By Joan Zhang

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‍A Reflection from World Mental Health Day 

Yesterday was World Mental Health Day, and it’s a day that I’m grateful exists as we fight to normalize conversations about mental health and it’s been incredible to see how far we’ve come in the past decade. I had the opportunity to meet up for bubble tea with a few of our Arise ambassadors who are bravely opening up the conversations about eating disorders on their college campuses and it brought me so much hope to see the boldness & creativity that this next generation of future therapists, researchers, and advocates bring to the mental health field. On World Mental Health Day, the “World” part stood out to me as a reminder to me of how our mental health is intimately interconnected & impacted by the world around us. And we have all collectively gone through so much in recent years, yet I think few have had the opportunity to process & heal.

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At Arise, our team has a recurring phrase that our CMO, Dr. Erikka Taylor, first highlighted in an all-team meeting: “Life is life-ing.” This simple phrase captures that dichotomy of how we’ve all had to balance tragedy, loss, grief, and hardships with continual resilience & persistence. To say that this team is resilient is a massive understatement. As a team with significant presence along the Gulf coast, we’ve survived hurricanes and week-long power outages in record-breaking heat. We’ve experienced the full circle of life with the hope & pain that encompass both ends. We’ve fought endlessly to protect our rights, all while watching legislation pass that threatens the safety of our communities. We’ve witnessed so much violence both globally and close to home that has impacted us personally & the members we support. We’ve seen our communities wiped out in North Carolina & Florida - two states where we not only have team members based but also where we support members struggling with eating disorders. So much life happens every single day, and we’ve gotten extremely adept at survival.

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Personally, I know that my resilience has been built on a lifetime of survival & necessity, and I know that is a sentiment that so many who are the “firsts” in their communities share. My own personal motto in the past few years was, “the sun rises, the sun sets, and life keeps going.” And ironically, the night I had been sitting with this thought, I received news that a beloved orchestra director had passed from cancer. The world suddenly halted for me. I realized that the world may keep moving, but the opportunity for me to truly experience life and the community around me is so precious and finite. There’s a deafening permanence that comes with loss. When I attended the memorial service, I had the sobering realization that I had not spoken to this teacher and many of my classmates in over a decade. I wish that I had taken the time to express one last time just how much of an impact this teacher made in my life and the father figure he embodied for so many students. For that weekend, I forced myself to be still and present with my community to grieve, reconnect, and commemorate life. 

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And without a doubt, the world kept moving after that weekend, and I along with it. But there are moments that necessitate pause to fully embrace the humanity that comes with life. When we think of resilience, we often focus on the bounce back & the victory, but there’s so much power in the valley when we recognize the humanity in ourselves and create the space to build back stronger. We all saw this embodied on the global stage with the one and only GOAT, Simone Biles. So on the day after World Mental Health Day, I want to take a moment and pause to reflect on all of the life we as a global community have continued to survive. And my hope is that we acknowledge that mental health isn’t an on / off switch that we can magically cure and solve for. Mental health is tied to our social surroundings and all of the life that happens around us - the loss, tragedy, conflict, and destruction, that can in many instances manifest in anxiety, depression, PTSD, and struggles with food & substances. Our goal with recognizing mental health is to eradicate the shame & stigma that comes with the notion that mental illnesses are any individual’s fault or shortcoming and focus on how we can support our immediate communities at the micro level and build better systems of support at the macro level. 

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In the months to follow, my hope is that we can pause & recognize all that we and our communities have persisted through. It’s so much, and sometimes it’s too much. Life will probably never stop life-ing, but the human in me sees the human in you.