u/Illustrious_Day7682

I've always been hit rather hard by my period hormones. My mood swings lessened dramatically once I started birth control, but I definitely still have times where they hit me like a truck. I can go from happy and calm to melting down like the world is ending in the span of minutes to hours. Once, during one of the worst of these episodes, I went from feeling perfectly fine to having thoughts of self-harm just a couple hours later, for seemingly no reason. I didn't act on the thoughts, but they surged with such intensity that it was alarming. On that note, I can also become more vulnerable to uncharacteristic, irrational thought spirals or intrusive and impulsive thoughts, such as thinking or doing things I would never normally do, even if I'm only seized by the urge temporarily.

(For the record, I don't believe I have PMDD*, I don't really fit the criteria for it and the worst of my negative spirals tend to hit when I'm menstruating, not before it.) I know that menstrual hormones can impact people with CP physically, such as increasing muscle tightness, but I don't know if it's common for the emotional effects of hormones to hit us harder as well.

(*PMDD stands for Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, a condition where a person experiences abnormally extreme mood swings that impact their daily life before menstruating.)

Pretty self explanatory. I started out my time at CSUF by dorming, but after some things came up in my personal life, I'm not going to be dorming anymore, and will instead be commuting to a few in-person classes while taking mostly online ones. Any advice about commuting is appreciated!

When a living creature falls asleep, small seeds fall from their nose and mouth and grow into dream-plants that sprout delicious dream-fruit.

Human dreams are the juiciest and most nutritious of all, and few people know this better than Kainma. An orphan who spent the first twelve years of her life surviving mainly off of animal dream-plants while living in a complex cave network, Kainma decides to go to the Surface to seek a better life after a terrible tragedy. She finds a happier life after being taken in by a thief named Su and his family, but when Su's mysterious past comes back to haunt him, Kainma and her new friends and family find themselves embroiled in a terrifying mystery that takes them to some of the darkest places in the Caves…and the mind.

Trigger and content warnings

On-page: Blood, stabbing, physical violence, arrests and being imprisoned, earthquakes,  death, animal death, dead bodies, body horror, traumatic flashbacks, depression and anxiety.

Referenced/discussed: Child abuse, child death.

Implied: mild suicidal ideation.

The gods Light and Shadow created the world, and the millions of creatures that call it home. While they were equal in power, they were different in ability: Shadow was the creator of changelings, Light ruled over humankind. One day, the two gods fought. Their fighting caused destruction unlike anything the world had ever seen, especially because of the armies of magical super soldiers, called puppets, that each god created to fight for them. After horrific battling, Light defeated Shadow and banished Her.

Over a hundred years later, a young changeling named Isabella lives surrounded by reminders of the war's devastation, but she has simply accepted it as part of her life. She is easily distracted by things like everyday delights, like the strange circus that comes to town one day...and shatters everything. Isabella's mother is murdered the night of the circus's arrival, and she's willing to do anything to find out who is responsible.

Ursa has known no other life but the circus. It's a life of constant moving and chaos, carefully controlled by Ursa's best friend, the hyperactive ringmaster. Ursa knows the circus isn't perfect, but when a changeling named Isabella arrives and asks to be made a performer, it exposes a web of mysteries and lies bigger and deeper than anything Ursa ever could have imagined.

Now she and Isabella must work together to uncover the secrets kept from them for years, but there are people willing to kill to keep them hidden.

Trigger warnings:

On-page: Emotional abuse, stabbing, knife violence, fire, gore, paranoia, panic and anxiety attacks, kidnapping, forced labor, alcohol consumption/drunkenness, fainting and death.

Implied/referenced/discussed: Loss of a loved one, brief mentions of allegations regarding grooming, animal death, sex, and war.

In the U.S, July is disability pride month. I know that living with CP isn't exactly easy, but please take some time this month to take care of yourself and love yourself unconditionally. In fact, finding this community has really helped me navigate and accept my own CP, and I hope it's helped others as well.

Get Alice Lorentino's books for free!

Hi! I have mild cerebral palsy and about three days ago I injured my foot, yesterday I found out I have a minor ankle sprain. I'm concerned about managing both my CP and my ankle sprain. Because of my CP, I have to do stretches/exercises every day for my muscles (and I will become increasingly tight if I don't do them as frequently as possible), and while I'm trying to avoid the ones that may aggravate my sprain, I fear that I'll just aggravate the sprain no matter what I do. I'm also worried that the sprain altering my gait may worsen some of my CP symptoms, such as muscle tightness or knee pain, as I've already experienced some increased discomfort as a result. Has anyone else experienced something similar? Any tips are appreciated!

Hi everyone! I occasionally get migraines, and while I don't think they're CP related, I was curious about whether or not other people with CP get migraines, and how frequently, stuff like that.

Hi everyone! I know that having CP can cause issues with spatial awareness and trouble with being aware of your surroundings, but do some of you feel that this applies to small things as well? If anything in my house is rearranged, even slightly, it takes me forever to get used to it. Sometimes I'll look at something, like a pile of clothes that need to be put away, and think "huh, I should put that away/clean that/etc." but then I get distracted and forget about it, or feel like it's not even there. I got nagged a lot as a child for never remembering to clean things, but the truth is, I just wasn't always aware that something needed to be cleaned, moved, or changed. I want to know if this is something that happens to other people with CP, or if it may be caused by something else that I need to look into, as I suspect I may be on the autism spectrum.

Hello! I recently purchased a surplus of menstrual and incontinence pads for women and I would like to donate them. Are there any SGV or Los Angeles based charities that would take these kinds of donations? It's a bonus for me if they take mail-in donations, as I'm kind of busy right now and feel it would be easier for me to send them through the mail.

This is just something random I've been thinking about for a while, but I think we need to raise more awareness of the fact that CP isn't the same for everyone, because I feel like a lot of people without this condition tend to think everyone's experiences are the same/similar. I think we get lumped together as a monolith. When in reality, there are so many different ways this disability can impact someone, resulting in a multitude of different experiences and needs.

I don't think a lot of people without CP are really aware that there are so many varying levels to it. For example, the other day, I started typing "can people with cerebral palsy..." into google. Google autofill suggested the following:

Can people with cerebral palsy...drive

Can people with cerebral palsy... talk

Can people with cerebral palsy...walk

...and so on. And the answer for all of them is: For some people, yes. Some people with CP can do one or more of the above, some can do all three. And even those who can do these things probably have their experiences impacted by CP in some way, but it's not impacted the same way for every single person, every single time.

But the fact that questions like those are the first things that came up when I tried to google something about CP shows how little people know about the varying forms of it. Which is why I kind of want to start calling it something like "the cerebral palsy spectrum" similar to how the different experiences of people with autism is referred to as "the autism spectrum." Because while there are some unifying experiences, the different ways a person can be impacted are so vast and varied. None of our experiences are exactly alike, and I think if we make more people aware of that, it could help broaden understanding of CP as a whole.

But yeah, that's just my two cents.

This might be an incredibly obvious observation, but I only discovered it recently, so I'm posting it here in case it helps someone else.

I wear special insoles for my CP, and my whole life, I have absolutely hated shoe shopping. It has always taken me forever to find a good pair of shoes, or adjust to wearing new shoes.

Until I discovered wide-fit shoes. They're just like regular shoes, but designed for people with wider feet. They're sooo much easier to fit my insoles in, and way easier to wear. So, if you're like me and struggle to fit your insoles into standard shoe sizes, look into buying wide-fit shoes.

When I first moved to college, my old routines of self-care basically fell apart because I wasn't used to managing everything on my own. I lived off of junk food, isolated myself in my dorm, and stayed up late into the night for no real reason. Thankfully, it's been long enough that I'm now much more well-adjusted, but I still struggle with staying on top of my self-care sometimes, especially when it comes to my sleep schedule. I've found that I have a tendency to stay up way later than I should. Sometimes it's because of school work, but more often, it's for no real reason. I simply scroll, text, or listen to music instead of sleeping. I want to say that it's partially because of my roommates-most of them are night owls who frequently also stay up pretty late, sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. But I've found that I still stay up late even when the people around me go to sleep before me. It's like I've become allergic to going to bed at a reasonable hour these days.

So, does anyone have any advice for fixing your sleep schedule? Any advice is appreciated!