As 2022 is coming to an end, I can’t believe that I have kept this up all year long. I am really proud of myself, especially because I didn’t have an accountability partner to help keep me focused on my business and putting out content. This year was was good to me, and I don’t take that lightly. I don’t say that to boast in anyway. I am just very appreciative of all of the gifts and blessing that came my way this year. I am abundantly thankful. I had to get that out of the way before I addressed how things have been going in this world. Take a deep breath, because this year has been a whirlwind for a lot of people. Many young people died from senseless violence, celebrities died by suicide, and many people died from illnesses including Covid-19 and even the flu. With death, grief always follows. Grief is always the emotion that most people don’t know how to manage. People shut it off, make themselves stop crying, and/or allow the grief to stop them from all sorts of life things, whether that be events or even activities of daily living. This post is not here to discuss how to deal with grief. I will give a word of suggestion though. If you are dealing with grief, allow yourself to feel. Notice why you feel the way the feel and allow yourself to feel whatever it emotion it may be. Give yourself grace in your emotions, and find a way to honor yourself and/or the person, place, or thing that you are grieving in your emotional state. And yes, I said that correctly, you can grieve more than people. Loss is loss. Often we don’t even recognize what we are feeling, because we don’t think that our loss was “enough” to grieve. I am not a grief counselor, but if grief has changed the course of your life, or you are finding it difficult to manage through grief, I know someone that I can refer you to, just message me.

Back to the thoughts of 2022. So many major things occurred in the media that stirred up many emotions in others, and some of them I addressed in my past blogs. I remember starting the year off thinking about the movie Encanto and talking about generational trauma. Now, they are doing a live version of Encanto at the Hollywood Bowl. It is very interesting how things come full circle. In my own generational trauma, I have healed so much as a person. I have made many revelations and have allowed myself to feel all of them, no matter how hard. I think I have cried more in this year, than I have ever cried in my entire life. It has felt like all my crying has made up for all of the times that I refused to allow myself to cry as a child, teenager, and even a young adult. Here’s the takeaway: Allow yourself to cry. If you haven’t heard this enough through my blogs this year, hear it again for the last time in 2022. Allow yourself to cry, and I mean a good “ugly” cry. The cry that you feel deep down in your body. Look inward for the answers you seek. Sit in silence or journal, but allow yourself to feel and cry, and notice what emotions arise for you. Lean into them instead of away from them, no matter how scary. If too scary, have someone trusted with you to “hold space” for you and to remind you that are safe in the present and not in the past. Trauma Recovery Coaching is good for this type of work. I have a coach that has done this for me, and it has changed my perspective in more ways than one. I can do similarly for you. Message me for more details on how or schedule a free 30 minute consultation.

One of my last thoughts of 2022 that I must address here. It felt like the buzz words of 2022, especially on LinkedIn were diversity, equity, and inclusion. Even my 9 to 5 employer had me working on Equity Initiatives to address the issues. Some of the things that I learned in this process is that we all have a learned perspective on DEI because of our personal and/or professional life experiences that have impacted us in some way. We have to learn how to listen to one another’s perspectives, even when we know that the biases exist, because we all have a bias in one way or another. Even if it is just an implicit bias. Let’s take the example, if you get stuck on the side of the road, who do you hope will stop to help you? How does this person look in your mind? Is this person a certain gender? race? have a certain ability-level? That picture perfect person that came to your mind, is your implicit bias at work. It is what it is. It is important to look for these types of biases in our lives every day and then challenge them. Why do we feel this way? We all hold some preconceived notion about other people and those preconceived notions are the problem. You may be asking yourself what does this have to do with mental health. Well, I help people with increasing their emotional awareness as a whole. Majority of the time that is just in mental health, but when I do public speaking I often talk about the stigma of accessibility for college level students with a disability, attempting to increase the audience’s emotional awareness of their biases that exist in the accessibility higher education realm. If you are high school student with a disability and need help with transitioning from high school to college, I can help you understand your transition and the gaps of information that high school doesn’t teach you. You can schedule a disability consultation with me anytime.

If you have followed me throughout the year or just reading one of my posts for the first time, I just want to say Thank You! I appreciate you! I hope that you all have a grace filled and peace filled holiday season!