Yesterday, I spent my morning wrapped in the comfort of my favorite PJs on an over-sized sectional on my back porch (aka my favorite room in my house) sipping my favorite Yogi tea and snuggling with my kiddo and doodle pups. The breeze cutting through the Georgia humidity was perfect, the view of the palm trees and Live Oaks and Jasmine around the pool was perfect, and College GameDay on the mounted television was the icing on the cake.
Sounds idyllic, right? Well, stick with me.
The TV announcer told a story of a coach who had lost his father to suicide at a very young age. A story of a young boy growing up and being made fun of for “not having a father,” clearly something this young man had no control over. A story of someone who was able to take his pain, confusion, isolation and deeply charged emotions that often felt like anger and channel them into something that he COULD control. “Ok, so he has a dad, but I’ll beat him on the field.” The athletic field. And he did just that, for years.
He accomplished. He won. He built. He married. He kept going. Some would say that he channeled his hurt into something productive and reached that pinnacle of success that MUST mean he was … healed. But this man, now a college coach of a high-performance team with a beautiful home and, by all accounts, an idyllic life, only realized in recent years that he hadn’t fully processed his father’s departure decades ago and the loss he felt every day since. He was still beating people on the field, but what he wanted was to beat the enemy within so many who struggle through their daily lives with unspoken hurt, unresolved trauma and untreated illness.
His story conjured such familiar feelings: a deep gratitude for the life I live, a simultaneous knowing of the mental battles people encounter all day every day, how far we’ve collectively come in broadening the conversation around mental health, and how far we still have to go. It also reminded me — actually stopped me right in my tracks — that no matter how it appears to others, everyone is dealing with big and small things in life.
It doesn’t matter what you have or what you don’t. It doesn’t matter if you’re married or single. If you have kids or not. If you have the biggest house or the teeniest apartment. If you have the big job or the “small” job (there are no small jobs!). If you spend your weekends on your boat or if you spend them working a second or third job.
None of this erases where you’ve been. It doesn’t diminish your daily battles, whether you are someone struggling with mental health, playing a support role to someone in peril, or recovering from the trauma and devastation left in its wake.
No amount of dressing up any form of the struggle eliminates it.
I’ve watched colleagues and family members and friends struggle in the past two years in ways they never have before. The pressure felt on a daily basis is beyond burnout; it’s paralyzing, isolating, overwhelming. The continued dismissal of these issues by many adds fuel to a fire designed to burn us down. And while there are no magic words, no one-size-fits-all approach that can fix all of the anxiety and depression and burdens people carry, there is a collective and individual responsibility to keep the conversations open and accepting and to remain aware of the fact that a “new normal” for some actually meant that things might never be normal for them again. We have a responsibility to foster home and work environments that encourage communication and boundaries and respect. People need to feel safe to share without judgment, shame or punishment.
Coach Ryan Day is an example of taking action, and in living and demonstrating this responsibility to others. His desire to “beat it on the field” continues to break down the stigmas attached to seeking help versus acting out and speaking up instead of keeping hidden battles hidden. “You don’t need to be in crisis.”
On this World Mental Health day, our team will be making a donation to the Ryan and Christina Day Fund for Pediatric and Adolescent Mental Wellness. Every day, we will continue to foster a work environment that supports open discourse and exemplary resources for our team and will continue to advise our clients on how to do the same.
Because no one needs to live in crisis.