PEACE OF MINE Blog
Are you mental?!
You don’t need to answer that. You’re mental. I’m mental. She’s mental. Your mother-in-law’s mental.
In the late eighties and early to mid-nineties, when we called our friends and frenemies ‘mental’, we meant stupid, crazy, weird, insane, out of their minds. (Sheesh — we were jerks.)
What does it really mean to be mental? The word has negative connotations, which have added to a lot of the stigma surrounding mental health as a whole. BUT — ‘mental’ actually describes anything having to do with the mind, just as the word ‘physical' has to do with the body.
You and I and everyone else has mental health, just as we all have physical health. Not everyone will experience mental illness per se, but we all have periods of time when we struggle with our mental well-being (Me?! Shocking, I know.), just as we all have physical health issues from time to time (Me?! Shocking, I know.)
Now that we’ve established that we’re both mental, we can be friends and chat about whatever we want. No secrets here.
I Have A Question For You
Do you agree that experiencing something like anxiety is hard enough, without having to deal with the shame and isolation that often comes with it? But times they are a changin’.
We now search online for breathing exercises to calm down our anxiety and to deal with stress. More of us are trying meditation to find inner peace and mindfulness. We use apps and Apple watches to remind us to take deep breaths or to exercise. Yoga classes are happening at every age from toddler to end-of-physical-life folks. We, as a whole, are discovering how important our mental health is. And that fact is awesome.
I was never someone who had anxiety to speak of. Or so I thought. Now I’m among the millions who have Google searched all of the things above in the past year or more. I have even dabbled in counseling (received, not provided). For one, it was free. Two, I kept going back because the counselor suited my personality.
I never thought I would go to therapy, let alone tell others about it. Personal counseling gives you that slightly more objective listener to bounce things off of. Even if you don’t have any seemingly pressing issues, talking to someone about everyday life helps you process things that have the potential of turning into a bigger deal than they need to.
I also took part in an over-the-phone group counseling session in winter 2021, which was great to connect with others feeling anxiety (again, it was free). It was meant to be for general anxiety, but most others were dealing with COVID-related stress on top of the day-to-day stuff. Good times, eh?
In my opinion, we all would benefit from counseling or therapy of some form or other, and free options are becoming more available as time goes on. But formal counseling isn’t the only way to deal with our issues in order to find clarity and mental well-being.
Well, If They Can Do It
Luckily, some celebrities and athletes and everyone in between are proving this by promoting mental health and support by publicly talking about their own lives and issues.
The first person to come to mind (right after the “2020” Tokyo Olympics, which took place in 2021 due to COVID-19), is the US Olympic gymnast, Simone Biles, who backed out of most of her competition to take care of her mental health. That’s huge! People looked up to her as an athlete, but now even more people can look up to her as a promoter of mental health.
It’s the same as people who join Alcoholics Anonymous, in that admitting that you have a ‘problem’ is half the battle. Especially when we admit it out loud to others. With our thoughts and emotions, when we tell others about them, that is half (if not more than half) the battle.
We also start to see that we’re definitely not alone in what we’re feeling. The more we talk, the more people come crawling out of the woodwork with the same emotions.
It’s like when we get a new Volvo (second-hand — obviously) - we notice more Volvos on the road. If we’re trying to get or are already pregnant, so is everyone else around us it seems. And whenever I wear my Wonder Woman costume to the grocery store I see tons of other people - staring at me. Bad example.
This blog and my company are just a small way that I’ve found to help myself, and You, to feel okay about the big (or little) emotions we go through each day.
You want to stay true to yourself, and I want the same for you and myself as I continue to set up and grow PEACE OF MINE™. If I were to only set up a store that sold products, I would not be able to sustain that happily. Just as you’re looking for more than a physical product, I am looking to give you more than a physical product. This blog is one of the ways that I can support that. We both deserve more, right?
And you deserve to know what you’ll get out of this blog, so here are just a sampling of things that I will touch on in the future. Each post will be informational about what has worked for me. (See Disclaimer here.)
- Mindfulness (A very broad term, but just so lovely to say, isn’t it?)
- Food (Hmm. Another broad term.)
- Okay, how about — What and how we can eat to help our brains and bodies? (In my opinion, of course. Based on reading and researching what has worked for me.)
- Exercise (Eww) (It doesn’t have to be long, though!)
- Yoga (This is exercise, but I’ll probably refer to it often. I do it on my own at home, and it helps, so I know I’ll want to talk about it on here.)
- Meditation (It’s not always your typical cross-legged Om-positioned activity. In fact, it’s often not.)
- And So Much More!
You and I are the same in that we both want to experience our best life possible. Do I have it all ‘together’? HAHAHAHA! Can you imagine?
But seriously, if any of us had it all ‘together’ we’d stop growing, and that’s when life would get boring. You and I can grow through this blog together. Let’s see what we can uncover about ourselves. I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Deal?
Feelings — you silly billy — show our feelings.
I’m willing to open up about my life, my personal anxiety, which colour underwear I’m wearing that day, and more. I hope this will help you understand that we need to talk. About our feelings, not our undergarments — unless they’re causing you emotional turmoil, then hey, I hear you.
As our need for positive vibes continues and grows, I wanted to be a part of bringing mental health to the forefront of our minds. Also, to give another way for folks to concentrate on bringing mindfulness and more joy to themselves and others.
I figured, to accompany this blog, and aside from tattooing inspirational words on our foreheads, what could be more blatant than wearing our inner thoughts, dreams and wishes on our chests? So I started designing shirts that would make me smile if I were to see others wearing them.
Each of my designs are based around mindfulness and mental health in some way. I enjoy coming up with the phrases and designs and I love writing the descriptions for each of them. Once we're done here feel free to check them out.
I want to thank you for coming. You’ve been a great listener. Has anyone ever told you you should be a counselor? As my daughters painted on rocks to leave out for people strolling by to see during the pandemic lockdown — “No matter the weather, we’re in this together.”
Thank you for considering Subscribing at the bottom right of this page to receive a note about new blog posts, and be the first to know about new products, discounts and promotions from my shop.
Please, share this blog with a friend or anyone you know who could benefit from joining in. You can do this below via Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, or be bold and use word-of-mouth. And I sincerely appreciate your comments with good vibes to lift each others’ moods.
If you feel like you want to show your PEACE OF MINE to others, or to give yourself a boost when you look in the mirror (although it would be backwards, but isn’t life that way sometimes?), you can always check out our T-shirts and more at the top of this page under SHOP. Let me know if they bring you any joy. There's more fun stuff to come!
See you soon.
Peace!
Jennifer
Small Print:
As per the disclaimer below, I am not claiming to be a mental or physical health professional of any kind. I just have a big interest in most things to do with the human body and mind, and hope to sell some T-shirts along the way. ;)
Although this blog and anything on my website are informational and my opinion on what has worked for me, if you’re ever offended by anything I say, please drop me an email at info@peaceofminestore.com and we’ll look into it together.