The Last Book

Posted on by Astrid

Today’s question of the day over at My Inner MishMash is: What was the last book you purchased or borrowed at the library. I loved this question so am going to answer it here.

I rarely borrow books through the Dutch library system. I am a member of the library for the blind, but use it mostly for the access to magazines, as I prefer English-language over Dutch books. As such, I’ve not downloaded a book out of the online library in months. I also have a subscription to Bookshare, an American-based book service for print disabled people. However, since the software I use to read Bookshare’s books won’t boot anymore, I don’t read books from Bookshare really anymore and won’t until I’ve either figured out a mobile app or bought a new computer.

I also used to buy books in EPUB format from Kobo. The software I use for reading those files, Adobe Digital Editions, however has destroyed several of my eBooks already. I was so happy when I recently discovered Kindle. I love it.

I haven’t downloaded that many books on Kindle yet. The last one I bought was Journaling: This Is My Life by Emilee Day. This is a book of journaling tips and writing prompts. I bought it because I looked for inspirational writing prompts and this one looked to be the best for its cost.

Besides this one, I have a ton of books and files containing journaling prompts in my Adobe Digital Editions, in my Bookshare books library and scattered on my computer. I just love them. It’s not even that I use them for direct inspiration often, but having these books does motivate me to write. Or so I like to think. Some of these prompts are really thought-provoking. I must say the Emilee Day book is a little disappointing as far as I can tell now.

Weekly Gratitude List (July 27, 2018) #TToT

Posted on by Astrid

Today, I’m participating in Ten Things of Thankful (#TToT). I have been looking at this link-up for a few weeks and wanting to participate, but somehow, never managed to actually go about it. I don’t promise I’ll be able to share ten things I’m thankful for right now, but I’ll try.

1. Sunscreen. It’s incredibly hot and sunny here. So hot in fact that it’s not funny anymore. I originally wrote “sunshine”, but then realized at this point I’m not thankful for the sunny weather anymore. I am, however, thankful for sunscreen. I recently started on a new medication and the doctor didn’t tell me it can cause photosensitization, which means you burn more easily when in the sun. This I’m not amused about, as I did explicitly ask about risks or side effects. It’s summer, man! It’s over 30 degrees Celsius. Thankfully I found out before starting the medication.

2. My sun hat. My husband bought it for me last year provided I promise to wear it. I never kept that promise until this week. It looks pretty cool on me or so I’m told.

3. Fresh fruit. Last Wednesday, I went to the supermarket with my mother-in-law and bought some peaches and blackberries. I’ve eaten them all by now, so maybe I’ll need to ask my husband to buy new fruit or take a trip to the supermarket myself again. I love love love fresh summer fruit!

4. Focaccias. Don’t know whether I spell this right, but they’re delicious and my husband bought some for us earlier this week.

5. Money in the bank. I received my disability benefits last Monday and that’s always something to be happy about.

6. My support coordinator. My main home support worker is on vacation now, but my support coordinator is thankfully able to fill in for her somewhat. This means I’ll at least have some home support.

7. My mother-in-law. She tries to come by on the days that I don’t see my support coordinator. I’m truly grateful to have her.

8. The fan my husband bought for in our bedroom. Thankfully, they weren’t all sold out by Wednesday, so I slept really well last nght in spite of the heat.

9. Being back in the blogging mood again. For those visiting from #TToT or otherwise unaware of this, I have been blogging on WordPress ever since 2007 and on other platforms ever since 2002. I have a terrible habit of dropping in and out of the blogging mood though. It seems it relates a lot to my general mental state. As such, I’m hoping to stay in this mood for a while.

10. Soap making. I made melt and pour soap again yesterday, this time with the help of my support coordinator. It makes me so thankful to have seen the result when she did the pouring bit, which wasn’t much better than mine. I don’t mean this to offend her at all, but it’s good for my self-confidence to see sighted people make a mess too.

Yay, I succeeded! What have you been thaknful for this week?

Quote of the Day (July 26, 2018): The Way to Get Started

Posted on by Astrid

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney

This sure has to got to be the motto for this blog. And maybe for my healing journey as a whole. I may talk healing, but if I don’t work hard in therapy and such, I’ll not accomplish much.

This also reminds me of a conversation we had a few days ago with our husband. I said I miss talking to him, really connecting to him, like I did when I allowed my alters to be who they are. I thought my husband didn’t want us to be us. This isn’t the case. My husband told me to actually stop talking openness and connection and start opening up. That’s the only way to actually connect. And though that opening up involved talking, it also involved connecting on a deeper, more-than-words-can-say level. We loved it.

Pineapple

Posted on by Astrid

Last week, I discovered a writing prompt on a blog that asked us to share our favorite recipes incorporating pineapple. Now I really cannot cook that well, so other than a pineapple and banana smoothie, I have no idea. However, something else came to mind.

One of my main hobbies is soap making. I started this hobby in 2016 after having tried out many other creative hobbies unsuccessfully before, including card making, jewelry making and polymer clay. It’s so frustrating to be blind and extremely clumsy sometimes. As a result of this, I often need a lot of help on any of my creative endeavors except for writing. That includes soap making.

Earlier last week, I’d been thinking of a way to pick up the soaping craft again. I’d not been doing it much for over a year due to not having the support system to help me. Before that, I’d made soap at my old day activities in the institution, but my new place couldn’t help me with this.

I started looking for a soaping buddy. No luck. Then I thought maybe I could try soaping independenty after all. After all, it’s not more dangeorus than cooking and, though I just said I cannot cook, I in fact did cook independetnly many yeas ago. Making a simple melt and pour soap requires less preparation than cooking a meal.

So last week when my husband was at work, I went to business. I deliberately chose to soap when my husband was at work rather than when he was home, so that I couldn’t take out my frustrations on him. As it turned out, the soaping went pretty well. I decided to make a simple soap with just one colorant and one fragrance oil and no additional ingredients. That fragrance oil was pineapple. So here you have our favorite recipe incorporating pineapple.

Yellow soap with pineapple fragrance oil

You just need three ingredients:


  • White melt and pour soap base

  • Yellow water-soluble colorant

  • Pineapple fragrance oil


First, I cut the soap base into small cubes. Guessing how much soap I’d need, didn’t turn out to be as difficult as I’d expected. Then I melted the soap base in the microwave. This is not ideal, as the heat may not be evenly distributed through the soap, but I didn’t want to add complexity by melting my soap base in a double boiler. It worked fine for me. Once the soap was melted (which takes only about 30 seconds in the microwave), I added in a few drops of colorant and fragrance oil. The colorant and fragrance oil bottles I used have a dropper, but I just guessed how much I’d need, as you can never be sure the dropper works properly. Then I stirred quickly and poured the soap into the mold. You only have a few minutes from taking the soap out of the microwave to pouring it into the mold. If you see or suspect bubbles in your soap, you can spray alcohol over them, but I didn’t do that this time, as I cannot actually see where the soap bubbles are. I then left my soap to harden for about 45 minutes. It turned out pretty good.

Movement Therapy Yesterday

Posted on by Astrid

Trigger warning: strong language.

So yesterday we had movement therapy. We feel it’s really helping but we also switch a lot during this type of therapy. We’re not formally diagnosed with a dissociative disorder. Were formally diagnosed DID but that got changed to BPD five years ago. Our current mental health team’s opinion is that the “pieces” are allowed to be there but there’s no need for a dissociative disorder diagnosis or any form of specialized treatment. We do DBT individually with our nurse practitioner (not in a group because we’re autistic and would be overwhelmed by a group) and the movement therapist tries to incorporate some DBT too. We really try to fit our “pieces” into the DBT model of emotional/rationa/wise mind (we purposefully avoid the word “alters” as to not suggest we self-diagnose, as our former psychologist believed we made up the DID).

The thing is, Astrid is rarely out. That is, always when we think we’ve found the core or “real” Astrid, we realize it’s yet another alter. We don’t mind as most adults can present as Astrid and act pretty much normally. However, yesterday in movement therapy Katinka was out from the start (she’s one of the main fronters). Then for some reason Suzanne popped out and the therapist called for Astrid to come back. Katinka came back with some difficulty and explained that she’s fine being called Astrid but she isn’t Astrid. The therapist insisted that she may be Katinka now but Astrid was out at the beginning. It was quickly time to end the session and we were still pretty spacey but didn’t say so. To be honest we didn’t feel fully safe to go home yet (one of us was having destructive urges), but we didn’t say anything and managed to go home anyway.

Now some of us are thinking of quitting movement therapy or the whole mental health treatment altogether. We’ve run into just a little too many disagreements with our treatment team. I mean, they’re overall good people, not like our former psychologist who just was one giant bitch. We don’t need a fucking DID diagnosis (we’re not fully DID actually). We’re fine calling ourselves pieces or whatever, but we’re not going away. Now we’re pretty sure we’re going to be taken out of movement therapy for it destabilizing us. Well, whatever. If the goal is to keep us acting apparently normally all the time, then we don’t need nor want no fucking mental health treatment for that.

Starting Over (Yet Again)

Posted on by Astrid

I’ve had this blog for over seven years and have started and restarted it at least a dozen times. I keep being unsure of how open to be about my experience, but to be very honest, I need a place to write about my healing journey. I hope this time we’ll be successful. I don’t primarily write this blog for my readers, although I hope it’ll help some of you too. I don’t intend on going social with this blog too much, but if I make it altogether private, I’ve noticed that I miss the opportunity to interact and still feel restrained by this being WordPress. And yes, I’ve tried truly secure diary apps and sites, but none have satisfied me so far.

In case you stumble across this blog and don’t know me, I’m Astrid. That is, we’re Astrid et al, since the core of us, the “real” Astrid, is rarely if ever out. We are multiple. No, we don’t have a formal diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, but we don’t care (or try not to care). We don’t experience amnesia much if at all, but that doesn’t make us any less real. We are a trauma-based system, but we’re fine with natural/endogenic multiples interacting too.

Here’s where we’ll share our daily struggles as well as our travels along the healing path. We’ll also post some random bits and pieces here. I hope you’ll feel welcome here.