This month, the world feels like a giant dumpster fire. There is so much hurt everywhere. Our team is diving into planning for next year, and I’m bringing with me to all of these conversations that May is Mental Health Awareness Month. The need to take care of ourselves in this work to build a just, abundant world beyond the climate crisis is so important to sustain.
It is spring in the midwest, finally. For all of us, connecting with the earth is a way to slow down and nurture our mental and emotional health — as we head into a season of climate extremes and grapple with the intersectional ways community harm and climate justice show up. So, GO OUTSIDE! NOW! I promise you will feel better.
Revel in the beauty of the natural world: slow down, pay attention, notice patterns and delights. (And if you don’t have easy access today or regularly, the practice of listening to and watching nature’s way on YouTube can have a similar effect.)
GO NOW, without headphones, so you can listen to the bird songs.
GET YOURSELF to a body of water. Listen to the waves lapping at the shore, watch the current flow downstream. Because water is life.
LAY DOWN on a bed of dandelions — first food for bees, while also edible and medicinal for humans. Pick one and rub it under your chin to see if you “like butter.”
LOOK UP in wonder at the tree branches, fractals of our own nervous and vascular body systems.
FEEL HER, our mother planet. Notice how she holds us up regardless of our attitudes toward her, unconditionally, with love.
SOAK UP the sun, let it sprinkle freckles across your face, let it warm your shoulders. Let vitamin D soak into your nervous system.
PUT YOUR HANDS in the soil. Notice how alive it is. Did you know the soil contains microbes that are natural antidepressants?
BE AMAZED and celebrate the tenacity of life. Allow it to give you hope and a grounding resilience; we are still here, still together, and still in the good fight for a better world.
Susan Phillips
Executive Director