"For those who tend to whisper, rest assured.
I don’t think I am better than anyone,
other than the version of myself a drop of time ago."
So.
As someone who has experienced it from the inside out and outside in.
Sometimes, mental health care means:
Recognizing just that up there.
-Then, lifting the veil.
Sometimes, mental health care means:
Taking an extended & prolonged (more than) 1 year No Beer Challenge...
- I did that. (1/1/2020)
- All on my own.
Sometimes, mental health care means:
Having painful realizations...
- That cannot be fixed for they are in the past.
- Accepting that sometimes, they are not even OF my own past.
- Or worse yet, ARE from my own past.
-And either way, must be dealt with.
Sometimes, mental health care means:
Having the gumption and gull to give the gratitude it takes…
- to own AND PUT TO USE how fortunate I am to have this time on my hands to, NOT ERASE the mistakes through writing,
- but expand the story line with a different narrative,
- one geared toward healing a generational wound.
For self.
Perhaps for my children also.
Sometimes, mental health care means:
Having the courage to be BY myself in the ways I had always feared...
- yet coming to the end of each day
- feeling proud
- accountable
- and like I lived up to the mission I set out on that day
since I announced my “battle” with alcohol.
I did this all by simply doing one thing.
Practicing just a little AUTHENTICITY.
I wonder what A LOT would do.
I wonder because…
This is the third Halloween
that “I am”
NOT:
HUNG OVER
FEELING SHAME
OR DOUBTING MY NEXT STEP
All by giving myself permission,
to take the time I needed.
I needed a mental health moment.
… (it actually took me years),
to break from the typical Halloween scene,
to refuse the mask,
to observe and address my relationship with alcohol.
It turns out that I learned a lot about myself during that time away from it.
I learned that I’m a social drinker and for only really important celebrations.
I feel regret that I had to be a worrier and a warrior JUST to figure that out.
Especially since it’s only a shadow I was fighting with anyway!
But that is a regret I am willing to be burdened with because the other side of that battlefield offered me sweet redemption from the evil effects & spirits of alcohol.
This self portrait is dated one year ago.
For my own measurement sake.
“A Valkyrie of Sea Change”
Here’s to not living in anyone else’s shadow!
- no new costume for me this year -
as I am STILL
this woman!
In role and irl.
Happy Halloween everyone!
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