Taking Care of You & Building the Conversation

Do you remember the first time you heard the phrasing “Mental Health”? And not just as a general concept? Do you remember the first time someone encouraged you to take care of your mental health? Do you remember the last time prioritized your mental health, like really prioritized it? If this practice is still new for you, then give yourself grace. In a society that encourages us to work, work, work, we are often told, both subliminally and directly, that putting ourselves needs to come last-after the work is done, after we’ve run errands, after we’ve cooked dinner, after we’ve checked on everyone else. But, what if the most effective way to do all of this is to ensure we are mentally and emotionally healthy first? As the saying goes, “you can’t pour from an empty cup.”

I am going to challenge this saying a little bit and say you “can” pour from an empty cup, but it makes life ten times more challenging. You could run around trying to do everything all at once, but what will you have left for you? I have been asking myself this questions alot lately and as I attempt to uncover the answers I realize how much they relate to my mental health. When I fill my own cup first, whether that’s spending some quiet time reading a book, playing music or my favorite show while I clean my space, journaling at the end of a long day, tackling a personal goal etc., I’ve noticed how much better I function in my relationships with friends & family.

We often tend not to consider all of the aforementioned activities as caring for our mental health, yet we also soon realize how good we feel when we do any one of those things I listed above. Of course, these are external items, and while they can directly affect our mental health, there is also therapy, meditation. In other words, there is more to mental health and more needed to make sure we are mentally healthy.

Take care of you as needed when needed and everything will flourish in its time. The goal of the Resiliency Project is to share new ways of being, healthier coping skills. Simultaneously, the project reveals the necessity for effective mental health education. Mental health is the new, trendy topic of our current social culture. However, we can ensure that it does not become a fading trend. There is a great need for the conversation to continue because mental health care will be something we all need as the world continues to change.

Through the work I aim to do with The Resiliency Project, I want mental health to remain in our cultural conversation and lexicon, so that there is a generation of young people who aren’t hearing about it for the first time. What information can we leave for the next generation? What can we create now for the future?