Learning to Breathe

"In 2012, I wrote my first blog post about my depression. I had alluded to it on Twitter, but this was the first time I had written about it formally in public. This was before we were having serious conversations on the platform and in academia more specifically about mental health. The topic was still largely taboo, but I had to write it down, record it, even if I was ashamed and embarrassed. "Over the next 7 years, I would go on to write about my ongoing mental health challenges, linking it back to what were depressive episodes in high school and college, to my postpartum depression. I wrote about my son's diagnosis of ADHD, and the discovery then diagnosis that I, too, had ADHD, which was probably the underlying cause of my persistent depression and anxiety."This book collects Lee Skallerup Bessette's online writing about mental health, including five new essays, written specifically for this collection.