National Mental Health Month

As summer has transitioned to fall, I can see the light changing. The days grow shorter, but with all that hot weather behind us (and hopefully all the fires, too), the air and sky are crisp again here in the desert Southwest.

This month our focus is on mental health, a topic that has gotten much more awareness since the pandemic began. It’s boggling why we haven’t given it much attention before– while I believe in holistic health (mental/emotional, spiritual, and physical), making sure our minds are in a good place is key to accomplishing so much. And that includes guiding us into healthy relationships (and maintaining them).

While we always should have some focus on our mental health, this month I’m asking you to take a closer look at what helps keep you mentally healthy. Maybe you don’t know, maybe you know you need to work on your mental health but you don’t know how or what to do. Acknowledging work to do is the first step. After all, we all should take the time to reevaluating taking care of ourselves. Sometimes we need to make tweaks but we don’t do it because we think it’s easier to keep rolling along in our comfort zone.

I was fortunate to be made aware early of mental health because of my competitive running career, working with a sports psychologist. My interest in mental wellness predates my sister’s suicide by quite a few years.

My challenge to you for this month is to think about the things that help you feel mentally healthy. And if you feel your mental health needs work, create a series of steps to make changes. We are all works in progress and there is nothing wrong with stepping back and revisiting how you take care of your mental wellness.

And there is no better time to do it.

The Holistic Health Plan

From the outside, I know that my lifestyle looks like a lot of work. I am up at 4:30 each morning (although do sleep until about 4:45 on weekends– I know, it's very late compared to the rest of the week!) to run and run-walk my dogs. I do a five-minute morning prayer before I shower. I plan most of the meals in the house and make a concerted effort to make sure that we're eating enough vegetables and keeping it as balanced as possible. I go to mass nearly every weekend and spend an hour with a priest at a monastery here once a month for spiritual direction. And each day I try to spend some time doing something I enjoy even if it's just a short time reading. This morning I had my yearly physical and blood work done. I go to acupuncture with my Chinese doctor twice a month where she works to me balanced with a slew of needles, cupping, and burning moxa while I rest.

But there's a reason for it: three years ago I had a group of fibroids removed from my uterus, including one that was the size of a golf ball. It was at that time that I realized I needed to make changes in my life. Outwardly all looked well, especially because I was just a few months from getting married. But clearly something was wrong inside my body.

While I have been running since I was twelve, there were a series of life events that had taken a toll on me: my sister's suicide when I was 21, my parents' unexpected deaths (among other close losses in my life), and then my first marriage where my then-husband was hit by a drunk driver and suffered a head injury. While running– and also walking the dogs– helped me through that, I now see that it wasn't enough and that's when I believe the fibroids began to grow.

Instead, I thought the way to cope was to do more: remodel the house, add more dogs, add a pool, get a doctorate, write more books, educate the world on suicide and grief. None of that I regret, I just look back now and see it was all a way of coping. By moving forward, I could manage the drama that surrounded me and keep it from suffocating me. There was no way to completely emotional cope with the roller coaster of living with a brain-injured person and my body instead resorted to doing it physically.

Just taking care of one part of ourselves is a start but it's not enough. We are holistic beings– and if you were in Maz's health class at Naperville North High School I know you learned this well. Although I admit I neglected all but the physical for a long time– and if we want to be healthy we have to work at it.

Don't think I jump out of bed each morning because I don't (and Greg will attest to that). But I will be the first to admit I love to be out in the quiet darkness, looking up at the still-night sky which is often clear here in Albuquerque. It's there that I start my day in prayer, in gratefulness, as I ask for help to make the most of the daylight hours ahead of me. I learned a long time ago that a new day, as the sun comes up over the mountains, is the same as the chalkboard being wiped clean; I can start over again.

What looks like a lot isn't in the scheme of my life. It's nothing compared to what the alternative would be if I chose not to work so hard at staying healthy holistically. I wouldn't choose it any other way.