Writing
Notes & new poems
Short reflections between books — on stigma, coping skills, faith, and the poems that did not make the page.
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Subjects
What these notes are about
Four things recur, and they are the same four the book circles. Each note is short — this is not a magazine, and nothing here is medical advice.
Stigma
The gap between how a physical illness and a mental one get talked about, and what it costs people to close it themselves. The argument that runs through Part Two, and the one subject Shalanda returns to most often when she is speaking.
Coping skills
The unglamorous machinery of staying well: sleep, routine, DBT skills, the appointment you nearly cancelled. Named plainly, without being prescribed to anyone, because what steadied one life is not a protocol for another.
Faith
What happens to belief during an episode, and what is left afterwards. Written for people whose faith has been tested by their own mind rather than by argument, and who have been told to pray about it once too often.
New poems
Work in progress, and poems that did not make the book. Occasionally a piece from the writing section that a reader has given permission to share. Drafts appear here before they appear anywhere else.
A note on what this is
A writer’s notes, not a clinical resource
Everything on this page is one person’s account of her own illness. Shalanda has a psychology degree and clinical training in psychosocial rehabilitation, and she is deliberate about not writing as though that made her your clinician. Bipolar disorder presents differently in different people, and what steadied one life is not a protocol for another.
Where a note touches on treatment, it links to a source you can check — usually the National Institute of Mental Health, which publishes plain-language descriptions of bipolar disorder and its treatment, or Mental Health America, which publishes free screening tools. If something here contradicts what your own prescriber or therapist has told you, they know your case and this page does not.
Some notes describe suicidal thinking and hospitalization directly, in the same register as the book. If you are in crisis in the US, call or text 988 — the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is free, confidential and answers 24 hours a day. Reading can wait.
Language
Words that help, and words that quietly do not
A recurring subject in these notes, because it is the part of stigma that anyone can change today without funding, training or permission.
The most useful shift is also the smallest: describing a person as someone who has bipolar disorder rather than as someone who is bipolar. It sounds like a technicality until it is your diagnosis, at which point the difference between having a condition and being one is the whole argument. Public-health bodies including NAMI and Mental Health America have used person-first language in their public materials for years for exactly this reason.
The second is to stop borrowing clinical words as intensifiers. “The weather is so bipolar” is not an insult and is not meant as one, which is precisely what makes it hard to answer. It teaches a room that the word describes unpredictability rather than an illness that, in NIMH’s own figures, leaves an estimated 82.9% of affected adults with serious impairment. Someone in that room is deciding, in real time, whether to mention their diagnosis.
The third is about suicide, and it is the one most worth getting right. “Died by suicide” rather than “committed suicide” — the second carries a crime in it. And when someone discloses, the question that helps is a direct one, asked calmly. Asking does not plant an idea; the 988 Lifeline exists precisely so that the conversation has somewhere to go afterwards. Call or text 988, any hour.
Reading these
If you are reading this in a bad week
Writing about mental illness can steady a reader or destabilise one, and which it does depends less on the writing than on the day. A few things are worth knowing before you start.
Recognition is the thing people come here for. Reading an accurate description of your own experience, written by someone who got through it, is a genuinely different sensation from being explained to. It is also, on the wrong day, a way of sinking further into a state you were already in. Both are real, and you are the only person who can tell which one is happening.
A practical rule that readers of the book report using: notice whether you are reading toward something or away from something. Reading toward — looking for language, for a way to describe this to a doctor or a partner — tends to help. Reading away, hour after hour, as a substitute for doing anything else, tends not to. That is not a diagnosis and it is not a rule anyone can enforce for you; it is just a question worth asking halfway down the page.
If you want somewhere to put what the reading brings up, that is what the writing section in the second edition of the book is for. If you want to talk to a person instead, the SAMHSA National Helpline on 1-800-662-4357 will refer you to services near you, free, 24 hours a day, and DBSA runs peer support groups online and in person for people living with mood disorders. Neither of those is a last resort. They are what the numbers are for.
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Questions
About the writing
How often does Shalanda post?
Irregularly, and on purpose. These are notes written when there is something to say, not on a content schedule. The monthly email is the reliable one.
Can I share a poem from here?
Yes, with attribution and a link back. For reprinting in a newsletter, service sheet or course pack, ask first — it is almost always fine, and she likes to know where the work goes.
Can I send her my own writing?
She reads what readers send and is glad to receive it, but she cannot give feedback on manuscripts or critique work individually. Notes to Shalanda is the right option on the form.
Will there be a second book?
She is writing. Anything announced will appear here and in the monthly email first.
Is there an archive by subject?
Not yet. There are few enough notes that the list above is the archive. When there are enough to make browsing by subject useful, stigma, coping skills, faith and new poems will be the four categories, because those are the four the writing already falls into.
Can I read these if I have not read the book?
Yes. Each note stands on its own. Where one depends on something from the book it says so and gives you enough to follow it without having read the poem first.
Are the poems here in the book?
Mostly not. What appears here is either newer than the second edition or was cut from it. Where a note quotes a poem that is in the book, it says which part it comes from, so you can find it in context.
Do you accept guest posts or sponsored links?
No. Nothing on this site is paid placement, and the outbound links go to public-health bodies rather than to commercial services.
If you need help now
Where to find real support
This website is a book, not a crisis service, and nothing on it is medical advice. The organisations below are staffed by people who are trained for this, and all of them are free.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
Call or text 988, or chat at 988lifeline.org. Free, confidential, 24 hours a day, every day, across the United States. It is for suicidal crisis, mental-health crisis and substance-use crisis alike — you do not have to be at the worst point to call.
NAMI HelpLine
1-800-950-6264, or text “NAMI” to 62640, Monday to Friday, 10am–10pm ET. The National Alliance on Mental Illness answers questions about diagnosis, treatment and local services. It is explicitly not a crisis line — for a crisis, use 988. More at nami.org.
SAMHSA National Helpline
1-800-662-4357 (1-800-662-HELP), free and confidential, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in English and Spanish. It is a treatment referral service: it will point you to local providers and support groups. See samhsa.gov.
Peer support
The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance runs peer-led groups, online and in person, for people living with mood disorders and for the people who love them. Mental Health America publishes free screening tools and plain-language guides.
Outside the United States, contact your local emergency number or health service.