Hi guys! I’ve had several sweet souls reach out and be like, “Hey, where are you? Are you okay?”, so I thought a check-in was probably in order. I didn’t mean to go MIA for the past few weeks. My mental health kind of fell off a cliff, and I needed to focus on righting that. I‘m not 100% now, but I’m doing somewhat better. Basically, the dueling pandemics of racial inequity and COVID have set my anxiety aflame. It’s like all the anxiety I (shockingly!) didn’t have in the spring finally caught up to me. First, I was obsessively poring over every post and article on racism. (I ended up putting time limits on my social media apps to try to curtail this habit, so that’s why I haven’t been very active there either.) Now, I’m also obsessing about COVID spikes and feeling like it’s hopeless and we’re all going to die.
Obviously, there is a FREAKING TON OF THINGS to be anxious and scared about these days. But if your mental health starts to spiral, please please address it. Call a friend, schedule therapy, call 1-800-273-8255 (the Suicide Hotline), something. Or do something like yoga, walking, or dancing to get out of your negative mind and back into your body. I did do some of these things eventually, but had I taken my spiraling emotions seriously sooner, things probably wouldn’t have gotten so bad. My own anxiety seems so stupid in the face of everything that’s going on, plus all that I have (physical health, active employment, white privilege, the ability to afford therapy and medication, et al.)… but discounting and criticizing my emotions doesn’t work either because it only ends up fueling the anxiety and feelings of self-hatred.
I had to actually take my feelings seriously to be able to address and soothe them. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, if something feels off to you, listen to your intuition, honor what you’re feeling, and start tending to those feelings as soon as you can. ❤️
Now, a bit of sparkle! ✨ I am very proud of myself that when I felt crushed by similar negative self-talk this week, I went for a walk. Two weeks ago, I was too panicked and sleep-deprived to get myself out for a walk, so, progress. And on said walk, I met the friendliest cat ever! No psst pssting or kissy noises necessary! 😍
AN ABSOLUTE ANGEL 😭
He actually followed me for a bit as I walked away from his house, and I was kind of nervous that his owners would think I was stealing him!
And then, literally as I was walking away from him, I got a text from our neighbor that she wanted to drop off some cake. Cake?! YES PLEASE! She also invited me to hang out with her and her husband in their yard, which was delightful and got me out of my head and laughing (!!) for a while. A much-needed sparkly night after kind of a rough day. ❤️
So that’s where I’m at. I may post more sporadically depending on how I’m doing, but please know that I appreciate you all and want to keep the sparkle going in some way. I do think we all could use some sparkle right now (since, oh, it feels like the world is ending), but I also don’t want to do so in a toxic positivity kind of way that ignores what’s really going on. So… yeah. We’ll see where this goes!
Have a great weekend! Be kind to yourself. xo
