Winter World
Holy A is it freezing
And Happy Lunar New Year!
Now isn’t this a good idea. If all stairs were this, no shoveling.
In a couple days it’s Bell’s Let Talk campaign to further destigmatize mental illness, open communication channels on mood and anxiety disorder, depression, etc. It’s no coincidence that it comes in the coldest darkest month.
When body chems go thru a bout of downward inward spin, outward is not an intuitive direction. Us distressed animals hide so they don’t leave themselves vulnerable to risk of prey. That’s evolutionary training. Moving it to the light can help find allies. Or instead of keeping self in the dark of denial, find good strategies to help ourselves.
Getting a handle on the brain, getting mindfulness, seeing patterns, can help manage causes that exacerbate. When the brain/body fritzes its impact is on everyone as indiscriminatingly as mental illness visits themselves. There are triggers and susceptibility, but the common cold has as well. The notion of blame isn’t productive. CMHA claims 1 in 5 will get a mental illness sometime. (That figure seems the result of under-reporting.) When we consider how many we interact with, hundreds in a year…it only can help to address the elephant instead of marvelling at its tail and calling it a rope.
Quotable Noteable: “He presses a hand over the nub of his lower vertebrae/as if testing for a weak rung on a ladder.” ~ Paul Wilson in The Long Landscape (Couteau Books, 1999)
