A Sample Letter
Here is a letter written by a Pavilion member (Vinik) to Chatelaine magazine (June 2007) after they did one of those horror-story "How it feels to have multiple personality disorder" articles from the tragic mental illness perspective. This can be used as a good example.Especially when writing to a magazine, shorter is better. When this was printed, much of it was cut, although the essential message was kept in. Make letters like this as brief as possible. They always take things out. When editing what you have written, when you think it is short enough, make it shorter. They don't care about anything but sales and space considerations. The author also reported annoyance that her signature was changed to "Name and location withheld". Initials aren't accepted by a lot of magazines and are considered to be the same as 'name withheld'.
I'm aware that many of those out there who are "Plural" (an alternate wording to M.P.D./D.I.D.) have had, and still do have difficulties functioning in everyday life, however this isn't always the case. I share my headspace with 17 people of all kinds, and I haven't suffered from "lost time" in 8 years. If you took Jane Philips' metaphor of many people watching a movie screen, you could add this: "When people who are sleeping wake up, the others quickly update them on what scenes they missed". That is more like my experience, as well as the experiences of many others who you don't hear about in books, thrillers, and soap operas. I was diagnosed as having D.I.D. many years ago, but over the years as my people and I have learned to work together, we no longer identify with negative diagnostic labels. Now we are highly functional, and happy just the way we are.J.M.
Toronto, ONT