Happy Saturday! I hope everyone is well. That you’re starting the year off slow, and with purpose. Me, well I’m hanging in there the best I can right now. Working out some new things and hoping something sticks. That’s the best we can do right?
Today, we are going to just jump right in on something I find extremely serious. Mental Health…. Something that we all battle on a day to day basis. Whether that is personal or with those around us, we all have someone in our lives that has hidden battles they are fighting.
Fast Facts
More than 1 in 5 U.S. adults experience mental illness each year
More than 1 in 20 U.S. adults experience serious mental illness crisis each year
More than 1 in 7 U.S. youth ages 6-17 experience a mental health disorder each year
50% of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, and 75% by age 24
Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among people ages 10-24
Only 42.1% of Males and 59.2% of Females seek treatment
79% of people who die by suicide in the U.S. are male
The suicide rate is nearly 4x higher among males than females in the U.S.
Transgender adults are nearly 9x more likely to attempt suicide at some point in their lifetime compared to the general population
*Statics are based off assigned gender at birth*
https://www.nami.org/about-mental-illness/mental-health-by-the-numbers/
So, you're probably asking yourself, “What does this mean for me?” Well, it means you're not alone. None of us really are. We might not all come from the same background, creed, color, or region of the world. But we all have something very basic in common…. We are all human. We all feel, bleed, and love.
Therapy can help… I want to say that up front. It gives you language, perspective, and tools. It helps untangle things that you might not be able to name on my own. It teaches how to pause instead of react, how to notice patterns instead of drowning in them.
But sometimes, it isn’t enough. And that's okay too.
In the spirit of honesty and transparency, I personally haven’t gone since I was ordered to do so. I was in elementary school when I started seeing a counselor. They said I had anger issues… what no one dared to ask was why I had those issues. What made me lash out. That’s when I was 6 and started writing. So began the budding author.
After that, it was an on and off thing when it came to therapy. Something would happen at school and land me in front of a professional for 6 to 8 weeks. When it was over, I had more interesting terms for my character.
It wasn’t until I was pregnant with the gremlin that I was kind of going to therapy. My mom suckered me into a few family sessions under the guise of “it will be good to deal with things before my child was born”. I wouldn’t say it worked for me but it gave me ways of dealing with taking care of both mom and my son.
And even with mom’s passing, June 16th 2024, I haven’t sought out therapy. Not because it won’t work, but because some things don’t want to be processed. They want to be expressed. They want somewhere to go that isn’t linear, polite, or solution-oriented. They want to RAGE.
That’s where writing steps in. It’s the safest way of processing without actually laying my hands on another person. I can’t say my characters have not been the victims of my wrath. Or had to play out situations that I have personally been through. Their outcome came out a little better than mine did by the end of the story.
But in the end writing gives me a place where I don’t have to explain the context before debating how much truth comes out. Where I can contradict myself, circle the same wound, say the wrong thing first. It lets me lay everything out without being asked “what I’m going to do about it”, “how did that make you feel”, or my personal favorite “Did you pray about it?”
On the page, nothing needs to be fixed immediately if at all…. Hell in the end it all becomes character development, or plot twists.
Writing doesn’t rush me toward healing. It lets me sit inside the mess long enough to understand its shape. It holds the anger, the grief, the numbness—without trying to smooth it into something inspirational. Because in the end PAIN should never be used that way. If it inspires you to do something different, that's one thing. If you can use it later down the line as a cautionary tale, even better. But this isn’t a “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
There are thoughts I can only reach when I’m not being witnessed in real time. Emotions that show up sideways, through metaphor and rhythm and fragments. Writing gives those parts permission to exist without judgment.
It also gives me distance. An outside looking in perspective. Because sometimes it's looking at it from all the different angles that helps us learn how to handle it differently. Sometimes that’s all we need.
When something lives on the page, it no longer lives rent free in my head. I can look at it. Shape it. Decide what stays and what gets revised. That control—small as it is—matters when the world feels unmanageable. And worse case, you can always set fire to it and cast it out. It no longer serves you. And now it doesn’t serve anyone cause it doesn’t exist any longer.
Therapy helps most survive the darkness, writing is what helps me. Both have their place. Both are necessary. But when the talking stalls, when insight doesn’t bring relief, when coping tools feel blunt—writing is where I go to remember myself.
I’m in no way an expert on any of this, but I am one of the many that has suffered through trauma in spades, abuse of all kinds, and now stands here a little wiser, a whole lot crazier, and a wholeheartedly unapologetically me.
So, I want you to do one thing for me as we navigate another season of uncertainty. Breathe. Just fucking Breathe. Then pick up a notebook, scrap of paper, hell a napkin if you can make it work, and give me three reasons why you need to stay. Cause I can give you one right off the bat. The World Will Not Be The Same Without You In IT. Now your turn. And every time the world gets loud or your brain tells you shit that isn’t true. Do it again.
When words fail you out loud, where do you go instead? What gives you release when talking it through isn’t enough? Tell me in the comments—or keep it close and write it out for yourself. Remember there are resources out there that can help.
Be Brave, Be Bold, But Always Stay Humble
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