Bereaved Parent Month: STILL Need Mental Health Days Eleven Years Later

This past week I've been able to enjoy a few precious days alone in my home.

As an introvert, alone time is important to me. It's how I recharge my emotional, spiritual and psychological batteries. It's how I gird my loins for social interaction and ministry.

I seldom get it.

So these hours of silence, self-reflection, personal freedom and solitude have been a huge blessing! I didn't realize how very badly I needed some mental health days.

For all my talk of boundaries and self-compassion, I rarely manage to keep others from invading my personal space and time I (theoretically) have reserved for my own priorities.

I beat myself up for not showing up or giving up or giving in when someone calls, texts or messages. I rush to fill others' buckets without recognizing my own is empty.

I love order. But in the crazy of life I too often settle for managed chaos.

I'm not OCD.

The order I crave isn't everything lined up alphabetically and precisely. It is, instead, the kind of order where I don't have to panic when I need a receipt to invoke a warranty or can find that tool or sewing notion so I can finish a project.

Order and routine free space so I can do creative things or fun things or even necessary things without unnecessary panic and inordinate amounts of time looking for this or that.

So these mental health days have been filled with organizational projects.

I dug through our family room closet. You know the one-full of board games, videos, DVDs and random bits and bobs from years past. I had the time to not only sort the stuff but to also sort the memories.

I pulled out all the linens in a too small and not-very-practical "linen closet" in the upstairs hallway. Washed 15 loads and dried them all on the clothesline to bring sunshine fresh to old fabric. Oh, the days of boys and beds and favorite ball teams!

Nostalgia isn't always a good thing.

I made piles to give away and piles to stash for future projects with the grands. Old sheets can make a wonderful over-the-table hideaway for little pirates!

I was also able to do a lot of thinking. So often when life is full of noise and people our minds simply stash what should be processed.

I've never been on a luxury cruise but I imagine the way I feel now after these quiet days is how one might feel after such a vacation.

Pampered, refreshed, renewed, reoriented to the most important things in life and reenergized to tackle them.

High recommend. <3