Our body is in tune with our mind and our emotions, and guilt is a strong emotion. Prioritizing and time management are essential, but too many people make it more stressful than it needs to be! While I am going to school fulltime, working full time, and raising children full time who all have extra-curricular activities, extra time is not a luxury that I have to waste. Since physical health is also part of nutrition, I have found that it is most important and beneficial to ensure that I am receiving the right amount of fruits, vegetables, and protein in my diet. For many people this means have a special diet of cutting out carbs and sugars, and beating ourselves up when we decide to eat a cupcakes on day, and then repeat that behavior the next day. This anger toward themselves is masked guilt, and guilt is a strong emotional signal that our brain sends to our body. Ensuring that we are maintaining mental, physical and nutritional health starts with our mental health. I've been someone who has tried the diets and fallen off, and hated myself for it. The weight came back faster and the will to do more physically, depleted quickly. That's why I have decided to do less worrying about being perfect at being healthy, because it is not good for my mental health. Balance is what is important. I may not always eat 3 meals a day. I may start my day with an energy drink. It's not healthy, and I'm realistic about that, but I don't beat myself up for it. I get in the shower, turn my music on, and dance around house while I get ready for work. The dancing raises my heart rate and gets my blood flowing early in the day. If I have time I will do the "Lazy Girl Workouts" app on my phone, because it increases the heartrate and doesn't break too much of a sweat to make me need another shower. I always take the stairs, and I try to make laps around the block in between clients. I work in an outpatient mental health clinic which means we have drug reps coming in regularly providing catering in exchange for giving us their newest medication information. The catering is rarely healthy. I try to ensure that I start with a salad or vegetables if they are available, and then end with the carbs. This alleviates the guilt that I would feel later for filling up on carbs. In the evening, I trade off cooking with my boyfriend. We rarely to never eat out or order from fast food and pizza restaurants, and try to ensure that we have a somewhat healthy dinner that we eat at the table with our children. On Tuesdays, sometimes I will have a virtual class that I have to attend. On the Tuesdays that I don't have that class, I go to a hip-hop aerobics class. It's only once a week, but as I become more used to it, if my time allows, I will sign up for more. None of this is a perfect plan, but this is the best way that I have found to balance all of the aspects of my life and maintain my mental, physical, and nutritional health.

The song "Keep on Singing my Song" by Christina Aguilera has always been the one song (since I was a senior in high school) that would bring me back to life and remind me that no matter what may come my way, I'm capable of overcoming all obstacles that life has to give me. It reminds me that life is all about perspective and that the only person that I have to prove anything to is myself. It may not be the most upbeat song to some, but to me it has feeling and life, it expresses the passion that someone needs to feel when they are truly brought back to personal faith. This is the song that you sing from your heart, feeling like you are giving it credit, knowing that you'll never sound as great as she does singing it. It doesn't matter though, because your negative perspective has just been given new meaning.

I think that this statement can go either way. There is definitely a "nature vs. nurture" debate when it comes to this. Therefore I would like to express my own personal experiences with this situation. As someone who grew up in a home with a very abusive alcoholic, I was sure that when my mother divorced him that I would never want anything to do with this life. My biological mother and father are not addicts or alcoholics. However, both of them are guilty of being in relationships with partners who were. When the abusive alcoholic left the home, I can remember months later being upset because I came home and opened the refrigerator and saw a case of beer that my mother's boyfriend had brought. Fast forward, not even a year, and I had begun to develop an issue with alcohol. Why? I would guess that it comes down to PTSD that had been unresolved. Visions of the things that I had witnessed were still fresh in my mind and due to mental health still being such a stigma, it never occurred to my mother to have her children sent to counseling after we had escaped the ordeal. Alcoholism was the start and in my mind as a teenager was not a way to deal with trauma, but rather just "partying with friends". As I continued to drink, other things were made present in the environment in which I was in and I began to develop more than an alcoholism issue. It's not something that would have most likely been classified as an addiction, but due to the nature of the environment that I grew up in, it did not seem as immoral as others who may have had a better lifestyle. Unfortunately, there was more than just the alcoholic tendencies that were learned in this childhood. As was previously mentioned, my mother was not an addict or an alcoholic. Her lack of self-esteem caused her to end up in more than one relationship like this, it is just the only one that I very vividly remembered and was what shaped my view of what a relationship is acceptable to look like. This caused me to also settle for less than my worth and carry on the generational curse of toxic relationships. Toxic relationships continue to diminish mental health and increase addictive behaviors. Years of going out of one and into another of these relationships lead my addiction into a dark place and once I came across someone who appeared to be very intelligent and had been dealt a bad hand, I felt that I had found a relationship that was not going to continue to take me back into the throws of addictions. Unfortunately, this relationship was so manipulative and narcistic that I felt stuck for a long time and this is the person that I ended up conceiving children with and marrying. It wasn't until after his untimely death that was caused by suicide, that I was finally able to move on and begin to make something of my life. What is interesting about this is that he had also grown up in an addictive family and was following a learned environment. I can fully admit through my own recovery that he was only following the example that he had learned in his own life, and that included the toxic traits that I had learned and also put him through. So how do we respond to life's challenges? I believe that we are constantly learning our way. How my children develop will provide me with better insight.

In the past year I have learned to accept love and be able to give it as substantially as I am accepting it. To a normal person this may not sound like much, but for me it is huge. Ever since the passing of my husband I have had an issue with being able to find interest in anyone. I would date for a couple of months, find something about them that was irritating, and move on. As a single mother of 2 young children, I was unwilling to allow too many people around my children and eventually accepted that I was not meant for the family life, but instead would take care of the children I have, go to school, make a significant living to support my children, and do everything on my own. Until a year ago. Someone came in my life and as much as I tried to fight it and find reasons for it to not work, I had to finally admit that there was something different about this. After a few months, I finally allowed myself to be able to accept the love that was being given and be able to give it back. Why is this a journey of self-discovery? It sounds like what everyone looks for, right? Not me. My life became different and I lost all interest in the "American Dream" when I lost the father of my children. It was what we wanted and a goal that we thought we would accomplish together, and I knew I couldn't create the family dynamic that we wanted without him. I had given up on such a life, and my focus was to ensure that the children never had to want for anything. Within the past year I have moved back to the town that I grew up in, where I was always judged and looked down upon because of my family history and my personal history with addiction. Small towns don't forget. Normally I would fade into the background and be preparing for my next move to get back out. I now live here, in this small town, with my children, my boyfriend, and his teenage son who I have claimed as my own. We are a whole family, and we are completely happy. I still keep enough separate that I can escape if I need to. I don't think that it will be necessary, but we don't change overnight. Having this family has created a structure that my children have never experienced. It is a little different for them because I've been too busy to incorporate much discipline, but they are thriving (despite their reluctance). What of this small town that we live in? It is a work in progress. I work for a company that is one of the few mental health facilities available which grants me the opportunity to become further involved in community research meetings in the area. My new teenage son is the best on the High School Cross Country team, which means that there are ample opportunities to be involved in the community sports functions. The self-discovery that I have found, is an inner peace. I'm continuing to further my education because I still want to provide the substantial life for this family, however if we were to already own a home - there wouldn't be anything else to work for. Happiness is something that I have found in this past year, and it was found through the exact emotion and life that I planned to omit.

Recovery is knowing who I am, the person that I am meant to be, not what drugs and alcohol created of me. Knowing me is a gift because I know now what self-love is and why it is so important in recovery as well as all relationships that we maintain throughout life. Just under 5 years ago I made the decision to go into recovery. I had recently lost my husband and went into a horrible relapse that had cost me a significant amount of money, my sanity, my home, my children, and was on the verge of losing my freedom. When going into treatment and then a long-term sober living program while awaiting the reunification of my children, I discovered that the only way to be a good mother to them was to fully submerge myself into the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous. As I'm building a successful education level and seeing a promising future, I am consistently granted the opportunity to see that my recovery makes everything possible. I am able to see my flaws as they are, rather than give justification for my negative actions, and right my wrongs. Putting a relationship with a Higher Power at the forefront of all my relationships as learned through the program grants me inner peace. This is a subject I can write on for days and will never feel as though I have given it justice. Thank your for your consideration!

My life has been filled with traumatic instances that have caused a significant decline in my mental health that I have noticed mostly while between degrees. Domestic Violence relationships, growing up in an abusive home due to an alcoholic step-father, witnessing my husband commit suicide, being kidnapped, and most importantly a long history of addiction, have all contributed to a series of mental health issues. However, as unfortunate as these may seem they are very necessary for my future. Working now in mental health and my previous employment in addictions treatment, has shown me that there is a great impact that can be made by continuing education in the field of mental health and helping others in ways that I had not been helped when I may have needed it the most. What I find most interesting about working in these fields, is that due to my extensive history, there are few things that I can not directly relate to and be able to "life coach" a client into a new perspective. What I have learned, and am still learning, is that every person's experiences are different and unique to their life. Every person on the planet has a story. Some are easier than others, some are horrible. What may seem to be a small in comparison to my experiences, does not mean that it is small to that person because it may be bigger than they have ever experienced, or may be just the one small thing that finally set them to their breaking point. Alcoholism, addiction, bipolar, anxiety, depression, PTSD, ADHD, borderline personality disorder, OCD. These are a few of the diagnosis of regular clients in my current line of work. They look different on each person, and it is important to know the whole person and their experiences that have shaped them in order to have a full understanding of their mental health. This is my goal in the mental health field, is to know the person before the diagnosis. Thank you for your consideration.

There are many significant pieces in my past that can qualify me for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, though to list them would be inappropriate. However, having gone through these things can not only created PTSD, but also spurts of depression, anxiety, self-doubt and over-confidence that can lead a clinician to diagnose bipolar. As someone who works in Mental Health and is pursuing a more substantial future in the field, I understand the importance of maintaining stability in my personal mental health. I believe that it is important to maintain mental wellness through a variety of actions. I would prefer not to take a series of medications everyday, which means that I have to stay vigilant in other areas. Spirituality is important to me and is practiced through meditation, self-help groups and steps, and continuing to educate myself on the ways to live in spiritual principles. I have never been great at talk-therapy, but was blessed when I entered into a 12-step program with finding a sponsor who is a therapist, and that helps me to bridge the gap. Letting go of resentments and hostility as well as finding the things in life that have caused me to put myself into the situations that created the traumatic situations to happen around me (even if it means that I allowed myself to be present) are necessary to my understanding why and how I may act in ways that will negatively effect myself and my family. Maintaining my mental health is important because it is not just my wellbeing that I have to be concerned with. There are little people watching me and expecting me to show them the ways to navigate through life. With the amount of people in the world who suffer from mental health issues, it is likely that they will also need to learn how to manage their own mental health in ways that will best suit them. Since different things work for different people, it will be up to them and whatever route they choose to follow for guidance, to decipher which ways will be most beneficial for them. I believe that maintaining personal mental wellness can occur through many options in addition to the previous spiritual remedies that were mentioned previously. Mental, physical, and spiritual health work together and for me to be completely content, I have to be sure that all are intact. For myself, maintaining a proper diet, including periodic physical activity, keeping a healthy relationship with my family, and acknowledging when I am thinking in ways that can lead me to act in ways that are not concurrent with my beliefs are necessary ways of maintaining my mental wellness. There are a number of ways that I go forth with keeping my mental health intact and some of unorthodox in the clinical field. All are meant to build a positive environment and mindset. I hope this information is substantial and thank you in advance for your consideration.

My name is Julie and I am the widowed mother to 2 young boys who are ages 6 and 7. Five years ago, their father (my husband) committed suicide. The boys were too young to remember him, and after going through a series of unfortunate events that were a result of my attempt to cope with the loss, I was finally awarded an opportunity to make a decision. I could either go down a very dark path and take the chance of my children losing both their parents, or I could do something different and take the steps necessary to make a successful life for my children. In 2019 I took the steps to go back to school. Something that I had attempted more than a decade prior, and had given up when it got hard. I knew this time that giving up wasn't an option. No one is going to step in and take care of my children, and it isn't anyone else's responsibility. Coming from a low income family that was surrounded in alcoholism, domestic violence, and trauma is not a childhood that I want to pass on to my children. As of August 2022 I have completed a Bachelor's Degree in Health Sciences from West Virginia State University. I now have been accepted into Marshall University to study Master of Counseling program for Mental and Clinical Health, as well as Master in Public Administration. Having these education programs in my background will allow me the opportunity to not only be able to help others who have suffered the trauma I can personally relate to, but also have the insight to help underserved communities build programs and organizations to bridge the gap in their resources. I hope that this is insightful. Though the loss of my husband is horrible and traumatic, I would have never gained the motivation to take control of my life without this loss. Thank you for your consideration, Julie Kimball