WELCOME.
I'm glad you found me
About
My name is Ashley Marie Berry
I'm not sure if it was you or I who were lost, but we've found each other and now we can laugh, learn, and connect to each other's beautiful minds.
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My diagnosis are just parts of me, they're not all of me. They are separate things within me that bubble up sometimes and i need to squash them down. When i'm not squashing...
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I'm a mom to an extraordinary child. We live with two golden retrievers, a leopard gecko and an axolotl. (And some fish when the axolotl lets them live)
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I love to sew, write and create.
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I use my notebook in my phone to write down my thoughts, and later they will turn into something beautiful. A poem, a list, or a journal entry.
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My last entry was -- What colour is sleep?
And I'm still deciding what that means.
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I wake up with ideas. Some are in word form, others are images in bold colours.
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I don't like crowded spaces, they crowd my thoughts and make my journal lie still. It flattens me until I recharge.
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Extroverted energy overwhelms me. I like to be alone, or with my favourite few people.
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So join me, together but alone, in this journey of trying to find the sunlight.
It's easier if we do this together right?
Let's go
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Check out the BLOG
A little background ... I wrote a memoir about all of me.
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I turned personal stories that were brittle and unfocused into something purposefully beautiful, a survival guide for one of 'us'.
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I was diagnosed with OCD and anxiety at age seven.
My first depressive episode was in high school. My friends were contemplating which colour lip gloss to wear, while i was contemplating if i still wanted to be here-here, like here on this earth.
My diagnosis changed from depression to major depressive disorder (MDD) in my early twenties. I was 29 the first time i experienced mania, when my diagnosis changed one last time to Bipolar disorder.
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I've been hospitalized six times. My longest stay being 61 days.
During my last hospitalization, i was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.
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I recently had ECT, which brought me out of my depressive episode that lasted longer than a year. I'm still regaining memories i lost during this time.