I have spent a few days thinking about this, and due to my outspokenness on the topic of mental health and specifically mental health in leadership, I want to use this month to share some words I have spoken (events, webinars, podcasts) and written (publications, books, social media) to both share my own story while also contributing to the ongoing awareness and destigmatization of mental health and therapy.
As such, for May, I plan to share, at a minimum, one post a week here on mental health. May is Mental Health Awareness Month (also referred to as Mental Health Month) and has been observed in May in the United States since 1949 and was started by Mental Health America (MHA) (then known as the National Association for Mental Health).
I hope that the words I share will be helpful to some extent and shared as needed.
Even today in 2024. Even post-pandemic. There remains a stigma around mental health. The only way to combat that is to speak about it. That requires vulnerability from us all.
Here is a post from March 2016 that was first published on a blog that I still had back in 2016. I wrote and posted it just days after my first therapy appointment. The words even now to my heart read raw, a little desperate, and in the tone of a searcher. Here I do not go into the event that resulted in me making that first call to a therapist; I have written other pieces on that. This piece is more of the reckoning I was having with myself, and with God, on why therapy was necessary. It is almost as if I was rationalizing Him giving me His blessing. As a lifelong Christian and with the conflict in the church about therapy. Even then. Even now. The fact that I was looking for a sign(s) makes more sense given that context.
1From the Archives…
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I had my hair stylist ease up on my ombre hair coloring, and I started toying with the idea of going back to my old nail polish, Opi's Bubble Bath (my color of choice for some fifteen to twenty years) from my current black. So today after an amazing brunch with friends, I decided to go get a manicure; I wanted to look nice for Easter next weekend. Without hesitation, I selected the bottle of Bubble Bath and plopped down in the chair. I had been thinking about it for weeks, and months, and I have a sweet little Easter outfit planned. I wanted to look extra pretty. I mean. What is happening to me?
Two strokes in.
Two. Strokes.
I regretted it, but I did not change it. Something said to keep going, and yes, I am still talking about nail polish.
I had no sooner gotten in my car to come home, and I looked at my hands (it was a beautiful manicure by the way) and started laughing. You cannot tell where my nails end and my hands begin. It is one solid color. My nails disappear into my hands.
Umm…
Where was I all of those years?
What was I running from?
What was I attempting to hide from?
I just looked down at my hands again. I still cannot see my nails. I am not exaggerating.
I had my first counseling session this past week. It will not be my last. I am not in the least ashamed to say that I am booked out for the next six weeks, every single week, and my therapist is developing a six-month plan. I am on board. No hesitation. In fact, as difficult as that first session was, all sixty minutes of it, I could not shake the thought walking out that this was probably going to be the best thing I would ever do for myself. I also felt a deep need to document the process. That makes me cringe. I am not sure how much I will write about on this blog, but I will journal the whole thing. My Sis already had a great idea about getting a journal just to write about therapy, and after the pages written this week, her idea seemed even more solid. That first night, my journal looked like a train wreck. Lines and words and arrows were everywhere and going in every direction.
It is hard to admit that I have expended a ton of energy in my life hiding from the truth of my life. Protecting my family. Protecting the "story" and all that means. Protecting my childhood, creating a narrative around only the very best parts, and gliding over the worst. I have done this to the point that when asked a point-blank question about my childhood in that first therapy session, I had the wrong age for most of it, and no memories at all of at least a year of my childhood. I have lost an entire year. As the nicknamed treasure-keeper and the memory of an elephant, those realizations stung.
The truth is that my family’s story is no different than yours. We had secrets. We had shame. We had bad behavior. I just never learned how to deal with mine.
I want to be clear that I am in no way interested in writing an expose on myself or my family, but I am very interested in learning how not to feel responsible for the tragedy that was my family. I am also very interested in learning how not to let my childhood define me for the rest of my life. I no longer want to take on all the blame. I would also like to stop feeling personally responsible that at the tender age of eight, I did not do more to prevent the implosion. That maybe everything since the implosion has not been 1000% my fault. In all of that too, I want to learn how to take responsibility for what was my fault. I have made plenty of mistakes, and I want to get a grip on those. Learn from them, and for the love, not repeat them. Ever.
This week in therapy, as I sat contorted in that chair being asked the most basic questions, I realized (after having it pointed out) that the red string that I use to describe the chain of events in my life has slowly been unraveling. I see now that it is time to slide down the wall to the floor and begin again. At the beginning. How do you unpack forty-four years and figure out what is real? Truly real. What is true? What is false? Well, you do not do it alone. I will no longer be doing it alone. Not only am I blessed with a therapist I know God picked out for me (there are simply ways one knows), but I also have some extraordinary people who are walking with me in this, and to them, here and now, I say, “Thank you.”
There is this beautiful song All Sons & Daughters' Brokenness Aside that I have been listening to these past few weeks. Just now it came up while I was typing, and I suddenly thought, God makes beautiful things out of our brokenness. I believe that to be true with everything that I am. For whatever reason, it feels like this is the time to own my own story of brokenness. You cannot start at today though. Like any great story, you must begin at the beginning.
So, one day I was born. {Insert nervous laughter.}
The therapist, my therapist, I guess I should get used to saying out loud that I have my very own therapist.
My therapist told me “…this is going to be messy, but I can help you”. She used words such as trauma and abandonment. There were silent tears, physical reactions to words, and admissions, but in all of that, she had me at "messy" because, with that one word, I knew God was there in that room, holding my hand. It is the word I hear when it is just the two of us. I knew upon hearing it that I was safe. That my heart was going to be safe.
All of this has me thinking about our individual gifts, how we learn, how we share, and who we are. I think the sad truth is that in many ways it has taken the wilderness of these past few years to help me figure out who I am. In some ways, the three-year purge2 I endured was just the act of me physically digging my way out of the mess of stuff, dogma, people, lies, mistakes, etc., just to get to the bottom. I wasn't digging my way out or up as much as I was digging my way down in an attempt to find my foundation. My core. Now, imagine my surprise when last week, just two months after completing that intense process, God stuck a chisel and hammer in my hand and said, "Let's go. Deeper."
Umm....say what?!?! To be honest God, I was thinking a beach vacation would be an excellent idea.
The truth is that my foundation was built on quicksand, and I have been shoring it up for years. Absolute years. God is trying to get me to rip it all out and start again on solid ground. Start again based on truth. Not of who I am, but on the truth of who He is. Who He says I am, and who He intended me to be.
Not the terrified eight-year-old that built a million masks to hide a terrified adult, but the confident, beloved daughter of God. The truth is we have to rip out the lies and the fear like bad carpeting hiding a beautiful heart of pine floor. The truth is I need an engineer. Over the past several years, I have seen glimpses of myself. Here and there. Now I have a real chance to find all of me. That is my hope. I dream of being more whole. I want to be better. Be a better person.
...but first I have to tell my story.
To a therapist.
That is not easy. Not for me.
But God is kind, and He teaches me lessons at the bottom of a bottle of Opi’s Bubble Bath nail polish.
It is time for me to stop hiding.
A friend sent me John 5:1-5 the day of my first counseling session. It is the story of the healing of the invalid. Jesus asks him simply, "Do you want to get well?" The man has an excuse for why he has not gotten treatment for thirty-eight years. Jesus said, Get up! Pick up your mat and walk."
My friend had no idea how God was going to use those verses with me.
There is a lot you can take from that scripture, but that night after crying myself to sleep. Who are we kidding, sobbed myself to sleep. I had a dream that Jesus was in between me and "them." Defending me. Protecting me. It was a gift. In my whole life, no one has protected me or defended me, whether I deserved it or not. It is a wound that is gaping and puss-filled and even up to today impacts me every single day of my life. Ironically, for thirty-eight years. Thirty-eight.
”Do you want to get well Heather?”
”Yes, Lord.”
”Get up and walk.”
There is healing available to us. We must take the first step. Just one step, and He will meet us there. He is probably already standing there in between us, and whatever or whoever, waiting for us to get up and walk. To have faith. To trust Him. Even with the hardest and darkest parts of our souls and of our stories.
I don't know about you, but I am seeking restoration in my life like my very life depends on it.
Palm Sunday. Opi’s Bubble Bath. Lent 2016.
Only God can bring those three together and teach me a lesson. He is that good. He is that personal. He loves me that much. He loves you that much.
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If you have ever thought about therapy, but do not know where to start, I am happy to help answer any questions regarding the process that I followed. Questions can be anything from how I found my therapist to forms of therapy we used to how I prioritized therapy into a very full and demanding lifestyle. Feel free to comment or inbox me with those questions.
Over the years, I have answered the question, “Why?” more than any other. Why did you start therapy? I have narrowed my response to this, “I had done a lot of healing and a lot of growth on my own and with God/spiritually, but at the end of the day, God needed a wing person in the flesh to help me heal the rest of the way. My therapist was that wing person.”
There is no shame in asking for help. In needing help. It took me a long time (too long) to learn that. My hope is for others to be faster learners than me. ;)
Whenever I share words written or spoken previously (in whatever form), I will note that by tagging them #FromTheArchives for the sake of clarity and transparency.
I completed a three-year purge, lovingly given the nickname #threeyearpurgefest, over the three years before beginning counseling. I gifted, sold, donated, or threw away approximately eighty percent of everything I owned from cars to real estate to personal belongings. It was intense. I write about it in my book Facedown, The Art of the Slow Rise Up. Release pending.
I love the option to listen! Proud of you, my friend…
So proud of you! Love you, friend!