Invisible Injuries: A Look Over the Shoulder at Our Mental Health Crisis
Many of us were deeply impacted by the news of Stephen "tWitch" Boss and his recent death by suicide. Flooding our timelines and feeds, we were reminded of the fragility of life, and how a person is capable of masking incredible amounts of pain, angst, and inner turmoil. He was seen dancing his heart out just 24 hours before his decision to go to a hotel and succumb to self-inflicting injuries. Our hearts shatter at what he was possibly suffering in silence over.
Put more honest, it hits different when YOU yourself are battling mental health issues and are trying to find your way back to wholeness, peace, and healing.
Laying the cards on the table, I'm smack dab in the middle of my mirror work, inner-child healing, and sifting through PTSD triggers that, as of late, have really started to scare me into submission.
Because I'm very much boots on the ground and close to the societal issues I wish to heal, I remain a teacher and activist with PTSD and vicarious trauma. A legit battle wound for being in the trenches for almost 20 years and witnessing up close literal blood shed.
After the recent death of my student Ruby, I was very taken back by my actions, and erratic behavior. I mean, I recognized my visceral response of running somewhere to cry and getting on the floor to fight for that next breath between trauma tears and sheer panic. Yet, the fact that I'm STILL reacting in the same way, but WORSE...startled the hell out of me. Punching lockers (never did that one before), and completely losing sense of my surroundings, in public may I add, was enough for me to engage a full stop and really examine my invisible injuries.
This is the year of loss for me: loss of a faith community, shifts in relationships, leaving my college adjunct role I've held onto for 8 years, the loss of my student, the loss of my favorite workout trainer who I trained with for years..watching her take her last breaths to the gripping woes of cancer...just some loss here.
Symptoms surfaced: Hyper-vigilance, disassociating, flashbacks, anxiety episodes, fighting with my own breathing while trying to catch it.
And as a leader, and as a good friend and colleague of mine described me as the leading Latina activist in the country doing the specific equity work I'm engaging----this doesn't put me in a good light if the goal is to keep up with good appearances.
I'm going to tell you something, so lean in. There are so many reasons why people take their lives or struggle with mental health issues in secret---yet, the message that I got repeatedly rings the loudest for me: "You're a leader, a nationally recognized educator, a minister's wife, etc. There is no room for you to share these injuries, or worse, display any kind of reaction in public.” Is this not total bullshit or what? I have held onto these messages for years...until...I broke free from them and began telling my story. I'd like to clarify that people actually said these words to me. Thus, showing up in your honest truth is not for the weak, it's reserved for the strong.
Thank goodness I started entering national fellowships that actually invited me to share my unfiltered truth. I found community like I never felt in quite some time in these spaces. That’s why I hold them dear and continue to offer up my gifts for their causes.
If there's anything that I learned in my Storytellers for Change fellowship is the power of our narratives and how it has liberating fibers. If my openness gives just ONE person permission to be open with theirs, it can literally save a life. Laying my prayers on that right now.
We have to normalize telling our stories, owning them, and yet all the while committing to wellness. Normalize creating safe spaces and permission for others to express in sheer honesty their cuts and bruises.
That night I received the news that my student was murdered, my mom came over. In a robe on my bed, mom gets on the bed with me. I sat up with a stack of tears falling and whispered, "Mami I need help. I need help."
These are such life-saving words that we don't give enough folks the freedom and courage to say. And you know what, shame on us! Do better, humanity, we have to do better.
I have just enough capacity to engage all systems of help, self-care, therapy, and mental health healing. I'm on my way, but it's messy, hard, sometimes isolating, and frightening.
Yet, I'm reading a book called How We Heal by Alex Elle. She coins the phrase, "We must learn to stay in the middle of our hurt so that we can get to the other side of it."
We are in the midst of a national mental health crisis. So be kind to each other. Hold space for stories without shame. We all have invisible injuries, we all could use healing somewhere. Please be kind. We are all we've got.