Is my mental health invisible?

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, goals, inspire, joy, mental health, mental illness, parents, passion, presentations

This week I visited with a group of mothers of preschool children who welcomed me as I delivered my presentation entitled, “Seizing the Moment: Making the Most of Your Toughest Parenting Challenges”. I was struck by how many of these moms are professionals who are choosing to stay home with the kids, and many of them have degrees or experience in social work, psychology and mental health. This is a perfect combination if you ask me.

I used to believe, erroneously, that mental health was the absence of overt mental illness. You know, that if you did not suffer from some obvious and embarrassing mental deficiency then you were by default mentally healthy. I have since learned that mental health is not so simple. Mental health is a bit invisible, as I thought, but it is the presence of healthy attitudes and healthy understandings of the world around us and of ourselves, and not just the absence of trouble.

The goal for me as a parent is to help my children be who they are, love who they are, and then go out into the world and share their interests and abilities with joy and passion, hopefully thereby improving the world. And that’s what I hope to accomplish through my talks as well: to share my own passions and abilities out in the world, in an effort to inspire you to think carefully and deliberately about your role as a parent. These efforts, in theory, are some of the ways in which I am trying to foster mentally healthy individuals: me, you, and our kids.

Take a look at my Thank You Notes tab above to see what this group and others have said about my talks.

Helping kids find their passion

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being yourself, control, creativity, dreams coming true, express feelings, goals, inspire, joy, listening, motherhood, music lessons, parents, passion, relationship

I keep hearing parents tell me that they are looking for that one thing that their children will love to do, as if they might be able to discover their child’s passion for him. But I don’t think it happens that way. I think kids find their own passions, and having parents trying to locate them for them interrupts the natural process. Kids know that’s what’s going on, too, that their parents are hoping they will love something, and that puts pressure on them to love something. It is so much more natural to stay out of it. If you try to help your kid find his passion you may become exasperated because it is impossible to accurately imagine someone elses urges. The truth is that in the long run ideas develop and, if you are open to it, they lead to other ideas that spark interests you couldn’t possibly have predicted ahead of time, and those then might lead to feelings that turn into ideas that suggest something you later might like to do. It just isn’t so literal as ‘let’s see if ballet is your passion’. That’s why some people’s passions are growing flowers and others are making things out of corks. And all of this happens over time, without pressure, and because it really is a true love. And everyone knows you cannot force love.

I am all for letting kids try things since after all they cannot understand life’s opportunities without being shown a few of them, but trying something and then deciding that’s not the passion because it isn’t fun for the long haul does not make sense. For me great reasons parents might have their children try an activity are for social experiences, or for getting exercise, or for developing talents or interests. Music lessons are great for teaching long term goals and for offering a source of expression and joy that comes later. And, of course, kids do not understand these abstract concepts. To me signing kids up for activities is a means adults have of giving their children these wonderful gifts, and do not have a lot to do with legitimately searching for passions.

The best way to help a child find his passion: listen well to his actions.

My kids thought I was just making cookies and muffins but I was actually on my way to a masterpiece

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asylum, baking, being yourself, cooking, dreams coming true, express feelings, goals, inspire, natural talent, passion, Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent Van Gogh took to wandering the streets barely clothed, barely fed, sleeping outdoors and muttering incoherently to himself like a vagabond for a year. He so upset everyone around him with his wayward behavior that his family decided to have him committed to an asylum where he could be hidden.

He resisted the asylum, yet complained of gnawing disappointment with himself for failing to meet his father’s expectations. He felt so low he wrote that if he ceased to be it would be best for all, yet he defended his actions as a man of passions, and claimed that his hands were tied, and that he was maddened by pain, unable to free himself as if he were a captive bird.

He wrote that ‘one does not always know what he can do’. Under all this he instinctively felt that he was good for something. He asked, “How can I be of use? How can I be of service? There is something inside me but what can it be?”

Silly me. I am still waiting for my path and Vincent’s to diverge before we both go crazy. I have not literally stripped myself and wandered aimlessly, but I have felt gnawing disappointment for failing to meet my father’s expectations. I have wondered what it would be like to just not be, and I have felt unable to free myself as if a captive bird. I am aware that I do not always know what I can do. And I instinctively know that I am good for something.

But now I see that it is here when Vincent starts drawing carefully and methodically, with great passion, that we head our separate ways. Already he is much more possessed than I. He cannot see beyond his own pain to meet with another and form a family, or quiet himself to hold a job, or rest enough to consider anything but the driving forces that push him. He is tortured to the point that by the age of twenty-seven Vincent can accomplish little besides scratching out pictures of everything he sees with dark pencils. Me, at twenty-seven, I was married and working. My feelings might have been similar but my actions were quite different.

This leads me to wonder whether if I’d just kept indulging in my true passion at the time, baking, maybe by this point in my life, like Vincent, I too would have created a masterpiece.