The first time I told a doctor about the weight on my chest, she didn’t ask if it felt like wet sandbags or a sleeping child or the ghost of every goodbye I’d ever swallowed. She typed two words: “Anxiety,” “Xanax.”
The therapist asked if I had considered medication for the anxiety. I wanted to say, “No, I was struggling with transitions, I am grappling with the silence where my language used to be.”
When I first moved away from home, I didn’t cry, not in the way people expected. My sadness didn’t come in “panic attacks or depressive episodes.” It came when standing in the grocery aisle, staring at spices I didn’t know how to use. In the way my hands would hover over the phone at 3am, aching to call someone who was already asleep seven time zones away. My laughter felt like wearing shoes two sizes too big. We don’t have a word for this in English, but other languages do. In Welsh Gaelic, Hiraeth: it’s homesickness for a home you cannot return to. In Romanian it’s Dor, the pain of wanting something so deeply it feels like a knife turning in your chest. Toska (in Russian) is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for. Éadromchroíoch (Irish Gaelic) is, literally, “light-hearted,” the bittersweet joy of remembering what you’ve left.
Language matters. I tried to explain this once to my peers, how the longing for a place can live in your bones. But it’s hard for another to understand the feeling, especially one they know nothing about.
In the emergency room last year, a nurse scanned my chart and asked, “Rate your depression from one to ten.” Medical diagnosis is all about measures, right? I considered the work of Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and science historian. In The Mismeasure of Man, Gould challenged the myth that objective measurement alone captures truth, arguing that such frameworks often erase nuance, especially in human experiences. The author’s idea of ‘objective’ metrics extends to psychiatry, in how my pain became a psychiatric scale, and not a story to be heard. When metrics subsume lived experience, pain becomes data points rather than an experience. It’s forcing lived experience into quantifications.
I wanted to tell the nurse that numbers couldn’t capture how it felt to miss a self I had left behind. Instead, I whispered, “Seven,” and watched him check a box that reduced my emotional states to checkboxes.
My response, seven, was a surrender to psychologist David Ingleby’s critique of the mythology of psychiatry and its power. His discussion about the medical model’s tyranny captures how my homesickness becomes pathology, and embodied memories are labeled as dissociative symptoms. When I was asked if I was hearing voices, I didn’t know how to explain that it wasn’t voices, but memories, voices of my past, voices I missed. As Luhrmann noted in Of Two Minds: An Anthropologist Looks at American Psychiatry, “Psychiatric knowledge seeps into popular culture like the dye from a red shirt in hot water; the way we understand these illnesses affects not only the way they are treated but the way they are experienced, their outcomes, and our sense of responsibility toward those who suffer.”
My loneliness didn’t disappear, it became familiar; a companion that spoke my mother tongue. Some days it sits at my table, drinking tea from the handcrafted stoneware pottery cup my best friend gave me when we were eighteen. So, I knew what it was, the silent vocabulary of a body that remembers too much, lingering like perfume on a discarded sweater. This wasn’t a diagnosable condition. It was love, stretched across oceans, my heart learning to beat in two places at once.
A few days later, my aunt came visiting, took one look at me that winter and said, “Ọmọ rẹ, ọkhẹ rẹ yẹ ẹwẹn ẹgbee” (spoken in Edo language by the Benin people in Nigeria) meaning “My daughter, your heart is a house with too many windows.” She offered to make a powerful healing drink for calming, soothing the mind, and boosting overall wellness. Boiling some bitterleaf, cinnamon, clove and ginger mixed in a pot filled the kitchen with a smell that unknotted something behind my ribs. “This is for the cold that gets in because of distance,” she said. Not a diagnosis; an offering! But here’s what I wrote later in my journal: “Today, the weight of loneliness is like an old coat draped over the chair, too familiar to hang up, too heavy to wear.”
Some nights, my body would become a library of lost translations. I sat still in my balcony sipping my aunt’s herbal infusion tea and let the silence between my reality mean something other than absence, letting the steam curl into the space between my ribs and the ache. People sometimes ask, can you even put what you feel into words? In psychological vocabulary, what I feel might fall under the rubric of coping mechanisms. But it’s more like teaching my bones a language older than diagnosis. I felt that clinical language gave me a label, but it was my own half-scribbled metaphors that taught me how to live with it.
There was a night last November when I felt the clinical words stopped working entirely. I remember curling up on the bathroom floor, the tiles cold against my cheek, chanting the only word that made sense: “Homesick, Homesick, Homesick.” Not for a place, but for a version of myself I couldn’t reach. The Emergency Room doctor would probably call it a panic attack with dissociative features or an adjustment disorder. My body and my flesh called it something else, something different. It felt like a combination of several things. Instead of the clinical terms social isolation or depression, or appetite changes, I would call it the sacred space between languages where I could finally hear myself think. The loss of appetite as my body’s rebellion against food that didn’t taste like memory of home. Clinically, I assume that sounds like a prescription for lorazepam or fluoxetine, but I knew exactly what I felt; I just didn’t have the clinical vocabulary for the ache of missing home love.
I thought about the rasp of my parents’ soft cheeks against mine when they whispered “Deboroski” (my pet name) before I slept. The aroma in the household from the caraway and onion from dinner soup, that peppery warmth seeping into the wallpaper, the wool blankets, and the pages of my books. It’s like the promise that no matter how cold it gets outside, there will always be this: a steaming bowl and someone to share it with. Neuroscientists have shown that smell is the sense most tightly wired to memory which explains why, when I chop onions in my too-quiet kitchen, I close my eyes and pretend the sting is from home cooking, not loneliness.
Savoring these precious missed moments, I came up with a Recipe for When the Words Run Out:
Ingredients:
One quiet afternoon by the water (where thoughts can float)
A handful of all the metaphors you can find (even if they’re not perfect)
One blank notebook ready to be splattered with thoughts and ink
Permission to feel things that don’t have names
Instructions:
Sit by the shore until your thoughts unspool like loose thread.
Gather your imperfect metaphors like wild herbs. Don’t worry if they’re bruised or mismatched.
Open the notebook to a random page. Press your palm flat against the paper and let the ink bleed where it wants, some stains will taste better tomorrow.
Name the unnamed with your own words. If it still won’t fit into language, sketch its shape with a butter knife.
Serving Suggestion:
Share with others who taste life in textures rather than terms. The crumbs will nourish what clinical language starves.
Let’s get it straight, I am not oblivious or opposed to diagnosis, I’m just busy learning the alphabet of my own becoming. The first letter looks like a question mark curled around a seed. The last? A doorway no chart could ever measure. It’s the language of longing: how I speak the love that’s missing. There is a kind of hunger that doesn’t appear in medical charts; the taste of home that no diagnosis can name. My feelings didn’t need measures or a diagnosis. It needed the smell of “shayi” brewing at dawn, made from fresh ginger, peppermint leaves, cloves, and cinnamon sticks, sweetened to taste with honey, just the way my parents used to make it. The sound of my childhood best friend’s voice saying, “Eat something, my friend, you look too thin,” or the weight of my little niece falling asleep on my shoulder after a warm bath. I didn’t need a drug for this. I needed a way to explain why not hearing my language in public makes my ribs ache.
What the system misses is that not every feeling can be measured and diagnosed in clinical terms. For example, I see social withdrawal like the unbearable lightness of small talk when your heart lives elsewhere. Low energy is like the weight of carrying a ghost country in your lungs. Does that mean we sometimes grieve in the wrong language? Although there are codes in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), they have little to do with the felt experience of how my accent slips when I’m tired or the way I flinch when someone mispronounces my name. The way my hands still yearn for spices that aren’t in the international aisle in the grocery store.
If only they knew how to ask, maybe an alternative assessment question would work. Questions like “What does homesickness smell like to you?” I would answer that mine smells like jasmine tea and diesel fumes, the scent of my old bus stop. When was the last time you felt understood without translation? For me, it was the barista who recognized my hesitation before ordering and said, “You miss the way coffee tastes back home, don’t you?”
In addition to my recipe, this is my Survival Guide for the homesick heart. I keep a dictionary of translatable words in my local dialect, writing down the ones that almost fit:
Ọmwan rhuẹ – That ache when you crave your mother’s voice more than food.
Ẹdọ ayemwen – The sound of heavy downpour on zinc roofs, still drumming in my dreams.
Ugboko mwen, Ọrhionmwen – My roots, my joy, sweet belonging.
All these I match with my playlist of home songs of voices I miss. I dance to the music no one else recognizes, cook a meal that takes all day just to smell it longer, ponder about a Benin spice I will hoard like a secret, let myself cry in the language I first learned to cry in. I just let my body speak its mother tongue. Longing is not something to medicate; it’s proof of what we’ve loved. It’s a part of cultural resilience. These lexicons are how we survive without being “fixed.” It’s a remembering that calls for gentler spaces, rooms where homesickness isn’t treated like a symptom but a meaningful story. A space for personal narratives, and the freedom to submit, for those who should desire it, to lexicons of longing.
I don’t think there’s a word to describe the stabbing betrayal I feel every time I come here and read a personal account of what people have learned from being ignored and abused by psychiatry, and then hear them do their inevitable pivot and say something like,
“Let’s get it straight, I am not oblivious or opposed to diagnosis,”
EVERY TIME we ALMOST have a good article on here, every time you finally give the platform to survivors, WHY do you only give it to the ones who still feel that unbearable societal pressure to balance any and all criticism of psychiatry with, “oh, it’s not ALL bad, I’m sure it works for SOME people, I’m not against ALL psych drugs, clearly SOME people still have brain disorders.”
I know this author isn’t making all those claims but the indescribable suffering *I* feel is like I’m screaming into a void and everyone can see me but they find me too annoying and so they’ve just tuned me out, having never even heard my words, my warning, just ignored me because I came off too aggressive.
These are not representative of survivor voices, MIA. Take the “social justice” off the tagline it’s a joke.
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That one line ruined it for me, too, Dead soul.
All the poetic metaphors in the world can’t save this story.
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As the editor of this story and most of Mad in America’s personal stories I need to respond to the misinformation in Dead soul’s post. No, we do not only give a platform to survivors who balance their critique of psychiatry with “it’s not all bad” type statements.
We also do not, and will not, deny a platform to survivors who make such statements. We expect authors to have some sort of critique of psychiatry or the mental health system, but they don’t need to be abolitionists. There’s a learning curve with this stuff and I’m more interested in meeting people where they’re at than enforcing purity contests and party lines.
As for “every time you finally give the platform to survivors,” that “finally” makes it sound as though it’s something we do rarely. So I’d like to point out that we publish survivors’ stories every week and have done so consistently for the past decade.
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I noticed my last criticism was altered to leave out the fact that I think every time I’ve seen this pivot, and I think this applies to most “survivor” stories here: THESE ARE PEOPLE WHO STILL WORK FOR THE INDUSTRY. These are not average survivors. These are seemingly ONLY people with degrees in “mental health” and letters after their name still.
People who literally work for the mental illness industrial complex are not the survivors we should be listening to. They’re still getting industry money, and overwhelmingly this biases them toward “improving” the system, because they now have a personal stake in its continued existence. I don’t believe they were paid TO patch psychiatry’s image, but that tends to be what they all end up doing once they’ve told you their story of how their life was ruined.
Now even if the system DID abuse them, they’re remarkably able to still defend its existence beyond any sense or reason. MIA has allowed survivor stories from people who literally said they would still be going back to their psychiatrist.
How is this “social justice?” It’s not. Take it. Off. The tagline.
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“People who literally work for the mental health industrial complex are not the survivors we should be listening to. They’re still getting industry money, and overwhelmingly this biases them toward “improving the system” because they have a personal stake in its continued existence.”
That’s the gist of it. Money, status and ego are powerful motivators.
Ego is probably the biggest.
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MIA is a social justice site in their very narrow field, not universally. If you think everything on here is so bad, why are you still here reading it? Start your own site. Show us how social justice in the tagline should be used.
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Dead soul has as much right as anyone to express their views in ways that make sense to them.
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Commenting as moderator:
I’ve decided there is a lot of sniping back and forth going on here that is not contributing to the conversation. I think everyone’s had a chance to air their views, so I’m not going to continue to post comments about other commenters or the author. Please stick to the content of the article.
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The author was speaking about their experiences and missing their home. Something most people who live far away from home can relate to. I think you severely mis-understood what the author was trying to convey. I think this was a beautiful story and I absolutely loved it.
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Why couldn’t she just say “I’m homesick?”
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Birdsong:
If all you found in this was, “I’m homesick” then that is sad, I think. I found it spoke very much to my heart. It opens, for me, a way to touch my own suffering. A way that I might have been nearer to years ago. Rage at the system?…yes! Finding what one might provide to/for oneself, despite the system, is for me a welcome gift. Be well.
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It’s not “sad”. It’s just my opinion.
Not being into poetry doesn’t mean I or anyone else is heartless. All it means is we’re not into poetry.
True respect is a two-way street—with or without poetry.
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Not everybody is into poetry.
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I don’t need metaphor to feel deeply, and I won’t be shamed for preferring plain speech over lyrical flourish or medical gibberish.
Emotional depth shouldn’t require translation—and shouldn’t be treated like it does.
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CLARIFICATION:
Emotional depth shouldn’t require translation—poetic or medical—and must not be treated as though it does.
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This is a beauty piece. A powerful reflection on how language, culture, and emotion intersect beyond just clinical diagnosis.
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It is a beautiful piece.
It just seems incongruous for someone who’s been through such experiences to not be opposed to psychiatric diagnoses, diagnoses that have negatively impacted too many lives, and especially when psychiatry has a long history of misusing language for its own benefit—not patients’:
DIAGNOSIS: Schizophrenia
HARMFUL IMPACT: Used to justify forced institutionalization; pathologizes spiritual experiences and cultural expression
DIAGNOSIS: Borderline Personality Disorder
HARMFUL IMPACT: Weaponized against women; often used to invalidate trauma responses and emotional intensity
DIAGNOSIS: Sluggish Schizophrenia
HARMFUL IMPACT: Invented by the Soviet Union to silence political dissidents—a diagnosis of dissent, not illness
DIAGNOSIS: Oppositional Defiant Disorder
HARMFUL IMPACT: Applied disproportionately to marginalized youth; punishes resistance and autonomy
DIAGNOSIS: Conversion Disorder/Hysteria
HARMFUL IMPACT: Historically used to dismiss women’s physical symptoms as emotional instability
DIAGNOSIS: Adjustment Disorder
HARMFUL IMPACT: Often used to pathologize grief, homesickness, or cultural displacement
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@Dead Soul, I completely agree with what you said. You’re onto something profound. I’ve been rejected multiple times for refusing to say I was “sick” or “mentally ill.” They kept labeling me because of a difficult childhood, but I didn’t need anyone outside my mind telling me what was wrong with my body or mind without proof in the present. The most important thing about diagnosis is buying your consent to agree. Notwithstanding materially, if that’s how we measure functioning, I would be considered more functional than those doing the diagnosing (there are certain markers used for psychological functioning). The irony of it.
When I said that, they implicitly asked, “Then what’s your problem?” My stance has always been that I want to explore my inner world in a safe space within a professional relationship, without being flattened into a diagnosis or reduced to symptom management. How is that even helpful in a real conversation? for this article, homesickness is homesickness. What tools, other than a relational conversation, could possibly address that? Let’s speak scientifically, if we must.
All I needed was a safe space to explore my inner world in the context of my childhood and beyond, which must be and should remain chaotic, because it is the source. Sources are not fully knowable. But that wasn’t acceptable. I refused to bend the knee to a diagnosis in order to be processed. Every article I wrote for that magazine was rejected for that reason.
You’re right. If I had added, “Oh, by the way, I work in the industry and see value in the system,” they would have listened, because then I’d be following the rule—the rule of academic writing and abstraction, this idea that only certain people can interpret research. In truth, any adult can read research and interpret it, but their interpretations might not fit the system’s narrative. Every piece of research organizes knowledge in one way but also opens side paths of new ideas, misunderstandings, and uses that go beyond what the researcher intended—and that “beyond” is open to anyone who interprets it in their own way. I’m not speaking about concrete research, but about psychological, cultural, and sociological research that is contextually and culturally bounded.
That’s the real issue. I appreciate your take because it’s honest and timely. Some people are finally beginning to hear voices like ours—those who don’t believe in the system as it stands and who are pointing out how language itself has been subverted to invert reality.
I wrote another comment on Mad in America about this. In another piece, an anthropologist with borderline personality disorder said the system “needs to change.” But it’s not about change anymore. The system is wrong and harmful. It needs to be dissolved. And if one is educated enough to see that, one must use that education to show HOW/WHY it is wrong, not to appease or pander to authority. Those who see through it aren’t the ones being paid to keep it alive, yet the idea of a “living wage” is used to justify its survival. Thank you for seeing that.
Fair enough, there’s also the issue of transparency and accountability to the state in regulation. I can’t fully disown the system because I work within it, but my personal view is that it’s broken. Allowing that kind of relational consciousness with readers, rather than hiding behind abstraction and academic language, is where real change begins.
It will open new territories for moving forward. Right now, we are at a standstill because the system can no longer think beyond itself and those against are not allowing anything that is not approved by the system itself! It is complete capture!
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As the editor of personal stories here at MIA I just want to clarify, in case anyone misinterprets Dogworld’s comment, that they are speaking of being rejected by some other magazine. We absolutely do not reject stories on the basis of an author refusing to say they are “sick” or “mentally ill” (in fact, while editing, I often remove such language or put it in quotes to show it’s a contested concept).
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A brilliantly moving piece, truly wonderful. I have so many new things to read and discover thanks to the citations as well! I am in the process of rediscovering my heritage and educating myself enough to create my own lexicons of belonging, and it’s significantly less lonely when folks are willing to share such masterfully written accounts of their own experiences on MIA.
That beign said… my fellow commenters:
For what it’s worth, I don’t think we should be tearing other survivors and people with lived experience down for not opposing psychiatry as vehemently as we would like. Like a lot of commenters here, I too am cautious of anyone still in the industry—it can be extremely hard to trust someone who works in the system.
The author, however, is an educator and researcher—an MA is a Master of Arts, and MS is a Master of Sciences. Neither of these implies specifically that she’s a therapist or other provider within the mental health industry.
But even if she was, listening to providers, especially Providers of Color keenly aware of their own cultural heritage and already attuned to the problems in the system, is how we get stuff done, folks. We cannot push away people who are trying to do the right thing for their patients and themselves in the middle of a broken system just because they, like ourselves, are imperfect and can’t fix everything single-handedly.
I also think her words are being taken out of context. I also possibly disagree with the author on the merits and helpfulness of diagnosis. *But.* The language being jumped on is found in *a single sentence,* alongside rejection of the interpretation that she is oblivious—which might be a more tactical statement than a personal one. As an Indian American I have often made such statements myself purely because I know who is going to come at me if I don’t; the “patient lacks insight” label is scary enough when you’re Brown, and I cannot comprehend what that’s like for a Black scholar to endure.
But even in safer, more private environs I prefer nuanced discussions about the validity if diagnosis *when coming from others with lived experience.* I dislike it, but many in my community have a more lukewarm view. I am accountable to them, so I try and be respectful of those who still WANT diagnosis and formal services, even though and especially since I myself will never go back.
I also need to point out the epistemic injustice elephant in the room. I simply don’t believe her experience is less valid, nor her status as a “knower” compromised, even if she *were* a part of the mental health system. We as readers can reject adhering to the opinion expressed in that small one-sentence part of the piece without rejecting her as a person.
I also don’t think Ms. Omontese’s comment section is the appropriate place to air grievances against MIA. She’s literally posted here all of one time, give her some grace. She’s expressing the same things so many of us have felt, but that doesn’t mean she’s obligated to agree with us on everything. And we need to act like the welcoming and supportive community I know we all can be.
Peace,
A
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The author clearly stated she’s not opposed to psychiatric diagnoses. That’s her opinion. Others have theirs.
No one should feel pressured to edit themselves on a subject as emotionally charged as psychiatry.
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Censorship wears many masks.
Real progress only happens when people are allowed to speak freely.
And every voice deserves to be heard.
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I think it’s important to recognize that when something is published online, the author may have one specific reader or audience in mind, but in reality, it reaches many others. This is a major shift from traditional print media. In the past, when people bought newspapers or journals, readership was more limited and often demographically predictable. Online publishing, however, reaches a vast and unpredictable audience — one that can interpret and respond in many different ways.
When writers publish on Mad in America, I understand that they are expressing their own point of view. However, once their work is public, they can’t control how readers interpret or engage with it. As a commenter, I respond to Mad in America as a platform, not to individual authors. The site owns and moderates the content, and all comments exist within that shared space.
For me, commenting is not about criticizing or offending anyone — it’s about expanding the conversation. Every comment contributes valuable data and perspective to Mad in America. So even when my comments are moderated or not published, I accept that, because the website ultimately decides what appears.
We shouldn’t fear the exchange of ideas. Sharing different perspectives — even those outside the mainstream — is essential for growth and dialogue.
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Thank you, Dogworld.
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“Every comment contributes valuable data and perspectives to Mad in America.”
Yes. Even comments others don’t like.
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Thanks Birdsong.
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🙂
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“We as readers can reject adhering to the opinion expressed in that small one-sentence part of the piece without rejecting her as a person.”
That’s exactly what I was doing. I was not rejecting the author as a person. I was rejecting her stand on psychiatric diagnoses as she specifically states she’s not opposed to them. To me that’s deeply concerning coming from someone speaking critically about her unfavorable experience with psychiatric language.
I think my comments were appropriate given the subject of her story, which I took to be about the power of language – or lack thereof – in the psychiatric space—a view shared by many who’ve experienced psychiatry’s dark side.
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“We as readers can reject adhering to the opinion expressed in that small one-sentence part of the piece without rejecting her as a person.”
That’s what I was doing. I was not rejecting the author as a person. I was rejecting her stand on psychiatric diagnoses; one that I find deeply concerning coming from someone speaking critically about her unsatisfactory experience with psychiatric language.
I think my comments were appropriate given the subject of her story, which I took to be about the power of language, or lack thereof, in the psychiatric space—a view shared by many who’ve also experienced psychiatry’s dark side.
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Metaphors aside, I don’t see how any serious critic of the “mental health” system can leave psychiatric diagnoses unopposed, when there’s more than enough credible evidence worldwide of their being more harmful than healing.
It leaves me wondering who or what the author is trying to protect.
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Psych diagnoses provide the pretext or justification for the wide range of unhelpful or damaging interventions that are so commonly used or even forced on clients. Getting rid of the DSM is more important than controlling the prescription of psych drugs. It’s the main source of psychiatric power.
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Absolutely. The DSM is where all the trouble starts.
As long as people keep thinking they’re “mentally ill” they’ll keep taking their “meds”.
Brilliant marketing scheme.
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CORRECTION:
Just shows the power of mis-using language.
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Last time I checked, this is supposed to a website for rethinking psychiatry.
How can it claim to be that if commenters feel pressured to speak uncritically, as in not expressing their critical thoughts and feelings about the contents of an article?
The content of this personal story seems to me to be about the power language in the psychiatry space. The author did an amazing job doing just that.
But if commenters feel obliged to not say, “I didn’t like the content of this article, and here’s why” isn’t that taking their power away???
This is what’s wrong with the mental health system: people think they are in a position to tell others not only how they should feel, but also how they should speak.
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COMMENTING AS MODERATOR: To be clear, no one is moderated for stating they don’t like the content of an article, and we publish critical comments every single day. Comments are only moderated for attacking a person or a group of people rather than addressing the content of the article. No one has to agree with any author, we just have to maintain civility in explaining our comments.
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I hope it stays that way.
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What a beautifully written story! I could vividly visualize my own journey of transition while reading it: the homesickness, the warmth, and the emotions. The part about your aunt making you that powerful drink felt so real, I could almost smell and taste it. It reminded me of home. Some smells feel so real like home. And when you described your parents’ gentle touch on your cheeks before bed, that truly touched my heart. I miss that feeling so much. You’ve articulated so beautifully the small, unspoken moments that mean everything. For me, this story is about belonging- about the ache of distance, the comfort of memory and realizing that home can live within our memories as much as in the spaces we leave behind. You reminded me how storytelling itself can be a form of healing.
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Thank you for such a moving piece. Reading this as someone living away from home, your words resonated deeply with me. The way you described the weight on your chest and the silence where your language used to be truly captured what it feels like to navigate life in another place. I’ve often found myself awake at odd hours, hovering over my phone, longing to reach out to family and friends who are already asleep across the ocean. That quiet ache of distance is something I know well. I understand the yearning for familiar sights, smells, and sounds. There have been moments when I stood in grocery aisles searching for spices that remind me of home, or when I realized how little I had spoken my mother tongue and missed its melody.
I appreciate challenging the idea that every form of pain or longing must be defined by clinical language. I believe that here are emotions that can’t be measured, because they live in the spaces between cultures and memories. Sometimes what we feel isn’t an illness to be treated but a reflection of love, loss, and belonging. The longing for home isn’t something to medicate, rather a proof of what we’ve loved and where we’ve come from.
For many of us living far from home, healing often means learning to create small “home-spaces” wherever we are through food, language, art, memory, and community. Those rituals help us carry our culture forward while adapting to new surroundings. Your reflections reminded me of my grandmother’s kitchen and how the simple act of cooking a familiar dish can momentarily transport me back to where my heart feels most at peace.
Thank you for writing something so deeply human. You’ve given voice to the quiet ache many of us carry, the mix of gratitude, nostalgia, and resilience that comes with building a life between worlds.
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Very insightful and deeply personal narrative Deborah. It’s very often understated the health impacts of being away from where one calls or feels as “home” particularly when faced with pressures and a limited community or group to lean on. Glad to see this piece generate very interesting conversations too. In the end, no one can tell your story better than you… Thanks for sharing.
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Hi Deborah,
Your article really spoke to me in ways that are hard to put into words. I like that you beautifully capture how our senses of smell, sound, and taste hold the stories our bodies remember when expressing ourselves through language falls short. When I was reading it, I was gently reminded that healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken but about finding meaning in the fragments we carry. Also, sharing these experiences with others who feel the same way as we do is therapy. This has helped me a lot through my life’s journey. I appreciate the honesty and softness in the way you write about turning symptoms into stories. Thank you for sharing something so personal and profound; so many can relate to it. I have struggled to capture these feelings, and so this really resonates with me. I totally agree with Tajiri; only you can tell your story better. This beautiful piece will linger long even after reading. Good luck in your career.
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David Ingelby’s paper called “Understanding Mental Illness” says a lot—but like most academic writing, it says it in too many words. Let’s be honest: it’s overwrought. Which poses its own problem: it’s accessible and understandable only to the highly “educated”, those who not only are given access to it, but also the skills to interpret what it says.
And this is bad BECAUSE it says some important things that could do a lot of good if it were written in a digestible form that the average person could understand.
Which makes academic writing a kind of addiction— a drug accessible only to a select few. It’s not unlike poetry: the former cocaine for the intellect; the latter perfume for the ego.
Each one seduces in its own way. Each one distracts from what the soul is actually feeling—feelings best communicated silently, or by looking into another’s eyes, through the ache that doesn’t need translation, the kind that’s TRULY “unspoken”.
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Dear Birdsong,
Not sure why you’re bringing this up. Is your intention to compare this piece to David Ingelby’s paper? Are you implying, therefore, that this piece is “overwrought,” “inaccessible,” and that only those who are highly “educated” and “skilled” can “interpret” it?
No one else in the comments complained that this article was elitist or inaccessible. No one else seemed to have a hard time understanding it. Maybe this article wasn’t for you. That doesn’t mean it’s bad or wrong, nor that those who did connect with it must be a certain “type” of person. Do you know the educational background of every person here in the comments, and how their educational background compares to your own? I had no trouble understanding it, and I’m a 24-year-old with only a bachelor’s degree. Roughly 40% of American adults share the same level of education as me or higher. Is that really such a “select few”?
Perhaps it doesn’t have to do with level of education so much, and really comes down to individual understanding and preference. It’s okay to just say, “I didn’t get it.” Or to simply say nothing and move on. But just because you didn’t understand and/or connect with something, doesn’t mean it is “inaccessible” to the “average person.”
You said “…feelings best communicated silently… through the ache that doesn’t need translation, the kind that’s TRULY ‘unspoken’.” That’s nice and all, but how exactly would you propose one communicates without words in a written article?
By the way, I commend your use of poetic language and metaphor in your very condemnation of poetic language and metaphor! “…addiction — a drug accessible only to a select few… cocaine for the intellect… perfume for the ego…”
Sincerely,
Jasmine
P.S. I’m quite curious as to what your exposure to poetry has been, and why you must have such a negative view of it. The way it is often taught in the education system is downright awful, and I believe that’s why most people become turned off to it. If you have 11 spare minutes, I’d highly recommend watching this video (with an open mind): https://youtu.be/FjwJQ0NVyYc?si=BG0gbcnrdJkwptSR
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Jasmine, nowhere did I say the Ingelby paper was elitist, nor did I say I had a hard time understanding the Lexicon piece. I clearly stated that Ms. Omontese wrote a beautiful piece, and that her not being opposed to the use of psychiatric diagnoses incongruous—two entirely different things. What I was trying to point out was the possibility of academic and metaphorical language being inaccessible, in more ways than one.
To be clear, inaccessibility is not the same as elitism; inaccessibility describes the effect of language creating barriers, whereas elitism implies intent rooted in privilege—a subtle distinction that matters.
Furthermore, your inquiry into my dislike of poetry and your attempt to point out my own use of metaphor misses the point. My critique was not about whether metaphor can be used—it was about how language, when stylized or academic, risks becoming inaccessible.
From my perspective, you are projecting when interpreting my comments rather than offering a fair reading of my views. I’ve clarified my position and the distinction I was making, and I stand by my words. If you continue to interpret my comments otherwise, that remains your projection—not my intent.
And finally, the Ingelby paper was from a link provided by the author.
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POSTING AS MODERATOR:
I have probably allowed some comments here that have been a bit too personal. I’m thinking this conversation has drifted away from discussing the article and has become about the comments. Let’s end off here and get back to discussing the article itself!
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That’s exactly what I was doing.
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Hi Birdsong,
Idk if this comment will get posted or not, because it has drifted too far off topic, but I just wanted to say: Honestly, you’re kinda right. I was projecting a bit & leaping to some conclusions based on my own perceptions & personal feelings. I am truly sorry. Poetry/art means a lot to me, and it’s hard not to take these conversations personally. I didn’t mean to cause any harm or hard feelings, and I hope you’ll accept my apology.
Sincerely,
Jasmine
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I don’t reject metaphor. I refuse its misuse.
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MIA has become a place for showing off academically or poetically. An ego trip for the well-spoken.
It ought to be a sanctuary where lived truth can be spoken PLAINLY by people who’ve paid their dues—not where pain becomes performance.
What matters is not how clever someone sounds, but how clearly HARM IS NAMED.
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Hi Birdsong,
I disagree. First of all, many of my favorite articles/blogs/personal stories on MIA are from several years ago, and are what I would consider very “well-spoken,” “poetic,” etc. To say that MIA “has become” this way is to imply that it didn’t used to be. That is simply not true.
What also confuses me is the notion that “academic” or “poetic” language is somehow antithetical to speaking “plainly” or “clearly.” Why must these be mutually exclusive? To the contrary, any *good* poetic (or academic) writing uses language/metaphor to clarify, not to obscure. I am curious as to where your ideas about poetry/academic writing come from.
I’ve noticed a trend of commenters wanting MIA to be a “safe space”/”sanctuary” for “real survivors” with “lived experience” to express themselves freely in their “authentic voice,” while simultaneously criticizing other survivors (usually the author) for using the language that feels right to them — be that poetic, academic, diagnostic, or otherwise. Hypocritically, this inadvertently undermines the welcoming, survivor-centered, censorship-free environment that they claim to advocate for. I thought our whole schtick was letting people self-define their own story without imposing our own opinions/beliefs/worldviews on them or insisting that they conform to our preferred way that they communicate (i.e. what psychiatry does).
Not a single positive comment here was praising this article for its “cleverness.” You were the first to bring that up. Instead, they found value in this piece through its humanness, relatability, and connection. Is that not the desired outcome of survivors sharing their voices with one another? What would you prefer instead?
Yes, the author is also a very good writer. Would you rather her be a poor writer? I do not think the piece would’ve been nearly as effective, or her effect on other (real, human, survivor) commenters/readers as profound. It’s true, not everyone possesses these gifts. Life’s unfair. But I think that’s all the more reason for those who have them to share them. One commenter literally said the “article really spoke to [them] in ways that are hard [for them] to put into words,” and another said “You’ve given voice to the quiet ache many of us carry.” The purpose of writing/art is not always to perform or “show off” or as an “ego trip,” but to communicate & connect with others (who need it) as well.
If you’re looking for articles that are written in what you call “plain” language, there are plenty of others you can find on here. I regret to inform you that that they will still likely be well-written. Of course Mad in America is going to “favor” those who are good writers; it’s a journalism outlet! If you want a place for indiscriminate venting, I suggest you visit Reddit (they actually have some thriving anti-psych & anti-therapy subs!).
Sincerely,
Jasmine
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