by H.L. Holder
“The animals, the animals trap, trap, trapped ’til the cage is full. The cage is full, the day is new. And everyone is waiting, waiting on you. And you’ve got time. And you’ve got time. Think of all the roads, think of all their crossings. Taking steps is easy, standing still is hard. Remember all their faces, remember all their voices. Everything is different the second time around.” ~ You’ve Got Time, Regina Spektor
“Seasons pass us by
And we think that we’ve got time
But here we are
At the end
It’s hard to let you go
I’ll miss you more than you know
And I won’t forget
How you made me feel” ~ Danielle Brooks (aka Taystee from OITNB), Seasons
There’s a period of the church calendar known as “ordinary time” and I suck at ordinary time. I’ve never been good at waiting for things to happen and remaining in the present when something else lies ahead of me that I’d rather be doing.
While I’m expecting inspiration to hit me upside the head I could be doing something with the time I’m currently in. But I’ve never known what to do with ordinary time. It feels like being stuck in the in between so what do I do with this “ordinary” time.
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by Rachel Virginia Hester
Rage against the personality tool.
When I originally wrote that line, they were the title of a poem. A long, messy and cheesy, but frustrated poem.
I want an easy way to explain why
I want to spill my guts
and gather them all at the same time
Maybe, leave each of my friends with
little pieces of my intestines
like a nice souvenir,
so they know the feeling’s real
I’ve used tools such Myer-Briggs, astrology and the Enneagram over the past couple of years to try to understand myself and why I am the way I am: the shyness, the bursts of unforeseen energy, the constant need to self-protect, my impatience with small-talk, and my love of love (both love with a lowercase and uppercase). The first time I was introduced to the Enneagram, I was 20 years old working on a farm. All of my teammates at the farm were raving about it, eagerly learning and discussing their types. The online test that I took described me as a Type Four, but not only was I assigned a Four, the particular test I took described me as an unhealthy Four. I responded by bursting into tears. The label of “unhealthy” slapped me in the face. I didn’t want to be reminded that I wasn’t well, especially after being sent home from a service year program because they couldn’t provide the mental health support that I needed, despite their best attempts.
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by Sarah Griffith Lund
Today my eight year old son heard a different story. All along we’ve told our child the story of how his grandpa Griffith was a great animal doctor who loved taking care of people’s pets. This is true. We told our son that his grandpa died before he was born, and that grandpa was a good person and would be very proud of his grandson. This is also true.
It is important for me as a mother that my child first hears the story of the blessing of his genetic inheritance from his maternal grandfather: love of creation, love of learning, love of healing, love of life.
Today it was time for my son to hear a different story. Today, just as causally as you’d talk about what happened at school, I told the story of his grandpa’s illness. I told the story of when grandpa’s brain got a sickness and how it changed all of our lives.
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by Kenji Kuramitsu
It is perhaps fitting that the season of Lent each year begins as Japanese Americans commemorate Day of Remembrance, recalling the day the President of the United States signed an executive order that saw our lives forever overturned. Only in recent memory have many of these stories begun to be shared out of silence: my uncle Lenny’s dad was a successful businessman before the war. Like so many, he “lost everything” when the camps were raised. Shortly after his release he drank himself to death. My auntie Sasaki was born in one of the open-air prisons. She still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, more than seventy years after being born in a place she can’t even remember.
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by Erin Wilson
This blog post is one I've been mulling over for a while. I definitely had some of the thoughts that'll be included several years ago, but most of these thoughts come from the last almost 2 years since the 2016 election.
I, like many people I know, was upset by the results of the 2016 election. I felt like there was nothing I could do. Things felt hopeless.
Sometimes, they still do. But something I'm working on is finding ways to be the change. I've always admired those who participated in activism. I've longed to go be at protests, to march, to join a group of people in resisting systems of oppression.
I've watched friends go and do. I've felt incapable of action. I've felt overwhelmed by the darkness of this world.
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by Sarah Griffith Lund
Here’s a quick list of 18 tips to improve mental health for 2018.
1. Make time for people that bring you joy.
2. Connect regularly with a small group of people who you trust and with whom you can be yourself.
3. Let people know when you are struggling. Let 2018 be the year of vulnerability and truth-telling.
4. Prioritize regular sleep cycles to maximize the restorative power of sleep.
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