Feeling Emotional

I think it is exceptionally healthy to look at my mental health experience and feel all of the emotions that are attached to it. It gives me a depth of emotional landscape that is often missing from current society. My mental health experience has led me to a place of increased empathy, compassion, and kindness that I do not think I would have reached if I had not had my experience. You have to be empathetic, compassionate, and kind to yourself through this process. You have to have a heartfelt love for yourself to be able to hold what can sometimes be a painful experience. I think society could learn a lot from those of us who have had a mental health experience. I often feel sad about what I have experienced, and I feel 'ok' admitting this. Crying is a healing modality, and sometimes I cry not through pain but through a deep recognition of what I've been through and the strength it has taken to come out of it into a healthy place. Dare I say it, but it's potentially an even healthier place than if I hadn't had the experiences I did. We are not broken. We are whole people standing strong and unapologetically in our wholeness, and given the way in which society stigmatizes us and we stigmatize ourselves, it's unsurprising and acceptable to feel emotions around our experiences. This is natural and should be embraced.