For Your Mental Health

For years I’ve experienced anxiety and depression.

It took me a long time to realize this is what was happening, to seek support, to find acceptance, and to learn tools to manage the waves of anxiety and depression that came through me. It took a long time because I didn’t have adults around me in my upbringing that modeled what it looked like to ask for support, to take care of their mental health.

My uncle committed suicide when I was 10 and it was never discussed about why or what the aftermath felt like as a family.

My mother was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital when I was 9 and I witnessed her periods of extreme elation for life and extreme sadness about the shortcomings of life.

It all seemed normal to me. I just chalked it up to “oh, this is a normal part of life”. That this is what life was…to be extremely sad at times and to be extremely happy.

I had a lot of shame about my childhood and upbringing.

We were poor. There was abuse. Alcoholism and addiction ran through our bloodline and sat at our kitchen table.

It wasn’t until a friend of mine in grad school was doing a personal history project for one of her counseling classes. We had grown close and she asked if she could interview me. I was 24 at the time.

As I shared my history with her, she would pause in between each memory I shared and would say, “Are you serious? Keegan, I’m amazed at how you came out of that, how?”

I didn’t really have an answer.

But when I look back on it all, I know.

It was mentors and friends who looked out for me. Allowed me to stay over when the nights were too loud at my house from my mom and her boyfriend screaming at each other.

It was the teacher in 5th grade who just knew I needed a mother figure when mine was absent.

It was my aunt who sat me down when I was 15 years old as I contemplated suicide who gave me a hard truth I needed to hear that was also filled with love.

It was a gentle voice inside of me that said, just keep going, there’s something more in life for you.

It took me 24 years to share my story fully with someone. And it took me 33 years to actually sit on a couch with a professional therapist to share it all and get the professional support and help I needed to manage the trauma and emotional waves I experienced in life.

Each day is a practice for me. A practice to live this life fully. To be in it fully. Because there were days (and sometimes there still are) when I don’t know if I want to.

We think of mental health as this other thing. But it’s the most important thing. It comes before our physical health and is directly linked to our physical health.

It should be the first thing we think about when we wake up. How do I want to feel today? And what can I do to support myself in feeling alive today?

There’s a few things I’ve collected over the years and created a nice full, overflowing toolbox that I go to each day.

One of them is breathing. It’s the most simplest thing, but also most powerful.

Our breath can help regulate our nervous system, settling the emotions that bubble up throughout our day, week, month, and years.

Emotions are energy and they want to move. So, with our breath we can move them through us and out of us, creating space in our minds and bodies.

Mental Health shouldn’t be something we focus on just one month of the year (BTW, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, hooray!) It’s something we can tend to and take care every day of the year.

I’m also sharing this with you on the heels of news breaking of the Supreme Court opinion to possibly overturn Roe v. Wade. You might be affected by this news.

I sure am. I’m angry, I’m heartbroken, and I’m scared.

I’m frightened at the fact that there are people in positions of power who can make decisions about my body, the privacy of my own life and health.

And this triggers a nervous system response, which we are all experiencing-- fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

I’d like to share with you a simple breath practice to support you whether it be today, tomorrow, or in the near future…

I hope you take a few moments to breathe.

Take good care of yourself.

with love + gratitude, Keegan.