1,781 Quotes About Mental-health

You’re brave, did you know that?’He must have me mistaken for someone else. ‘You have all these fears, your body endures all this pain and heartache, but you keep going. I think that’s really brave.’I shake my head. My mind is telling me that he’s wrong. Brave is swords and shields. People who are fearless in the face of adversity. Warriors for social justice. Brave is not me. But my heart registers the way he’s looking at me now, and my shoulders straighten. I feel shiny, normal.

We are not all in the same boat. We are in the same storm. Some of us are on superyachts. Some of us have just the one oar.

We misfits are the ones with the ability to enter grief. Death. Trauma. And emerge.

What I learned from that intensely educational period of my life is that one kind of misfit is the person who suffers abuse or trauma and doesn't transcend it in the socially hoped-for way. We take a wrong turn or go deeper down. That's often looked at like a failure, but sometimes I wonder. I've learned things by taking the wrong turn or going down deeper that I could not have learned any other way.

If you are one of those people who has the ability to make it down to the bottom of the ocean, the ability to swim the dark waters without fear, the astonishing ability to move through life's worst crucibles and not die, then you also have the ability to bring something back to the surface that helps others in a way that they cannot achieve themselves.

It dawned on me that we have to breathe and to find reasons to stay alive on our own terms.

I 'passed' in every sphere of regular life I entered, but I entered those spheres less and less, and spent more and more time under the overpass.

My sadness is beautiful. It infuses everything I do. It is at the core of my identity and always has been, just as happiness is in some people. I refuse to be told that it's a flaw. I will not mute it with medications for the sake of society. I will hold it close to me and celebrate it rightfully while the rest of the world fails to see it for what it is and it will be their loss.

Words, just sometimes, can set you free.