An appreciation of the winding road.
Yes, I’ve had multiple periods of time where my mental health was quite bad. Yes, I have hit the...
Read More
Author: JC Clapham
Good riddance?
1999 Green Day’s Time of Your Life was released a year or two before I finished high...
Read More
So-ober it
In the July issue of The Westsider, in a piece entitled ‘A brief history of my former life as an...
Read More
Running for mental health
It’s been six years since I did a run of any note. Six years… and during that time...
Read More
A brief history of my former life as an occasionally-but-very drunk dickhead
The day I write this piece marks four years since I last had an alcoholic drink. Alcohol of any...
Read More
Like father, like son? No. Not at all.
27 March this year was the last ‘coming-of-age’ milestone of my father’s suicide. He took his own life twenty-one years ago, in 1998.
Ordinarily I’m overcome with a sense of dread in the weeks before this annual milestone, but this year, I wasn’t.
Read More
Our own little Ramsay Street
In his poem Mending Wall, the American poet Robert Frost said, “Good fences make good neighbours.”...
Read More
It’s about time all Aussie Dads were screened for depression, too
In announcing an expansion of its mental health program, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) said the men “will be automatically offered a comprehensive mental health assessment and sign-posted to professional support if needed.”
Australia should go even further.
Read More
How we learned to co-parent peacefully after the separation
The reality of how my kids’ mother and I were, and are, as parents really surprised me. Our personality types and general approach to life ended up being the opposite to our parenting styles.
As we created our family and brought children into the world, I assumed we’d be those same people in our parenting roles, too. But that could not have been further from the truth.
Read More
Dads: brush up on the ‘girly’ stuff
You’re all over the doodle and ballbag, but brush up on the female body, too. Your daughter (and your partner) need you to get over yourself. My brothers and I were told fairly early on by our mother that boys have ‘doodles’ and girls have ‘fannies’.
Our friends had been bestowed with similar expertise in anatomy by their parents (or all-knowing us if they didn’t yet know), and we demonstrated our knowledge and prowess by having regular pissing contests against the concrete walls of the clubrooms at my dad’s footy club.
Read More