May is…

• Fajr, water, meditation, stretching

• School drop off with special handshakes and forehead kisses.

• May is Mental Health Awareness Month. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve carried a quiet war behind my ribs. Crippling Anxiety. Depression that felt familial. Suicidal ideations that whispered like lullabies when I couldn’t, when I begged for sleep.

  It’s been five years. Five years since the last time the world crumbled inside me. Since I sat in a freezing room, on a hard chair, in a circle of strangers, each of us heavy and frozen with life iced behind our breaths, our stories trembling out of our mouths. Each one of us witnesses to how fear can steal color from the sky and softness from your name.

  Five years of healing. Not a cure. But a long, winding walk into a lighter version of myself. Five years of antidepressants—small white petals dissolving under worry. Of natural medicine from the Earth’s pantry. Of music pulsing like a second heartbeat when mine feels weak. Of writing. Always writing and of nature holding me and setting me free under sunlight filtering through trees like stained glass prayers. Of meditation. Of crying—loud, snotty, unpretty crying—when it needed to come. Smiling so wide it cracked something open in me, and hugs that stitched what loneliness tried to unravel.

  I’ve walked through a hole so dark, it made me question my reflection. An emotional and mental prison just tight enough for impostor syndrome to set up camp, for social paralysis to decorate the walls, for traumas I inherited and earned to echo in rooms louder than my voice. I climbed out. Not quickly. Not gracefully. But with stubborn breath. With help. With love. And maybe someone, somewhere, is still in the hole. Still in the freezing room. Still afraid to say out loud, “I’m (more than) not okay.”
  

  Dearest you, 

  I could tell you a lifetime of stories, but you already know them, don’t you? I’ll say this: The light is real. Even if right now, it’s just a flicker through the cracks. Hold on. Please, hold on. I’m here, five years out of the dark. Still healing. Still here. Grateful. And smiling and waiting for you. You are not what pain is calling you. Growth and light is there. Let me be real though…I still, in moments of overwhelm, feel that aching, trembling shadow version. I acknowledge and thank him for surviving. I thank him for holding on long enough to get here. See you soon.

• Everyone is a hero to a cause.

• Everyone is problematic to a cause.

• Ginger mint tea.

  With all my heart…Té