I’m Proud of You.

I’m proud of you. Four words I think a lot of us could hear more often.

I recently polled my Instagram, and the next blog topic chosen was mental health. For some people, mental health could be something easily talked about. For others, you may never know what’s going on under the surface.

In either scenario, I think it’s important to remind ourselves how far we’ve come and how much we’ve progressed from our past experiences. And I know it’s easy to say,”Be proud of yourself!” or “Reflect!” but I actually mean it. Allow yourself to be proud for a second. It’s okay, you deserve it!

Whether you’re satisfied with your present or not, we can only move forward. Unfortunately (as we obviously know), life doesn’t slow down for anyone. But that can be a beautiful thing!

Think about how much you’ve accomplished in just this past year alone. Whether it was the best year of your life, or the worst year of your life, you got through it. You handled it. You managed yourself in the ways you could at the time. That’s HUGE! Like…huge. Really. And now you get a chance to experience another year full of new experiences!

I don’t think we often give ourselves enough credit for how we go about the world, handling our own collective mental healths (health, healths? grammar yikes). Everyone, even those who seem to have it all together, has something going on in their lives. Something is affecting them, something’s on their mind. I unfortunately think mental health sometimes has an awkward stigma around it. People are made to feel that if they share how they actually feel inside, that it’s showing some form of weakness (which is total bs in my humble opinion).

I truly think some of the strongest people in this world are those who own their feelings. That doesn’t mean you have to go spreading your every emotion to every person, but it does mean that you’re honest with yourself. You allow yourself to feel (trust me, I know this is hard). You don’t underplay or invalidate your own feelings. You give yourself a break. You give yourself time and space to heal or relax from whatever could be going on.

I believe mental health should be treated like physical health. If you’re not feeling 100%, you should be allowed space to breathe. That’s A-OK! You don’t have to be at your best every single day - that would be exhausting!

Overall, I am proud of you. You deserve all the hype in the world. You’re crushing it. You are doing the best you can, and that’s something to celebrate. I have full faith that everything will work out for you, and if you need someone, you know I’m always here. Be kind to yourself please 💜