Mental Health

“Nothing Good Can Grow If You Don’t Nourish Your Own Soil” ~ Someone Wise

As this year concludes, it’s imperative that we prepare our minds, bodies, and spirits for what awaits us in 2021. That includes the good and the bad, because learning to appreciate contrast will grant us great awareness (read last week's column “Appreciating Contrast” for more information). Some of us prepare for the new year or holidays by fasting, exercising, saving money, or spending money. With that said, I found it peculiar that our mental wellness is often forgotten when discussing holiday preparation.

If anything, 2020 has been a roller coaster and, for some of us, an obstacle course. You may be experiencing mental exhaustion from grief, job-loss, child-birth, school, work, health-concerns, and God knows whatever else! To whomever is reading this, know that you’ve survived 100% of your worst days -- go ahead, feel free to revel in your resilience. However, many of us survived those days without asking for help, utilizing the resources available to us, numbing our pain, enabling other’s pain, and feeling unworthy or unable to accomplish the task that life assigns us. We spend the majority of our lives in our mind, why not make it a beautiful place to live?

Because mental health encompasses many topics, I'd like to consider the following: mental illness, mental wellness, and the decline of mental wellness. Many of us are carrying a heavy load, but remember that you do not have to carry it alone! If religion stipulates you from getting help, with all due respect, God created professionals. If ignorance is bliss, with all due respect, remember that self-negligence is self-deprivation. If you do not take the steps to water your soil, how do you expect to grow?

I challenge you to include a task on your New Year’s resolutions that prioritizes your mental health! That may include: self-care, seeing a counselor or holistic healer, journaling, writing one story-a-week about your childhood, not distracting yourself from feeling those emotions, silencing self-diminishing thoughts, and doing something you love.