Do you…
savor every moment?
subscribe to a the dishes can wait attitude?
find nature to be the best antidepressant?
Me neither.
Some days suck. Sometimes the house needs to be cleaned while the kids watch cartoons of questionable quality. And Zoloft & Cymbalta Prozac & Wellbutrin? Yeah, I hashtag heart that.
I started blogging in the late 90s, back before blog was a word. Get off my lawn. I wrote mostly boring tidbits about my day that nobody save my mother would want to read.
In 2015, after my son was born two months early, I found my voice in writing the realities of the situation.
Turns out my voice says fuck a lot, and isn’t afraid to talk about mental illness.
Late in 2015 people started paying me to write words, and I assumed they had made a mistake, but figured I should cash in before anyone noticed.
So far my failure has continued to go undetected. My therapist and friends say it has something to do with talent, at which point I put my hands over my ears and hum repetitive tunes.
Despite an endless reserve of self-deprecation I have managed to write for quite a few publications, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Scary Mommy, National Lampoon, Reality Moms, Sammiches and Psych Meds, and The Mighty. I have been featured on the front pages of Huffington Post and TODAY.com. I am a sometimes staff writer for Pregnant Chicken, and a volunteer writer for Hand to Hold – NICU Family Voices. I have been quoted in Glamour and Forbes.
What about you, Rhiannon?
I live in a solidly liberal bubble of North Carolina, which plays well with my life goal to avoid being burned at the stake.
I have long known I suffer from obsessive-compulsive disorder, yet was 33 before I realized that means I have anxiety. Quite a bit of it, as it turns out.
I know all of the words to It’s the End of the World as We Know It.
When I was 9 I was in an all-elementary production of Macbeth. When I was 17 I thought that meant I didn’t need to read the play again for English class. I was mistaken.
My daughter, Lorelei, was born in 2010, and was a full-term induction due to Cholestasis of Pregnancy. I like a full range of experiences so I went with a partial abruption and severe Preeclampsia for my second pregnancy. Rowan was born in 2015 via an urgent c-section at 31 weeks and 5 days, and spent 40 days in the NICU.
My father’s near-last words to me were, “You curse too much,” complete with a wagging finger.
Why rhiyaya?
Because my younger sister couldn’t pronounce Rhiannon.
She has since learned.