Welcome to my website and blog. The difference between average and exceptional is imagination. Imagination breeds faith, innovation, and fiction!
I have been speaking to a variety of audiences about managing mood disorders. In 2024, I would like to focus on speaking to college students about the daily habits that make a huge difference in managing negative mental health, including mood disorders.
I also write realistic fiction, and, when desperate for a laugh, dark humor sneaks in. Life experience influences my main themes:
- How does the human spirit rise above obstacles, ignorance, and hatred?
- What prompts spiritual awakening? Actualization?
- How do the subconscious and denial enable addiction?
- How do brain disorders and addiction become intertwined?
My short story collection went back to the shelf when I chose to write Intact: Untangle the Web of Bipolar Depression, Addiction, and Trauma (2021), a memoir that includes an information guide and some poetry. In 2023, I recorded it as an audiobook.
Click here to watch a scene from my 2013 coming-of-age novel Dream Walking.
When I get to it, I blog about my journey toward establishing myself as an author, the creative process, struggling to find the time to write, and staving off depression and compulsivity.
Some of my blog posts titles are below. (I haven’t yet been able to republish the blogs from 2012-2020 that were lost when my site was disrupted in 2024.):
- Afterparties—A Masterpiece
- Reading Between the Lines of 9 1/2 Weeks
- Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel Adds to Mental Health Stigma
- Experiencing Alexander Chee’s How to Write an Autobriographical Novel
- Did addiction claim yet another creative—Scott Weiland?
- How to Teach Your Children Apathy
YouTube: Sasha Kildare—Several 2-minute videos filmed in 2021
Depression and Anxiety Zappers: 45 Ways to Manage Depression and Anxiety
Introduction
- What are the basics?
- What are some different ways I can connect?
- What if I don’t feel like moving?
- Why should I nourish my senses?
- Why do I need to reconnect to my spirit?
- What does relaxing have to do with depression?
Category 1
Check the Basics
- Consider light therapy
- Create simple routines
- Drink water
- Energize–maintain your blood sugar
- Make one goal for the day
- Watch out for depressants
- Watch out for stimulants
Category 4
Nourish your Senses
- Add color
- Aromatherapy
- Bask in natural light
- Get a great haircut
- Listen to nature sounds
- Make your bed with your favorite bedding
- Wear something that feels good against your skin
Category 2
Connect
- Tell yourself something positive
- Attend a support group
- Consider cognitive therapy
- Journal
- Label your negative thoughts and discard them
- Phone someone who is uplifting
Category 5
Reconnect to Your Spirit
- Express your gratitude
- Pray throughout the day
- Search for beauty–it is everywhere
- Spend time in nature
- Volunteer
- Yoga
Category 3
Move
- Clean
- Dance
- Declutter
- Exercise
- Garden
- Organize a small area
- Play… in a recreational sports league
- Practice Yoga or Tai Chi
- Run an errand
- Walk
- Work with your hands
Category 6
Relax
- Bathe in a bathtub full of bubbles
- Breathe Deeply
- Draw
- Get a massage
- Laugh
- Listen to music
- Meditate
- Stretch