NOT ALONE comes to Indianapolis July 13
Indianapolis, here I come! Dr. Kimberly Martin I’ll be in Indianapolis on Sunday July 13! Psychologist and mind-body healer Kimberly Martin is hosting me for a reading and signing of NOT ALONE. It’s...
View ArticleInterview with Wizdom Powell Hammond
This Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m interviewing Dr. Wizdom Powell Hammond, Assistant Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at...
View Article10 ways you can pray for mental illness
10 ways you can pray for mental illness Today is the National Day of Prayer for Mental Illness Recovery and Understanding. People often ask me how they can pray for people who live with mental health...
View ArticleInterview with Dr. Wizdom Powell Hammond
This Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, I’m interviewing Wizdom Powell Hammond, Assistant Professor of Health Behavior, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at...
View ArticleThe Black Church and Sexual Assault
Ebony.com recently featured a series on Sexual Assault and African American communities organized by colleague and survivor, Lori Robinson. Lori has written an important book about surviving and...
View ArticleOnline Altar Rails
I continue to blog for the New Media Project where we help religious leaders become theologically savvy about technology. For the series on community formation and social media, I write about a...
View ArticleWhat I Wish People Knew About Depression
My colleague Therese Borchard recently wrote this brilliant post on what she wishes people knew about depression. It’s great. i could not have said it better myself. Check it out: I wish people...
View ArticleGrief is not Depression …
Many writers say that depression is like grief, but deeper, longer, worse somehow. “Depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance,” says National Book Award winner, Andrew Solomon in Noonday...
View ArticleFaith and Depression at Christianity 21 Phoenix #C21PHX
Monica A. Coleman #C21PHX I had a great time speaking at Christianity 21 on January 22, 2015. Christianity 21 discusses ways to live a better faith through 21 big ideas presented by 21 voices in 21...
View ArticleLenten Reading Group
Lent is one of my favorite seasons in the traditional Christian calendar. In early Christian communities, new converts to Christianity were often baptized on Easter Day. Lent was the 40-day season...
View ArticleFailure or Adaptation?
New Wineskins 2014 contained many surprises and challenges for me. I blogged bit about them here and here. I wanted to write more. I wanted to share with my online community because you all are so...
View Articleordinary saints
“It was a boy,” April says. The woman cries in Jackson’s arms, as they mourn the knowledge that their unborn child has been detected with an incurable disease. Before I can exhale, I start to sob. I...
View ArticleNot Hiding
I like rituals. I like sacraments. Those rituals we think of as being holy. The ones that point us towards God. Baptism. Eucharist. Weddings. Foot-washing. Penance. Ordination. Anointing. Altar...
View ArticleSlippery Slope
I didn’t know it was depression until I couldn’t feel the happy. That is, I had really good news and nothing about it felt good. I know, intellectually, that it is good, but I don’t feel happy. Sure my...
View ArticleMental Health is Physical Health
It hit me all at once as a new psychiatrist laid out my options before me. I knew the drill. New doctor, long intake appointment, re-tell my story with craziness, get a diagnoses that may or may not...
View ArticleBecoming New
Every time I experience a depressive episode, something dies. Sometimes I have lost things I would have preferred to keep – a sense of hope, a faith I recognize, friends, ideals about relationship, a...
View ArticleGrieving Faith
I was raised in black Baptist and African Methodist churches. My grandparents’ Carolina Christianity migrated with them to Washington D.C. As they ambled around the kitchen preparing dinner or in the...
View ArticleDrawing Out of Myself
Fellowship Meals Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten season for Christians. On this day, many people attend a ritual of the imposition of ashes as a reminder of humanity mortality, or the...
View ArticleSojourners Magazine, Bipolar Faith and World Mental Health Day
“Too blessed to be stressed” is one of the phrases that I think the church should erase from its vocabulary “What I like is that in the stories of Jesus healing people, there are other people around....
View ArticleBipolar Faith feature in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jennifer Frayer-Griggs wrote a great feature in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bipolar Faith is graceful and heartbreaking “You can die of grief.” This is the first sentence of the Rev. Monica A....
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