Thank you so much for thinking of my family and me. This has been one of the most difficult couple of weeks I've ever had.

As I mentioned (in a round-about way) in my previous post, my 20-year-old son is suffering from a serious mental illness and attempted suicide. I decided that I am not going to pretend it's something different. I don't want to be part of continuing a stigma about it.

He was very, very ill and spent the first four or five days in the respiratory intensive care unit. He was then transferred to the psychiatric unit.

He has been struggling tremendously and is very unhappy about still being in the hospital. He doesn't always feel that his father and I are on his side and advocating for him (though of course we are, constantly, constantly, constantly), and that is really hard on him and on us.

I am starting to understand the temptation to go to the market in sweatpants and flip-flops, because frankly, it just doesn't feel very important right now to be so fussy about something like clothes.

Still, I do understand how important it is to maintain my sense of self. I am struggling to make it through each day and it's easy to start letting things go. I know from experience that it is important to keep a routine, to take care of my personal needs and to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

My outfits of late haven't been fabulous - I'm not able to concentrate on the details - but I'm making an effort to stay presentable. Comfort is much more important to me right now than it usually is, so a lot of the form-fitting, constricting outfits are in the back of the closet. The things I've learned here on ylf have really helped me be able to pick out decent outfits even though I'm not feeling very inspired.

Remember the wardrobe capsule challenge? I'm so grateful I did that, because I learned a lot about mixing and matching pieces, which has helped me be able to pack my little suitcase every few days to travel up to the hospital.

I've been sort of keeping up with blog posts and trying to read at least a couple of forum posts each day. I miss really participating here. I know I'll be able to get back to it relatively soon.

Thank you again for all of your support.