Darkness to Dialogue: Living Well With Mental Illness

​ Finding Safety, Clarity, and Strength One Word at a Time There’s something I’ve been paying attention to lately, something I didn’t want to ignore. The more I write, the more I feel something shifting inside me. It’s subtle at first, then obvious once I finally slow down enough to notice it. Writing is becoming part of my recovery in a way I didn’t expect. I didn’t start writing with the intention of healing. I just needed somewhere for my thoughts to land, especially on the days when my mind feels loud, and my body feels like it’s carrying twenty years of tension. But somewhere along the way, writing became more than expression. It became a regulation. Stabilization. Relief. “The page became the only place where my thoughts stopped fighting each other long enough for me to breathe.” I’ve lived with chronic stress, depression, and anxiety for most of my life. Trauma has shaped me in ways I’m still unlearning. Even with all the work I’ve done, there are days when my symptoms spike, wh...

  Estimated read time: 5 minutes Summary Burnout is not just a personal failure or a lack of self-care, especially for BIPOC communities. It's often the cumulative result of navigating: historical trauma generational expectations systemic oppression This post explores how internalized productivity culture disproportionately affects BIPOC mental health and how reclaiming rest is a radical act of resistance and healing. Unlearning the Need to Be Twice as Good For much of my life, rest didn’t feel like an option. It felt like a weakness. Growing up, I learned, directly and indirectly,  that to survive, I had to keep going. There was no room for pause, softness, or asking for help.  There were times when I truly believed I had to earn my worth by staying busy, performing twice as hard, and never letting anyone see me struggle. I grew up thinking that constant motion was the norm,  that rest was something you did only at the end of the day, once everything else was d...

When Memory Protects: The Link Between Trauma and Forgetting Have you ever looked back on a difficult time in your life and realized entire pieces were missing—conversations you can't recall, moments that feel foggy or distant? You're not alone. For many people, especially those who’ve experienced trauma, memory doesn’t behave like a straightforward timeline. Instead, the brain sometimes blurs, distorts, or blocks out painful memories as a survival response. This isn’t a flaw in your memory—it’s a reflection of just how deeply your mind tries to protect you. By exploring the connection between trauma and memory, we can better understand how the brain copes with overwhelming experiences, and why remembering—or not remembering—is a key part of healing. I can relate to this more than I ever thought possible. There are pieces of my past that I simply can’t recall—parts of my trauma that feel like they’ve been wiped away, as if my mind was trying to protect me from the pain. At ...