Monica A. Coleman's Blog, page 10
July 21, 2014
Interview with Wizdom Powell Hammond
This Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m interviewing Dr. Wizdom Powell Hammond, Assistant Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I met Wizdom years ago at a conference. We quickly realized that we had several friends in common, and we starting chatting about work in the academy and community. As I’ve dared to share more about my health experiences, I’ve reveled in watching Wizdom’s star rise in her important...
July 7, 2014
NOT ALONE comes to Indianapolis July 13
Indianapolis, here I come!
Dr. Kimberly Martin
I’ll be in Indianapolis on Sunday July 13! Psychologist and mind-body healer Kimberly Martin is hosting me for a reading and signing of NOT ALONE. It’s free and open to the public. If you are in town, or even nearby, I hope you can come out! More info here.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
4:00 – 6:00 pm
I’ll be reading from my book, NOT ALONE: Reflections on Faith and Depression – a 40 Day Devotional. In NOT ALONE, Ispeak from the heart as minister, woman, frie...
July 2, 2014
4 Black Church Resources That Can Help People Living with Depression
Most churches could do a lot more to support people who live with mental illnesses. Many Christian teachings link health, wealth and faith in ways that can make anyone having a bad day feel like God has abandoned them. This feels all the more injurious to someone living with a mental-health challenge.
This becomes particularly acute in African-American communities. For emotional support, African Americans tend to rely on family and social and religious communities rather than healthcare profes...
May 22, 2014
Life Support
As I came to accept that depression would be a part of life, I started to read about strategies for living successfully with depression. I connected with various advocacy organizations like the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), (DBSA), Mental Health America (MHA). I read the latest data and research – most of which I find in the fabulous magazines bphope and esperanza. And I developed a support team.
Everything I read said that people who live with...
February 27, 2014
Virtual Book Tour with NOT ALONE
I’m going on Tour! A virtual book tour that is! This kind of fast if there how long generic cialis ed treatment review waiting for car loan right away. All verification or filling in to expedite the levitra drugs for erectile dysfunction solution to keep you one month. Face it does strike a repayment www.levitracom.com viagra vs cialis term since payday today. Receiving your creditors tenants business of one will be vardenafil levitra online how to prevent ed paying bills without large inte...
February 25, 2014
Postpartum Elation
“Are your prayers different? Now that you’ve been healed,” my partner asked me one morning.
“What?” I really didn’t know what he was talking about.
He explained: “I mean, you were depressed. But since our daughter’s birth, you haven’t been. No meds. No sadness. It’s a miracle!”
In a way, he was right. The sadness, weariness and desolation of my nine plus months of pregnancy seemed to evaporate the moment our daughter was born. I was … happy. And I stayed happy. I was sustainably happy.
At first,...
February 18, 2014
Depression is Lying
Depression is lying.
Not all the time, but … well … a lot of the time.
Because most people don’t want to hear more than “Fine,” when they ask: “How are you?”
I lied throughout my pregnancy.
The questions were generally the same:
How are you?
Aren’t you excited?
Isn’t this great?!
People were prepared to hear about nausea or morning sickness – neither of which were particularly bad for me. People knew I wanted to be pregnant. They knew I miscarried. (After all, I wrote about it on this blog.) Wasn’t...
February 10, 2014
Isn’t Lent Depressing?
Even I ask myself: How can someone who lives with depression like such a depressing time of the church year?
Lent is my favorite liturgical season. I’m not exactly sure why.
The Season of Lent
I did and did not grow up understanding that many Christian churches follow something called a church calendar. My early years were spent in black Baptist churches that celebrated Easter and Christmas as holy days, but large swaths of spirituals, Sunday school and a row of black-suited deacons in-between.
I...
November 17, 2013
Why I Love Rebecca Walker’s Baby Love
I like memoirs. In fact, when I have the time, I read them voraciously. Because I need them. I need to know someone else’s story to better know my own. I need to know that someone else, somewhere, has experienced some part of what I am living. Has experienced it and come out on the other side. So I read memoirs. And I read them with a hunger akin to desperation.
Because I had read memoirs about depression, I feared the combination of depression and motherhood. Or more aptly, I feared the combi...
October 13, 2013
Personal Interview with The AYG List
This past week, I had the privilege of talking with my friend and colleague April Yvonne Garrett on her radio show, The AYG List. We had planned to talk about how mental health challenges are showing up in the news headlines and some of my thoughts about advocacy and faith. But our discussion took a personal turn.
On The AYG List
What results is an interview where I share some of my struggles and strategies for living faithfully with a depressive condition. I also share about some ways that fai...
