R U OK?

Hello lovely people and welcome back ❈ 

The annual campaign and a day of action, highlighting the importance of meaningful conversations. R U OK?Is being held today 12 September 2024. Are you someone who would let the person asking, ‘R U OK?’, know if you weren’t, ok? Is reaching out for help difficult for you?

We all know that if you have a broken arm, you don’t walk around in pain with a broken arm right, you take yourself off to the doctor quick smart. An x-ray would most likely follow, your arm would be set in a cast, and you would need to have at least one follow-up appointment when the cast was due to come off. All these steps because without them, you would be in pain and suffering. It is sociably acceptable across cultures, genders, and classes for you to follow this process. Then why would your mental health be any different?

I grew up in a house where my emotional well-being was not considered, I also grew up in an era where this was sociably acceptable. Where ‘men don’t cry’ and it was considered weak if you spoke about having mental health issues. Mental health stigma was alive and thriving in that era. I lived in a rural area that experienced a significant drought, where fourth and fifth-generation farmers’ livelihoods were completely impacted to the point of losing farms that had been in families for generations. These farmers were not equipped to deal with the stigma associated with their impacted mental health. As a result, our community experienced so many losses of older males to suicide. 

When this was occurring, my children were reaching their pre-teen years. It made me reflect on how I was raised, what these poor farmers were going through and how I wanted something different for our family. My boys needed to know that their emotional well-being mattered and that it was ok and acceptable in our house to talk about their feelings. That this didn’t mean they were weak, in fact, it meant that they were brave and emotionally responsible for taking care of their mental health needs. To make it easy for them to reach out to me, they just had to say, ‘Can I talk to you’. This meant they needed my attention, that something big was going on in their world. We used this sentence for multiple purposes, so sometimes I wasn’t sure what would be coming, a broken window, school detention, young love troubles or the like. It did condition my children that they could come to me for any reason, and I would listen first and then support them through whatever was going on in their world no matter how insurmountable they believed their situation to be. My children are adults now, and still come and chat with me about their big things.  

If someone asked you today, R U OK? how confident are you that you would answer them truthfully? What would prevent you from answering that person honestly? Have you or anyone else ever created a safe space so you could talk openly about your big emotions, where what you have to say takes priority in that space? Your mental health is important, you live with your internal dialogue 24/7, if you have more low-mood days than you do good days, I urge you to take steps to take care of your own mental health. Maybe when you reach out you could start with, ‘Can we talk’. 

❈ Thanks for joining me! Be kind to yourself. Enjoy the rest of your day ❈