This didn’t feel normal AT ALL, but when they offered the words ‘That’s normal and you’re going to be ok’, a flood of reassurance swept into me. After they had told their story, the psychiatrist looked at them and, with quiet compassion, said these words. For what you’ve been through, […]
Helping Others
76 posts
You’ve been through a storm, and there has been major upheaval. Please, take time to steady the ship and restore direction. It was a wild and unsettled time in my life. It was like my little life boat had run into a big storm and I had held on […]
There will always be storms, but it’s how prepared you are is more the question. Prepare a shelter from the storm for yourself and those to come. There’s a storm coming. I can smell it. It’s a mental health storm, and it’s brewing to be a big one. A […]
Progress and change can seem like ‘two steps forward and three steps back’ but maybe the steps need to be millimetres and with gradual gentle side ways movements we can see movement. It was disappointing when then they said it. In fact, it was surprising. They said it with good […]
It wasnt so much a closed door, it was more a Christmas rejection. There is no place for you here. I watched him as he told me he wasn’t going to his family’s Christmas party. He had felt a lot of rejection from his family and now he couldn’t […]
A crisis hits and the scaffolding around your life seems to shake, but you have a Mental Health Grab Bag, and so you know you can get through this. An emergency hits, or maybe it’s just seeing certain family members. Something gets added to your stress load, and the […]
There is an internal world to every one of us with words that need sharing, but it’s hard to put into words, so we need someone safe to help us. They wanted him to tell them what was going on inside, but it felt more like he was in the […]
Something was wrapped over them. A shroud. But there is a waiting to be found and a rich party to one day be found. There was something draped over them, or at least that was it felt like. A shroud. What’s a shroud? It’s something that envelopes or obscures. […]
We think we can do it all, manage life ourselves, but you simply can’t. You discover you can’t make it on your own. They were told by their closest companion that they should not need others to affirm them. That they should be able to do it themselves. They should […]
I want to know, and because I want to know I will ask empowering questions. Ones that open up the treasure chest of the heart and mind. It felt more like an interrogation than an invitation. Questions poured out. Demanding, angry, harsh questions that sent me into a state of […]
When no one understands you, it can create a deep sense of loneliness. Perhaps there are reasons for the lack of being known. Forgive them anyway. They were carrying something precious. Their inner world. Thoughts, feelings, motivations, desires, pains, and joys. Everything that goes on within their life and sometimes […]
Four types of power play a part in our lives, but the power that will transform you enters your ditch and is with you. I’ve seen it all. Through the eyes of my half-dead body, I watch them come, look, and then go. Will no one stop to do what […]
Sometimes you can feel like you are a problem to be fixed, but you’re not that. You may have problems, but not a problem. You’re not a problem to be fixed. Neither are you a personality to be probed. You’re not a diagnosis, a number, or a category. You may […]
Sighs and groans can come with such ease, but inhaling is also necessary. So we take note of our diet of breath. ‘That was a deep sigh,’ he said to me. I hadn’t noticed it, but he was right. I had let out a long deep sigh into the safety […]
You wake up and see a new day, but you didn’t want to wake up. So it’s a call to endure and go deep with God. They want the pain to end. The struggle of the journey has become too much. That’s the underlying theme of many of the emails […]
We can get angry to the point where we want to curse the day we were born, but being held in our anger allows us to go through and not around the pain. It was about time they got angry. As the words vomited at me, through me, and around […]
Are you out of balance? Perhaps what you need for your mental health are more activities that are tangible and tactile. In the 1980s, my father and I spent many months building new fences on the farm. We would clear the old post and wire fence away and make a […]
Grief is hard, but grieving alone can be a torment of anguish, so we sit with the broken; we are silent and Shiva to the tears. When my father cried loud and hard, I experienced a kind of solidarity in my grief. A child had died, and a funeral was […]
We want change, and we want it now, but deep change requires the granting of space and time. So grant it to our self and others. It was all becoming too much. Pressure from others to ‘get over it,’ to ‘let it go,’ and ‘sort your life out’ was beginning […]
Emotional pain can lead us to some very dark places, but embracing the pain may open doors for the Christ light to come and eat with us. It was another email of pain. I looked at my inbox, and someone had sent me an email in response to my ‘God, […]