This letter is written while my 14-year-old bipolar daughter sleeps in. She sleeps in every day, goes to school for two hours a day. In my teens and twenties I struggled with depression and severe menstrual problems that made me sure in my heart-of-hearts that pregnancy could push me over the edge. Now, in my 50's, I am the mother of three adopted girls, and recently separated from my husband. Though I'm a photographer, my "hobby" is learning about learning "differences" and my daily life is the management of a kid on the edge. I know most of the experts in my city.

Being stable isn't everything, but it's really a big sacrifice to try to start over when you bottom out. There are many ways to be a parent, a mother, to give birth. Most important, there are ways to be a valuable part of a child's life. It's like crossing the river; the real child is very, very different from the idea of the child, no matter who you are or what your problems are. Choose carefully.

Happy Birthday to Beverly, and many more. Her books were my favorites, and sharing them with my dog loving daughter was special.

I read articles like this because they give me hope. My experience with my kids, their meds and my own mental health and medication issues have led me to the conclusion that the right meds make life better, but that like any consumer issue, one has to choose carefully. And what if you can't do that? How do you know?

Please don't criticize Salon for a headline that may be dramatic, but catch the eye of readers like myself, who have children with mental health issues. Those of us who fool around with these drugs always have to keep up with the same stuff the doctors keep up with, or we end up as unknowing victims. Most parents don't have the good humor about their chidren's inconsistencies that this article relates.

When my youngest daughter - a bright but defiant child - was small, all sorts of wrong prescriptions were suggested to us. She is now at a theraputic boarding school, being treated by a psychiatrist who seems to have found a drug that is beginning to make a shift, if not a dramatic change. It is confirming to know what perils you've been saved from by reading of the experiences of others.

TV is entertainment for those of us who are brain dead at the end of a real day (or brain dead all day, take your pck. Heroes is just a show. Get over it, or write your own. I'm sure it's more difficult than it looks.

Having struggled with my weight all my life, I'm wondering why we celebrate women of color who are not skinny, and who their white sisters in the media might be. Oprah, Queen Latifah, Jennifer Hudson, Jordin Sparks are all gorgeous the way they are. Let's give them credit for being curvy and "zaftig", not obese. Where are the role models for white women, and for teenage girls of all colors who struggle not just with extra pounds, but with builds that will never make them runway models? Where is the Shelley Winters of our generation? Why can't all women be considered beautiful whether they are voluptous or Twiggy?

I read stories like Debra Gwartney's because some day I hope to finish writing mine, and with a happy ending. Nothing is what it appears to be. My daughter wandered around town telling people that her parents kicked her out when we were desperate to find her. When the police finally did go to get her from a friend's house (where I located her by getting on her mySpace page) the friend's parents thought the police were thugs. Unlike the police, these kind people didn't find the big bottle of scotch in my daughter's purse.

As for sending a child to a wilderness program or RTC - the people who work with your children at these places get to go home and sleep at night. Taking care of a troubled teen full time requires an objectivity that parents don't have.

My daughter introduced me to Idol when she was around 12 and now she would not be caught dead watching it. Here's why I continue to tune in: it's entertaining. Not perfect, not intellectual, and not the best music either. Like a soap opera, there's always the promise that if you don't watch, you'll miss something. There's a certain democracy to Idol, both in the voting and in the way people of many backgrounds get hooked. During the Bush years, the ability to vote for someone I liked was very empowering. And it's not bloody, violent or at the expense of another's dignity, despite Simon's brutal honesty.

Truth is just as strange as fiction. Fiction comes from stuff like this.

All it takes is one or two crazy or angry people to shoot a mayor, kill a doctor who provides abortions or blow up a government building that houses a Social Security office and a daycare center. Shouting out at the President in a session of Congress doesn't seem like much, but it crosses a thin, invisible line of decorum.

The bad thing about this for me was that when I went to turn on "Ellen", the Denver stations were fixed on the balloon. It was the balloon, Dr. Phil, or Cheers. Sorting papers made even more tedious.