisis is black, the results can be deadly. Because of the pervasive and dangerous philosophy in many Black homes, like her own, that "what happens in this hou...

Officer James Jefferson, an 18-year police service veteran and wellness coordinator in Canada, is done with the "blue wall of silence." He speaks openly, candidly, honestly, and earnestly about mental health issues in law enforcement, and the series of events that almost resulted in him killing himself with his service weapon. Why? To help other officers who are struggling, just like he did. 

On a wintry night, y...

Sheri Heller is many things. She is a psychotherapist, a coach, an interfaith minister, and a supremely talented writer. She is also a trauma survivor, having been raised in the chaos and pain of a home where her mother was suffering from chronic paranoid schizophrenia. Sheri wrote the piece, “An Orphan’s Memorial to Her Dying Mother” and sent it to us, years ago. Our filmmaker, Glenn Holsten, was so moved by the piece that he coll...

The most dangerous period for a veteran isn't during during enlistment, but that first year after leaving the military; and the danger almost exclusively comes from the self; a severely elevated risk for suicide. In fact, the suicide rate for non-combat veterans is higher for those who have been in active combat.

When Navy veteran Taylor Grieger survived a suicide attempt, he made a radical decision—to sail around Cape Horn, th...

Elizabeth Ann Devine is a non-binary author living with ADHD, PTSD, OCD, and dissociative identity disorder. They have been twice published on Recovery Diaries, and we were delighted to welcome them onto Recovery Diaries in Depth to share their powerful journey of using writing as both survival mechanism and healing practice.

From early childhood, Elizabeth found sanctuary in libraries, using books and later their own writ...

From her earliest memories growing up in Pakistan—where her dream of pursuing music seemed impossible for a woman—to the hallowed halls of Harvard University where overwhelming expectations led to debilitating burnout, Dr. Shumaila Hemani reveals the institutional and cultural pressures that shaped her experience. The expectations of perfection, unrelenting pressure, and cold academic warnings left her feeling bereft of direction, ...

"Love is what gives us the strength to balance the anger."

It seems improbable that a human being who has shouldered the weight of so much trauma, so many secrets, so much shame could come to this conclusion, but this is part of what makes Dr. Deborah Derrickson Kossmann such a powerful writer, and such an unshakable empath. 

In this episode of Recovery Diaries in Depth, Deb speaks openly about her mother's descent int...

NAMI asserts that the average length of time between onset of mental health symptoms and reaching out for help is eleven years. That is an excruciatingly long time to be living with mental health challenges without professional help, and the reasons behind why many people wait so long are varied, complex, and understandable. If you are one of those people living in anguish or despair, if you are one of those people who know, deep d...

People do all kinds of things to bring attention to mental health and suicide prevention. There are people who have ridden bicycles nude around the United Kingdom. Some take ice baths and do push-up challenges. A few years ago, the host of this very podcast filmed himself driving his 1963 Beetle, emblazoned with the Suicide/Crisis line on the rear window, up and down the East Coast.  

Tim Perreira is walking across the United States...

What happens when your own mind becomes your greatest fear? When intrusive thoughts flood in that feel completely alien to who you really are? In this intimate conversation, writer Pinar Tarhan takes us deep into her experience with Pure Harm OCD – a misunderstood subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder characterized not by handwashing or organization, but by terrifying unwanted thoughts.

Pinar describes the journey from ...

Florence Mukangenzi is a doctor in Rwanda who lives with mental health challenges, including anxiety. In 2017, back when she was a medical student, she wrote a beautiful essay for our site called "Playing Hide and Seek with a Demon: My Struggle with Anxiety." In 2019, she flew across oceans to join other women from around the world for a unique women's writers retreat in Cape May, New Jersey, where her bond with the ...

Jason Schreurs calls himself a “punk rock weirdo”, but he’s also a mental health group facilitator, writer, creator, advocate, podcast host and someone who lives with bipolar disorder. You could say that bipolar and punk come together in a unique and exciting way in Jason’s life and that “scream therapy” (the name of his podcast) is just one of the ways that Jason keeps and stays healthy, stable, and in recovery. 

Jason has written ...

Hannah R. Goodman is busy: she has a Substack, she’s a writer and novelist, she is a therapist, she’s a spouse and a mother. She has a lot going on in her life; and a lot going on in her head, too—as she’s very open about—particularly “pure O” and generalized anxiety disorder. There’s so much going on that it was surprising that she found time to spend an hour with us to sit down and talk, but she did! And we’re grateful for it.

Han...

Sheila O'Shea is a writer with bipolar disorder; two of her intriguing and vulnerable personal essays reside on our website, www.oc87recoverydiaries.org. In one of her essays, she writes about the importance of drawing boundaries at work and the other piece is devoted to how she learned she had bipolar disorder. Our podcast interview with Sheila delves into material and themes from both essays. Sheila talks openly about workin...

Erica Harris is an emergency physician at Einstein Hospital, and she also serves on the Board of Directors of Recovery Diaries. Our "Recovery Diaries in Depth" interview with Dr. Harris is a wide-ranging, empathic conversation that you will be sure to want to hear.

Dr. Harris's experiences working in emergency medicine, surviving the trauma of COVID, are discussed in her interview and are also the subject of a beautif...

Child sexual abuse and trauma, particularly at the hands of family members, is often called "unspeakable" and yet Morrene Hauser is breaking silence and shattering taboo by doing just that. She is determined to not allow shame and stigma to force her into being quiet. What Morrene endured growing up is unfathomable to most people and yet, at nearly sixty years old and living a full, rich life, she is living proof that the...

Reed Smith is a man of many talents, skills, abilities, and interests. He is a filmmaker, a screenwriter, a podcast host, and a creative, talented man. He is also living with autism. Recovery Diaries is committed to featuring a diverse array of autism spectrum stories, and Reed's journey is exciting and engaging, as you will see in this latest episode of Recovery Diaries in Depth.

In 2017, Recovery Diaries made a film about Ree...

What do you do when you've got to record a podcast episode but your guest cancels last minute due to COVID? You interview Chat GPT, of course! Or... maybe it's Chat GPT interviewing Recovery Diaries in Depth's host Gabriel Nathan. Either way, you get a fascinating episode where Gabe fields AI-generated questions about mental health storytelling, advocacy, and suicide prevention. The questions may have come from a bot...