Let’s stop pretending New York State’s “jail diversion” system is anything more than a shiny PR stunt slapped onto the rotting face of the criminal justice and mental health apparatus. They call it diversion , mental health court , treatment over punishment . They parade these feel-good phrases in front of the public like some kind of humanitarian breakthrough. It’s bullshit. If you’ve ever seen this system up close — or worse, been dragged through it — you know exactly what

Let me say this as bluntly as it needs to be said: Don’t ever let anyone — parent, counselor, friend, partner, system — tell you that you’re not good enough! Most of the people who try to shrink you are just terrified of their own limits. They hand you their fear and call it “truth.” And for too long, you believed it. Not anymore. You don’t owe anyone the smaller version of yourself. Not the version shaped by their trauma. Not the version shaped by their judgments. Not the v

A new resource for anyone ready to move forward from the mental health system Over the past few years, I’ve heard the same thing again and again—from friends, family members, people in crisis, and people quietly holding their breath, hoping for something different: “I want out. I just don’t know how.” Not out of life. Out of the system . Out of endless appointments, labels, and the feeling of being managed instead of understood. That sentence— I want out —is exactly why I’ve

I knew, in some abstract way, that one day my father would die. Everyone knows that. But nothing prepares you for what it’s like when the day actually comes — when the phone rings, when the room goes quiet, when the world builds a new shape around the absence of the person who was your anchor. I’m 60 years old. And I just lost my father — the man who wasn’t just my dad, but my best friend . People think losing a parent at this age should somehow hurt less. They say things lik