Mental Health Awareness Month

For anyone who may not be aware, May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Also referred to as ‘Mental Health Month’, it has been observed in May in the United States since 1949, reaching millions of people in the United States through the media, local events, and screenings. With time the month has shifted from being observed in just the United States to being observed the world over.

Last year for Mental Health Awareness Month I took the month off to use the blog as a platform to share guest posts from people who struggle with their mental health like I do. It served as the inaugural Guest Post Wednesday for all of May as I decided that every year going forward I will exclusively put up guest posts in May for Mental Health Awareness Month to:

1. Show others that they are truly not alone.
2. Add more voices to the fight to destigmatise conversations around mental health because every mind matters.

Last year’s posts were from Wanjiru Mugenda, Nyambura Kinyanjui, Murage Macharia and Warimi Karogo, and if you have not read their posts yet I highly recommend you do so as they were both deeply moving and highly informative.

In the post I put up last year to draw awareness to Mental Health Awareness Month I wrote:

I mentioned in my last post that I have not been in a good place of late and the impending Mother’s Day is not helping at all. So the break will be good for me because my head is just sooo busy and full right now and I need to sort it out ASAP.

One year later and sucks to be me because I am still not in a good place at all. If anything, I am worse off than last year 😐 Ever since my mum died on December 13, 2017 at 1:10 a.m. the month of May has always been a difficult one for me because of Mother’s Day. I usually start dreading Mother’s Day the second May checks in, but this year I have been dreading it since end of March. Why that early? I do not know. What I do know is at some point during the Easter break I had a very vivid flashback of my last Mother’s Day as a daughter and since then it has been top of mind that my fourth motherless Mother’s Day is coming. Now we are just days away from the second Sunday in May and the Mother’s Day promotions on social media, which began towards the end of April, are in full swing now. I wish there was a way on Instagram that I could mute everyone and everything that puts up promotions for Mother’s Day. I do not go online on Mother’s Day because it is always sooo heartbreaking seeing people and accounts I follow post their living mums yet mine is dead, but surely how do I avoid promotional posts that begin in APRIL!!??

I do not remember my first motherless Mother’s Day as it fell on the 13^th, which marked the five month anniversary of my mum’s death. Most likely I spent the day doing what I usually do on Sundays, which is drink wine and catch up on all the TV shows I watch, except I probably drank all! of! the! wine!! But as I said I am not sure. For all I know I may have gotten blackout drunk and was passed out for most of the day. My second motherless Mother’s Day I spent it on the road as I was en route to Nairobi from Bungoma as the day before was my paternal grandfather’s funeral. Last year’s Mother’s Day was the worst though, for reasons I will not share, and it was what prompted me to be proactive this year with coming up with a plan to combat the heartbreak Mother’s Day always come with for us in The Unmothered Club.

Last year for Christmas my family and I had our inaugural Secret Santa and my Santa gifted me this:

First things first BEST! GIFT! EVER! I am the biggest Taylor Swift fan this side of the Sahara and I LOOOVE reputation sooo much I got it tattooed.

I like to save special things for special occasions so I have been saving reading the magazine for the right time. When I started thinking about what I can do to make Mother’s Day more bearable for me, I realised that this month, more so this week, is the perfect time to break it out. I have also been listening to folklore A LOT, like every two days, and all the folklore songs I previously said I like in my evermore post I now LOVE!!!

august in particular is what is singlehandedly getting me through this depressive episode I am currently in.

On Sunday I plan to read The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides.

The book caught my attention at some point last year and after I saw someone I know say in her Goodreads review that she read it in one sitting I began searching for it fervently to read it as part of my 2020 Reading Challenge. However I was not the only one who really wanted to read it as it was sold out in all bookstores. I finally got a copy of it last month and have decided to read it on Mother’s Day. Kwanza now that restaurants have reopened I will take myself out for a long, expensive, boozy lunch and while away the day with good food, good cocktails and a good book. And who knows, I may also finish it in one sitting which would be perfect because then MY LEAST FAVOURITE DAY OF THE YEAR would be over before I know it.

However, while Mother’s Day is already making me sad, it is not my only source of stress. In fact it is not even among the top three things that are currently stressing me the fuck out, hence I said I am worse off than last year. Last week when I started writing this post I was really struggling with my mental health. Thankfully I am in a much better space now, but I also know full well how my mental fitness ebbs and flows, and the closer we get to Mother’s Day the harder it will be for me to hold on to this positive wave I am currently riding. So I am grateful for this break because I need to dedicate some quality time to my mental health.

See you in June and till then have a lovely, healthy, peaceful May and stay safe.