Friendly Fill-Ins Week #115

Posted on by Astrid

I discovered Friendly Fill-Ins already a few months ago and participated on my other blog a few times. However, I didn’t like it that my posts always came out way shorter and less “serious” than I intended my blog for. I felt they were cluttering my blog. Well, since this blog is quite chaoitc anyway, I’m giving it a try here.

This week’s questions are:


  1. I deserve a gold star for _________________ today.

  2. Right now, I am loving _____________.

  3. The best advice I’ve ever been given is _________.

  4. If I had to choose a new first name, it would be _________.

My answers

1. I deserve a gold star for blogging so much today. This is my third post for today. I have a rule on my other blog that I can’t post more than once a day and I can’t post less than once a month. Also, posts have to be at least 300 words long, because I seem to remember shorter posts (especially without pictures) are bad for your Google ranking. Now, on this blog, I don’t care about my Google ranking.

2. Right now I am loving the WordPress community. I guess I take my other blog a little too seriously, because I didn’t like connecting with personal/journal-style bloggers. IN fact though, I love this type of bloggers and am so glad to be interacting with them now.

3. The best advice I’ve ever been given is to live your life. I don’t really know who said that, and maybe it’s a combination of advice I’ve received, but I agree. My life is mine alone.

4. If I had to choose a new first name, it would be… I really have no idea. We’d each want our own first name and we have one already. (For those who don’t know, “we” refers to the multiple selves or alters who share this body.) I don’t think we could have one name that we all agree on.

Practising Self-Care

Posted on by Astrid

Yesterday, carol anne of Therapy Bits asked a question about self-care. This really got me thinking. Is self-care a challenge for us? How do we practise self-care?

Self-care can really be interpreted in several ways. Sometimes, what is self-care one day may be the opposite the next. For example, many people see self-care as pampering yourself. While this is good in moderation, it can become destructive if done too much. For example, we like to buy ourselves comfort food as self-care. However, this used to quickly turn into overeating. Now we recently realized that a small bag of sugar-free candy is just as enjoyable as a large bag of sugary candy and it is a lot less unhealthy.

Remember, any self-care activity can turn destructive if done in excess. We happen to be the classic overindulgent type, but exercise or healthy eating can also become an obsession.

We definitely find self-care a challenge particularly when we feel depressed. Like I said, we’re the overindulgent type, so then we sleep and eat all day. When we aren’t depressed, self-care comes relatively easy.


There are a variety of self-care activities we like. For example, we like to practise yoga and mindfulness. We also love the sensory room at day actvities.

Writing is also a good self-care activity for us. I am happy that we relaunched this blog, so that we can write without the pressure of having to create “good” content, as this was realy holding us back on our other blog.

We also try to take good care of our physical health. We are overweight and have been trying to lose weight over the past fourteen months. Though it’s been somewhat successful, it’s not been as successful as we hoped it’d be. We recently started a food log again, but we can’t keep up with it everyday. We try to exercise regularly too, though over the past few weeks that’s been hard due to the hot weather.

What do you do to practise self-care?

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?

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.