It’s time I started practicing what I preach. After months of prescribing journaling and creative writing therapies, pushing for my clients to start blogs, at long last, I am taking a swig of my own medicine . Perhaps it came recently from someone who bluntly said in retort to my suggestion; “Why don’t YOU start a blog?” I really started thinking about ;”why not?”, and as is the case for most people, a bunch of excuses started to emerge , like dandelions on the lawn .
Some of my excuses were plausible, such as my favorite; “I have no time!”and my second favorite; “I won’t have anything to write about, I don’t have the energy!”Eventually my hypocrisy caught up with me , much in the same way that the invisible boogey man follows you throughout childhood. Aggravated and not convinced by my flimsy excuses, here I sit in the dim light of my office, after putting in a full day’s work, and about to dive into this endeavor, so here goes…
A long time ago I felt that I had an enlightening moment, an epiphany some would say. My “aha moment”, was this, and I found it hanging on the wall of my high school nurse’s office, a rather unexpected event.
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one life the aching;
or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again
I shall not live in vain…”
I remember being in high school, in the nurse’s office, struggling to come up with reasons why I was there this time. I had nearly used up every excuse in the book , to justify why I had to be excused from class, yet again.
I had this really annoying persistent problem called anxiety that would really interfere with my ability to maintain my status as a high school student. I remember reading the words of this poem on that wall in the office , followed by an assured, yet confrontational statement;
“you know you can’t keep doing this forever, running from everything that makes you nervous or upset”….
As kind and as patient that Nurse was, after seeing me nearly every day , for some made –up malady , she cut through to the truth of my situation quickly . Little did I know then , those words would later inform my present-day practice, and the career path I eventually chose… We’ll get to that part a little later.
So here it is, my first blog, and an open invitation to anyone out there who is interested in learning with me. I’d like to offer weekly snippets of insights into topics that have to do with topics in the mental health world. Many of them have to do with buzzwords that we throw around ,as a society, but the actual meanings of the words becomes lost in translation , among a sea of other misunderstood words and diagnoses. My hope is to clarify some of these topics in a clear and understandable way .
Learning about mental health is invaluable, as it affects all of us . Even those of us who are fortunate enough not to suffer from it directly, often know and love someone who does. Many people are content to avoid , or even ‘talk around’ the topic of mental health these days. It seems to be the least acceptable stigma we are willing to speak about publicly , and I would like to help change that mentality. Hopefully I can shed some light on topics that can initially be confusing , scary, or intimidating. My hope is that I can break them down into bite-sized pieces that you can digest easily , with little to no aftertaste. I’d like to get the conversation started because someone needs to, and because the words of Emily Dickinson’s poem “If I Can Stop One Heart From Breaking”, still seem to speak clearly to me.
