Category: mental health

Thankful Thursday 17: New Beginnings

Welcome to the seventeenth instalment of my Thankful Thursday series, New Beginnings!

Here we are again, finally on a Thursday! I’m really proud of myself for getting this post up today, because it’s been a crazy week. Yesterday totally felt like Friday. Anyone feel me?! Three big things have gotten going for me this week: Work, which for me is teaching high school French full-time; Grad school, which is my Masters in Education at UBC; and the youth club rugby season, for which I am a coach. Phew!

This week, probably unsurprisingly, I’m focusing on gratitude for new beginnings.

Here’s my Thankful Thursday for the week of August 31 – September 6, 2018!

Things I am thankful for over the past week:

  • Over the weekend I got kind of “nest-y” in the sense that I cleaned a lot. It was kind of born from a want to start both of my school years off on the right foot. But I also fear that I will be too busy to clean very much for the next 3.5 months, so I decided I better get started with a very clean slate before things go down the tubes. I am thankful that I had the motivation and energy to do this over the weekend.
Part of my nesting process was continuing to work on my new shelf unit and finally framing the artwork I had done of my dog, Jazzy.
Another part of my nesting was reorganizing my bookshelves in the bedroom so that I can fit more books on them. The whole of the top is only Harry Potter!
  • I need another grateful word for PSLs. I’ve had so many already. I often say that coffee is my comfort drink. Pumpkin spice lattes  are my greatest comfort of the comfort. They are just the greatest and make everything brighter. Half sweet, though, of course.
  • On Sunday, we finally had a really good air quality day, and I was able to go for a run. I intended to do about 7k, but felt fantastic and kicked it up to 10. It’s the longest run since I completed my second half-marathon of the year in June, and I was so excited. I also especially love my longer runs because I get to this part of the seawall:
The view of the Lions Gate from the seawall is one of my favourites. This part of the seawall is also always much quieter than everywhere else!
The inukshuk guy was also out on the seawall when I was running and it was fascinating to watch him.
  • Yesterday night, Andrew and I went to the new ice cream place on Thurlow called Perverted. I got the lemon, which is cream soft serve with lemon drizzle, graham cracker, and toasted marshmallow. So good!

And finally, the theme for this week, New Beginnings!

This week I’m feeling really grateful for the new beginnings I’ve experienced this week.

First, work started back up, and I’m really thankful to have a job that is always new and exciting. Now, I’m the first person to say that I don’t much like change. However, I think that if my job were the same every day year in and year out, I would go insane (not that I’m not already, haha). I love that teaching changes every year. But I’m also thankful for little things that don’t change – this is the first time I’m getting to teach students I taught last year. Walking into that classroom on Tuesday morning to a group of familiar faces was so wonderful. New, but still the same! Magic.

I also started my Masters on Tuesday. This semester I’m taking two classes. It’s going to be a lot because they’re both on campus at UBC, which is a trek from West Van where I work. Also, working full-time and doing school at the same time is a lot in general. I did it two years ago to get my pre-requisite diploma, so I know. It’s certainly going to be a challenge for my mental health.

Thankfully, with these changes and beginnings, I’ve still been really focusing on my physical health through my workout program, and my nutrition. One of my biggest priorities is to make sure I don’t let that slide.

The last thing to start this week was rugby. Unfortunately I won’t be able to make practices this term because of school, but I am going to be at all the games and I’m really looking forward to it!

There you have it!

So, that’s my Thankful Thursday list for this week. I hope it inspires you to make your own, and get on that gratitude train!

Peace and love,

Bee

Related posts:

  1. Thankful Thursday 18: Coping
  2. Thankful Thursday 7: Birthday Week
  3. Thankful Thursday 2: Sunny Vancouver Spring
  4. Thankful Thursday 10: Wrapping up

Thankful Thursday 16: Breakthrough

Welcome to the sixteenth instalment of my Thankful Thursday series, Breakthrough!

I’m coming back at you on a Friday again. I’m getting into the swing of things slowly but surely before work starts up again and grad school starts up for the first time, both on Tuesday!

This week I’m focusing on gratitude for a breakthrough I had mid-week.

Here’s my Thankful Thursday for the week of August 24 – August 30, 2018!

Things I am thankful for over the past week:

  • I lost my glasses on our trip to NB, and on Friday my new ones arrived and I love them:

Funko HQ!!

  • This place deserves its own subtitle. On Saturday, I drove to Everett, Washington. I went there because it’s the home of Funko HQ, and a friend that I met on Bookstagram and I decided to meet up there! She lives in Seattle, so it was a place in between Seattle and Vancouver for us to get together. It was AMAZING.
The day we were there, you could build your own monster or Freddy funko.
Posing with a life-size Hagrid funko! (And two of the five funko I purchased.)
  • My friend and I also hit up this beautiful coffee shop called Narrative, both before and after our Funko HQ adventure.

Other things I’ve been thankful for this week

  • It’s been a pretty quiet week in terms of doing things or going places. And it’s been nice sometimes, but also pretty dreadful others. Sometimes I get so anxious that I fall into a depression, and that happened to me this week. One thing that helped to start bringing me out of it was following the suggestion of a mental health advocate on Instagram and posting a selfie of myself in the sun.

    I did it, and the supportive response was really amazing.
  • A lot of my quiet time this week involved coffee and reading in the sun, which is pretty much my favourite thing ever.
  • I also took some time to make my cozy space a little neater and more spacious, and I feel like it’s so much better now! I find that living in a small space I have to be really conscious of the things I keep and how I organize and I’m constantly moving things around to make it work better. This also goes along with the tendency my anxiety has to go up incrementally in tandem with the cleanliness/organization level of my space.

  • Finally, pumpkin spice is BACK! And as much as I’m sad to see summer go, autumn is my second-favourite season, and PSLs are my all-time favourite hot drink (but half-sweet, because holy is that syrup ever brain-tinglingly sweet). I’ve had three already. I know, I have a problem. TAKE MY MONEY, STARBUCKS!!!

And finally, the theme for this week, Breakthrough!

This week I have some major gratitude for a breakthrough I’ve made. Since getting back from our trip to NB, I’ve spent a lot of time feeling depressed. Like I said above, when my anxiety gets really bad, it transforms itself into this full-blown depression monster who also has anxiety, and it’s the worst thing ever. I have already started brainstorming a post to tell you all about it. For now, just know that most days in the past couple weeks I’ve been pretty comatose.

On Monday or Tuesday, however, I had a major AHA! moment, and since then I’ve been slowly climbing my way out of that dark hole. My motivation, happiness, purpose, inspiration… everything – I guess you’d call it mojo – is starting to come back. I’m going to write a whole post on this soon. I wanted to share about it now though because it was so meaningful for me this week. I’m really thankful for all the things I was doing in my life even though I felt like shit that helped the breakthrough to happen.

There you have it!

So, that’s my Thankful Thursday list for this week. I hope it inspires you to make your own, and get on that gratitude train!

Peace and love,

Bee

Related posts:

  1. Thankful Thursday 2: Sunny Vancouver Spring
  2. Thankful Thursday 3: Slowing Down
  3. Thankful Thursday 11: Taking a Break
  4. Thankful Thursday 10: Wrapping up

Thankful Thursday 15: Movement

Welcome to the fifteenth instalment of my Thankful Thursday series, Movement!

It’s been about a month! For my husband and I, it’s been a month FULL of travel, so I took almost all that time off from blogging. We hit up Seattle for four Blue Jays games, and went to our hometown in New Brunswick to visit friends and family.

Now that I’m back, this week I’m focusing on gratitude for movement.

Here’s my Thankful Thursday for the week of August 17 – August 23, 2018!

Things I am thankful for over the past week:

  • On Friday, our last full day in NB, Andrew and I hosted a BBQ at his parents’ house with a ton of our friends and their kids. Great food, company, and baby cuddles, what more could a girl want?!
  • Our trip back to Vancouver on Saturday went off pretty much without a hitch. Even though it was smoky when we got home, it wasn’t too hot in the apartment, and we slept well and adjusted to the four-hour time change quickly,
  • We grabbed brunch at our favourite weekend haunt Sunday morning – I’m sure that helped us adapt, too!
  • On Monday, I did a whole bunch of major adulting things make me anxious – getting things sorted for the upcoming start of my M.Ed. program, and making phone calls for things like car maintenance, car insurance renewal, and getting my new glasses.
  • I spent a lot of time reading and relaxing.

  • I took the time to enjoy the chalk art that has taken over my home corner of Robson Street recently.

  • And although I really hate the smoke because it’s keeping me cooped up inside, it does make for some eerily cool photos.

    On the way to Starbucks, very close to my home. It felt like walking around in a dystopia that day!
The view from my counsellor’s office. Normally you can see a huge stretch of North Shore mountains. Not so on this day!
An angry, red, smoky sunrise.
Out our apartment window, that crazy, yellow, hazy post-apocalyptic light.

And the theme for this week, Movement!

This week I’ve felt gratitude for the exercise routine I’ve gotten myself into over the last month. I believe I mentioned in my last Thankful Thursday post that I started a new workout program. I’m doing Kayla Itsines’ BBG program using the Sweat app. And it’s doing me a world of good. I knew I wanted to do a body weight exercise-based program to go along with a reduced running schedule as cross-training during the half-marathon off-season (which for me is July through December). I’d seen a few others trying and loving this program, and it was easily accessible for me and reasonably priced ($20 a month, and I can do it at home!).

It has been really smoky here in BC since we got back from vacation. I am so thankful that I’m in the rhythm of doing these workouts, because I’m still getting my body moving even though I can’t run outside now. I’ve always needed to exercise regularly for my mental health. Even though I’ve done the BBG workouts, I’m still feeling antsy because I haven’t been able to go for a run. But I am thankful for the movement I have been able to do! And to get some cardio in this morning I pulled the stationary bike out of the closet to do a little HIIT.

A little more about BBG

I love everything about this program except its name. BBG stands for Bikini Body Guide. Ugh, even typing it out makes me cringe. All bodies are bikini bodies, not just bodies that are as RIDICULOUSLY sculpted as the trainers in the program videos. I have to admit, it would be nice to see someone a bit more average-sized demonstrating the exercises in the app occasionally. I’m not trying to be down on myself, but with the lifestyle that I want I am realistically never going to look like Kayla, and sometimes it makes me feel bad. I’m human.

Anyway, the program is composed of three resistance sessions a week that take 35-40 minutes each. Then, you can do whatever kind of cardio movement you want three times a week. For me, this is running, obviously (or stationary biking this week, due to the smoke). It can be hiking, swimming, walking, biking, whatever. The last part is recovery. One day a week is completely off, and one day you incorporate a stretch and foam roller session. I think this is a really great balance that helps me keep my running legs. And I also get to build muscle and strength to help me do even better next half-marathon season. Plus, it’s structure that works really well for my mental health. It’s gotten me into a really great routine, so it’s easy to motivate myself to do it. And it’s almost daily, so my anxiety levels are partly managed by all that movement.

There you have it!

So, that’s my Thankful Thursday list for this week. I hope it inspires you to make your own, and get on that gratitude train!

Peace and love,

Bee

Related posts:

  1. Thankful Thursday 14: Home(body)
  2. Thankful Thursday 18: Coping
  3. Thankful Thursday 2: Sunny Vancouver Spring
  4. Thankful Thursday 20: Being Mindful

“Died by” vs “Committed” – A Reflection on Suicide Nomenclature

Recently I read Jennifer Niven’s young adult novel, All the Bright Places, which deals with suicide and mental illness.

What I thought of the book

Overall, I loved it. And you can read my review of it over on my book blog. Fair warning: it’s one of my only not spoiler-free reviews. It’s a really good, mature-ish, YA (young adult) novel. It’s creative and fun, but also dark and serious.

The reason my review is not spoiler-free is because of the topic of this post. One of the characters dies by suicide, and his girlfriend, as a narrator, writes it as to “commit” suicide instead of “die by.”

You need some back story.

Before I get to some of the reasons why this nomenclature difference is important, I want to explain why I’m writing this post. A few years ago, the difference in wording was brought to my attention (not directly) by another mental health advocate in my sphere. It made complete sense to me, and since then, I have been vocally challenging anyone who uses “committed” instead of “died by.” And very often, people ask me why it matters. That made it clear to me that the phrasing needs more attention. This novel made that clear to me as well, as does any time I encounter “committed” instead of “died by” in reference to suicide.

My history

First of all, I have never attempted suicide or seriously contemplated it. I do, however, experience intrusive thoughts related to suicide, which I talk to my counsellor about.

I have also had several experiences with a person in my sphere dying by suicide. Never a close friend or family member, but I don’t think that matters.

Please, if you are a person with more authority on this matter than I am, share your thoughts and challenge mine if they need to be.

So, why does this matter?

First, think about instances where we use the word “committed.” People are “committed” to institutions, like prisons or hospitals. Crimes are “committed.” Most often, we encounter this word with a negative connotation.

But suicide is not a crime. It is a tragedy.

“Died by” vs. “committed” suicide – the difference

Saying that a person committed suicide gives their passing the connotation of a crime. Which it is not. It is unfortunate. And terribly, terribly sad. It is heartbreaking. It hurts other people. But it is not a crime. And most times, it is not even a choice.

People who die by suicide are not criminals. They are not inherently bad. They’ve just lost the battle with a disorder, just like people who die from cancer or heart attack have lost the battle with a disease. I would argue that people who die by suicide are far closer to victims than they are criminals.

What I’m doing

Every time I encounter the phrase “commit/committed/commits suicide,” I challenge it. Vocally. And I invite you to as well.

The thing that I find most interesting is that in her afterword, Niven uses “died by suicide,” not “committed.” I wonder why she chose the other wording in the story. I wonder if perhaps she thought it would be more realistic for a teenager to not know the right wording. I don’t know.

But I do think that writers and bloggers and mental health advocates have a duty to treat mental health and stigma with care. Words are powerful. Don’t get me wrong, I think Niven does a very good job of this for 99% of her novel. But any time a person reads the word “committed” instead of “died by” before the word “suicide,” it teaches the reader, subconsciously or not, that that is the word you use. Conversely, the same can be said about choosing to write “died by.”

In a world where there is still so much stigma associated with mental illness, perpetuating as much health-centred, person-centred, and less-negative vocabulary is important.

Let’s work to end the stigma, and help people who suffer with various mental disorders and who experience suicidal ideation or thoughts of suicide.

Peace and love,

– Bee.

 

Related posts:

  1. Lexical Abandon’s Life Lately
  2. Medication: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 3
  3. Thankful Thursday 1: An Introduction
  4. Sleep Hygiene: Self-Care for Anxiety Strategy 1