Strong Is The New Weak
‘Strong’ seemed a strange word for the context, yet there it was scrawled on the board – as a negative word. It was during an event I helped facilitate at my local yoga centre in support of mindfulness and community mental health as all the participants – all of whom were acknowledging their everyday internal struggles, like depression or anxiety – came up with their word of significance with regards to mental health. There were many other words you may expect, like apathy, numb, alone, angry, isolated – But ‘strong’? The person who contributed the word shared with the group that for a full two years after her mother’s death (when she was urged to be strong by herself and others) she did not grieve. Instead she became emotionally numb; she felt no sadness, no joy. She was simply functioning, and living an emotionally numb existence. She described it as having a muffler on her life – none of her experiences during that time were truly felt in the same way as she had used to fe