The Mending...
and the month of mental health awareness
I do not suffer from chronic physical pain.1 But I have known chronic pain nonetheless. My suffering is invisible, hidden in the dark inner recesses of my heart and mind. Some is so personal and private that it holds risks if it were to be made visible (especially publicly).
My God, it hurts to have suffering that feels like a secret kept in the dark, doesn’t it? Especially when we believe Light heals…
When life inflicts a wound and we lack support, our mental and emotional health suffers.
Seeing as how May is Mental Health Awareness Month, this weekend is Memorial Day weekend, Mother’s Day just passed and that’s difficult for many of us, and this has been a difficult month for myself and several people close to me, I felt compelled to share this piece. Take care while you read.
Since I started writing publicly on the internets approximately 14 years ago, I learned that there are certain types of breaking and certain types of grief that are more readily accepted and supported than others.
In my own story, my Great Grief arrived when my daughter, just one-month-old, died. It wasn’t a one-time, traumatic event. It wasn’t just witnessing the event of her death. This pain was made up of many moments unfolding over time: her birth, the days and weeks leading up to her death, yes, her actual death, her funeral, and the days that unfolded subsequently thereafter.
This whole story of Grief was and remains “easy” for me to share.2 Overall, if I can make a sweeping statement here, our culture tends to be most apt for recognizing and showing support in light of the grief that comes with the death of a loved one.3 This was true for me. Most people “get” that a mother burying her child is uniquely horrific and that the Grief accompanying it would, of course, cause her mental and emotional health to suffer. Though Grief can certainly be an isolating and lonely journey, in the weeks, months, and even years that followed my daughter’s death, I have felt mostly supported by others and mostly safe to tell this part of my story openly.4
But Grief shows up for other reasons, too.5 There are countless other ways that loss and pain can unravel our lives and break us—heart, mind, and spirit. And some of those other ways are less acceptable to talk about, especially the ones that involve harm done by someone else or have a long-standing stigma in our communities.
In 2017, I experienced what I’ll refer to as the Great Breaking and a second way of Grief. This is a time in my life that is lesser-known (or rather not known because I haven’t talked or written about it pubicly).
At the time, I found myself thrust into a darkness deeper than I had ever known—and this was after I experienced the death of my child. How could this hurt more than that? It truly confused and startled me.
There are several other reasons why I believe this was the case.
In some ways, having already traveled down a path through deep darkness made this journey move even faster and propel me even further into the darkness.
I had to carry the pain of this story privately, and still do, for the most part. I can count on one hand the number of people (excluding therapists) who know any details of what happened.
This part of my story is knotted up in a larger, ongoing, nuanced, messy story.
This story is also not fully mine just yet and also impacts my children. It’s one I’m not ready for them to know and that they’re not ready to know yet. They’re especially not ready to stumble upon it online via a public platform of mine, seeing as how they’re in their era of Googling me.
Sharing our stories requires discernment for the sake of ourselves and those we love. We must handle them with care, but that doesn’t mean we must handle them alone or keep them hidden and unhealed. 6
The Great Breaking of 2017 still impacts me and differently so than the Great Sadness7 that broke me the first time around. The pain of the inciting incident and continued incidents chips away at my heart, sometimes feeling more like a sledgehammer on demolition day.
All of this to say, my mental and emotional health have suffered for a long time, certainly much longer than I’d like. And even as I continue to heal, it still hurts, and I still need support and help.8
I believe art is story and story is art and that we heal through stories shared in safe spaces.
Our inner pain etches itself into our physical bodies and can get caught in our brains. Creative expression and safe storytelling offer us relief and healing.
Yet, there are stories we cannot share publicly—or even with all of our people—and we do carry them privately. Sometimes, people, relationships, and communities around us are not safe—and also, some of them don’t deserve access to certain parts of our stories. Some stories carry greater risks of being told than others. Some stories that, if shared without care or discernment, could lead to more woundings, more harm, more shame, and more loss—loss of relationships, careers, and more. As a writing coach, I frequently talk with other writers who struggle with the burn of holding a story they want to tell yet don’t feel free to, at least not yet.
What do we do with those parts of our stories? The ones held with more secrecy than others? The ones that seem safer to hold than tell, at least for now?
If we’re not careful, keeping them burning inside of us can burn us right to the ground. It’s imperative for our health that we find tools and healthy outlets of expression so that we do not fully suppress them as secrets that make us sick.
I long for a day in which being honest about our pain and struggles doesn’t put us at greater risk for suffering. But, just because it can, and just because we all have our own inner battles and pain we’re carrying, doesn’t mean we are without help or hope.
Over the years, I have lamented and begged God to take away my pain—to divinely orchestrate a path to relieve my suffering and heal my heart, mind, and spirit miraculously. I still do at times. And I do believe in the power of prayer and miracles, but I have not experienced miraculous healing in the traditional sense. I have also been wounded by people who call themselves Christian and respond to suffering with a falsified solution of “just pray more and pray harder—and don’t forget to fast” that others, shames, and condemns. (I’m sorry if you have known this pain, too.)
I think Evangelical communities have sold salvation so focused on freedom from suffering that it has led to unhealthy escapism and an inability to cope with pain instead of lending itself to being a source of the perseverance through suffering that maybe it was initially intended to be. I have longed for Heaven so desperately that it has warped into a desire to leave this earthly place of suffering—and that has been my greatest battle: to find the staying power.9
We’ve been taught a thousand ways to escape the terrible terrain of this life, but what we really need is to be shown staying power by the sages who have braved the wilderness of suffering before us.
One of the ways I have supported my emotional and mental health over the years is through therapy (I recognize full stop the financial cost and the privilege of being able to afford mental health services). It can be scary to let someone in on the most vulnerable parts of your story, especially those you wish never happened to you or feel terrified to tell, and so I know that finding a therapist can require all the courage you have the capacity for—and seeking the help of professional experts who are trauma-informed is worth it—because your life is worth it. Having moved frequently because of my husband’s career in the military, finding a new therapist, and rehashing old wounds and trauma, I have felt this amplified.
When my family first moved to California, I found a new therapist. It was going well until she moved out of state to take care of her aging mother. I had to grieve that loss. For over a year, I had zero energy to invest in a new relationship with a new therapist and had zero desire to revisit any of my stories with someone new. Just an intake form at a regular doctor’s office was too much for me. It can be beyond draining when you’re already out of capacity. I don’t share this to be discouraging but to say I get it. You’re not alone if you feel that too.
I don’t believe we need to be in therapy forever. I’ve gone for long periods of time without the support of a therapist, in which I relied on the wisdom and tools I’d gained over the years and been well. But recently, I hit a point of not doing great and knew that it was time for me to reach out again. I’ve been working with a new therapist for about two months now. This time, I’ve learned to take more control and practice self-consent in our sessions regarding my stories and goals. This step was hard, but again, it’s been so worth it.
I also journal and write for personal processing—a lot. The pages are private and safe—and free. I can be unfiltered and honest. I can release the valve when I feel emotionally flooded. I can write my way out of rumination. I can notice and name my emotions, untangle my tangled thoughts and find clarity, attune to myself and God, and through that, receive lovingkindness and compassion that heals. I’m a huge advocate of journaling (see my journals and Pen & Mend).
My journal is like a sanctuary, keeping sacred stories safe and offering refuge when I need it most.
I consider myself a highly sensitive, deeply feeling person, but becoming emotionally healthy and intelligent has been a process for me. I can be easily flooded, reactive, and get stuck in my head about my feelings. I tend to think about my feelings more than feel them. Writing and journaling are helpful practices but also keep me in my head. Part of my process of mending the breaks in my heart has been actually to feel my feelings—genuinely feel them physically in my body—and learn how to regulate them.
I’m not trained in somatic therapy or internal family systems, but over the years, I have learned more about these types of therapy and practices. I practice body scans and notice where I feel the emotion's physical sensations in my body. Gentle yoga has been a gift over the years.10 Recently, I’ve been practicing somatic release dance breaks after an emotionally charged therapy session. I’m receiving mending not just through moving my pen but my body, too.
As much as healing is an individual journey, it is communal. Yes, it is helpful to be discerning and invite the help of a therapist, but we also need communities that are safe for us to share our stories. And I know I already mentioned this briefly before, but I need to go back to this and say out loud (maybe with you) that it can be really difficult for those who have been ostracized from a community or even removed geographically from one. My heart has a special, compassionate ache for those who know this added layer of unique pain. Even so, it's to our benefit to patiently pursue safe, healing relationships and communities.
There are all sorts of tools we can use and steps we can take to mend the broken places within us that hurt. But the mending is both a journey of acting and receiving. When it gets too tiring (because it does), that’s a signal to be gentle, pause decision-making, rest, and receive.
I am presently, and perhaps always will be, in pursuit of mending my heart, finding wholeness, and engaging with Hope through creativity.
I renamed my Substack The Mending. If you’re not tired of reading yet, I invite you to read about the story and heart behind this update here.
Some imperfect, parting words…
Whatever has harmed your mental or emotional health matters and is worthy of being mended. You and all parts of your story deserve a safe, compassionate witness that honors your inherent worth. Remember that the shadows play tricks and weave lies. Know that there is a Perfect Thread composed of Truth and Love woven through your story and your very body. This Perfect Thread is Held by the Mender.11 May you encounter the Thread holding you, even when you can’t hold on to it.
Take care. Be well.
—Kristin, your fellow sojourner in the mending
An initial acknowledgment must be made: The pain that impacts our hearts and minds the most will be held by our bodies and can manifest in physical illness. (Recommended read if you haven’t yet: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.)
I do think it’s important for me to share, as my therapist noted just last week, that my threshold or tolerance for grief is higher than most. Not everyone has the same capacity to sit with it, feel it, talk about it, or process it. That doesn’t make the work less important, but our different tolerances lend themselves to different grief experiences.
And even so, collectively speaking, we’re still not great at it. And that’s an understatement.
Most members of the grief community have the shared experience of support drastically declining around one or two months after their loved one’s funeral and dwindling thereafter.
The validity of your Grief is not up for debate.
If this resonates, I encourage you to check out either of my journals, Rest: A Journal for Lament or Rise: A Journal for Perseverance. More importantly, if you’ve had intrusive thoughts of escapism as it relates to suicidal ideation, please talk with someone safe or text or call 988, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
A not-so-kind Internet Stranger did make sure to DM me a not-so-nice message years ago warning me about my evil yoga practice and condemning me for leading others astray when I shared about it. When it first happened, it sent me into a spiritual spiral of shame that I processed with my spiritual mentors, who had a personal relationship with me. I’d like to say it didn’t hurt me. But it did at the time. We might not align in theology about certain things and that’s okay, but DMs like those are not.
This is so helpful, Kristin. Thanks always for your vulnerability and wise words.
Beautiful. As a mom who had also buried a child, I resonate with so much you have written. Sometimes that great undoing of burying a child seems like that grief should be enough for one person to carry in a lifetime. Sadly, there are the betrayals that come after that from other sources for other reasons, the ones can’t yet share, that cause more coming apart. I know. I’ve been there. Blessings to you as you mend.