wrapped in daisies

Losing Your One-Track Mind

I’ve always been single-minded, pooling all my energy into one goal. It’s a strategy that helped me attend a favorite college and land a dream job in advertising. When I was seven, I locked my father out of the car until he threw his cigarettes in a trash can. He begged me to let him
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Me and My Father in 1967

A True Brother

They say there are no accidents. That is not true. I am a classic accident. Technically speaking, I am an only child born to Rita Marie Murray three months after her 18th birthday at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan. This is not a joke. She told me I was a blue blood baby. I only
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wrapped in daisies

Let’s Share Our Story Of Living With Mental Illness

Remember Oprah Winfrey’s amazing acceptance speech at the Golden Globes Award Show this year? It was a call-to-action for girls and women to continue the fight for equal justice. It’s thrilling to see that sexual harassment, something I took for granted when I was young, is in the light and that things are changing. I
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Finding Your Power

I Realized That Sharing My Mental Illness Is An Act Of Love

“I share being bipolar because it is an act of love.” This just came out of my mouth last night while I was talking to a friend of my husband. She was telling me about her daughter’s struggles without sharing intimate details, so I told her I was bipolar. This usually makes people more comfortable
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A photo of my mother age 16

My Mother Inoculated Me With Love

Forgiveness was never top-of-mind when I thought about my mom. A list of childhood grievances sat on my heart for decades. Now I think about how hard it was to be a young, single mother with a mental illness. Rita did some extraordinary, hair-raising things when I was growing up, like throwing her boyfriend’s computer
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