Everardo Green

 I was recently asked how parents can talk to their children about mental health. That question hit home for me because no one talk with me about mental health when I was growing up. I often felt sad as a kid and was told to be strong or not allow the devil to use me. I tried both, but most of the time I still felt incredibly sad. I had episodes where I withdrew from family and friends spending hours and sometimes days alone in my room. No one seemed to notice or care. I slept a lot and had feelings of hopelessness. I contemplate suicide on numerous occasions. I attempted once too by taking a bottle of Tylenol as a teenager. I hoped that I wouldn’t wake up. When I did wake up, I felt angry believing I could not do anything right—not even take my own life. I had many more episodes and even another suicide attempt. The last one was at 26, which was after I had slit both of my wrists and taking some deadly prescription medication. Don’t let this be your child. Talk to them about mental he

  If I asked you to define an affair, what words would you use? For many, the term “affair” conjures up images of secret rendezvous and sexual encounters and, while those images can qualify as affair-worthy, there is another type of infidelity that is less familiar but equally destructive—emotional cheating.   Emotional cheating, while lacking the physical aspect of a sexual affair, is every bit as damaging to relationships. How do I know?   Because I have been betrayed by a spouse who was in engaging in an emotional affair…and I chose to engage in an emotional affair myself.   It’s a unique position in that I have both caused and been the recipient of deep pain due to an emotional affair. I was married for 14 years and, during that time, both my spouse and I engaged in emotional cheating. My experience as both a perpetrator and victim of such an affair was part of the impetus for writing my book, Dating Myself UNMASKED: A Guiding Light from Sexual Trauma to Self-Acceptance