As We Near World Mental Health Day – Tips For Looking After Our Mental Health 💆

Thank you guys and gals re the poem I posted re

self-care, celebration, of your life, self compassion,

Derek Walcott says it SO well.

He make self compass so present so real so touching so inspiring. he makes it easy.

Please share his poem online and to friends and strangers

Share love, we all need it,

daily

How about

''Give us this day our daily bread, and self-compassion poem?!

You guys are my and yours disability caring family.

@ChristineC1 I've just spent a long time writing an elaborate response to you that was lost when I posted it. So I posted it again and again it was lost. I don't know what's going on but I have to get to bed now. I'll try again tomorrow. Hopefully this message gets through. Good night. 😽💞

Hi @ChristineC1

Thanks for your lovely note! I hope you got your soup making sorted. I do soup batches too and freeze them. Re any eating program, I have a lot dietary restrictions and nutrition necessities for mental and physical health, and stick to those guidelines. Thank you so much, though, for your suggestion. The image you create of all the neighbours scarfing down my freezer food in an emergency is delightful! LOL! Thank you for that image. That's a funny image to keep in mind as I work through my emergency preparedness. You have a lot of great ideas for emergencies. Do you have a plan in place, or do you feel safe enough that your community has your back? I'm working on a plan in my head right now, and I think it's going to work. Like you say, it's about making small steps that add up to big steps. So I've got the basic framework already done in my head, like the foundation for a house. Now I'm building the walls - the outer walls and the rooms. Then comes the roof. Then the decorating. Each step has its challenges, you know.

I hope you're okay for your prep so far for your Tuesday surgery and that you're looking forward to spending some time with your sister. What a fantastic sister to come to take care of you. Perhaps you're grieving your parents and grandma not being there right now? Maybe you can consider like I do that our relatives never die because we are made of their flesh. I mean they don't die because their love lives on in our hearts and their memories live on in our minds. But they also literally physically are alive in our very own flesh. So when you look at your hands or your feet or your legs or your knees or your tummy, well, you're looking at them too, not just you. So they are with you now and during your surgery and afterwards. Maybe that's helpful?

So we're on for 11 AM UK time on Tuesday. It works out great for me too at that time because I will be just rolling into my hotel in Granada for my first trip as a disabled person. So I'll undoubtedly need a little grounding too. I just stocked up on incense, as I do about once or twice a year. So you can have your pick of which one you want, or you can let me decide. Here they are:

And here are the meditation bells, incense holder, candle and candle holder that I'll bring:

And here is a little song for you too, to hopefully bring you comfort at any time. Back in the late 90s when I was living in Toronto, I saw a beautiful concert by Charlotte Church. She was so talented yet humble. She was gushing over a scarf she was wearing that she had just bought in Little India. She sang one of my favourite songs so sweetly and so sincerely that she brought me to tears. Here it is, a cover of Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Waters.

Love and hugs and kisses for you and Sweetie.