EXPERIENCE + UNDERSTAND

Speak with your wallet and support Arizona-based Morning Mist Soap Co., run and owned by an inspired Diné women + mother with a dream to create high-quality products out of the purest ingredients.

Why This Matters For Your Mental Health

My wife started getting these products about 6 months ago or so, and I love them. How I treat my body has a direct reflection on my mental health. 

I'm no soap connoisseur, but Rocio Francis knows what she's doing. This has to be some of the best skincare products I've used, if not the best. The soap and moisturizing bar are both amazing.

It's better if you just read Francis' own words:

"I pride myself on only partnering with local businesses, farmers, markets or my own backyard. All ingredients are locally sourced and responsibly harvested. When you support Morning Mist Soap Co., you support an inspired Diné women + mother, with a dream to create high-quality products out of the purest ingredients. Each order comes with a little happy dance + a push to continue creating and working."

Be amazed by this award-winning optical-illusion video.

Why This Matters For Your Mental Health

Have you ever watched one of those videos where you're told that there's a trick coming and that you have to see if you can spot it? 

Every time, I tell myself I'm going to relax, stay super composed, and figure it out. Every time, it doesn't happen.

Why? 

Because we're human, and brains don't always work the way we think they should. 

Our brains are always going to default to try to make meaning out of lots of random inputs, and that, unfortunately, means we miss things from time to time.


READ + REFLECT

Sign up for 30 days of short reflections you'll actually want to read.

Why This Matters For Your Mental Health

I've mentioned before that I use Holstee's Reflection Journal for computer-based journaling. 

They are an incredibly thoughtful company, and I was blown away by their 30-day email series.

I was so used to email series trying to sell me something, but the quality of these short, digestible daily reflections helped me create new meaning in my life. 

One of the reflections turned me on to the word "sonder," which is how I got to the next mental health resource for this week.

Dive deeper into finding the meaning and mystery behind emotion-packed words.

Why This Matters For Your Mental Health

Humanity amazes me. 

According to Wikipedia, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a website and YouTube channel, created by John Koenig, that coins and defines neologisms for emotions that do not have a descriptive term. He's been doing this for about a decade!

Sometimes, we don't have words for what we're feeling, and that's OK. 

They often come to us in time, and I find that drawing from a variety of quality sources helps me make sense of my moods.

Learn from Maria Popova, a meaning-making master and writer of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), as she shares a heartbreakingly beautiful letter from E.B. White to a man who has lost hope.

Why This Matters For Your Mental Health

Maria Popova is a master of her craft. I have no idea how she reads and writes so much, I really don't

I've been dipping in and out of her book, Figuring, which is a masterful example of meaning-making.

With so much information coming at us from the past and present, from our memories and our dreams, how do we make sense of it all?

Popova shows us how, by blending our facts with our own personal artistry.

Go to the source:
To read and buy Letters of Note, An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience. Find more historical letters from famous people that will both break and mend your heart.

Support and uplift the adolescents / pre-teens in your life with Friend Tales, innovative books that teach about mental health.

Why This Matters For Your Mental Health
I found the Friend Tales account on Twitter, and I'm glad I did. 

I've had anxiety since I was a little boy and OCD / skin-picking issues since middle school.

These beautifully drawn books about anxiety and OCD would have been so helpful for me when I was a kid. 

These books appear to have been published recently, but the few reviews on Amazon are excellent.

Get inspired by reading The Transcendent Child, a book about mind-blowing individuals who overcame childhood adversity.

Why This Matters For Your Mental Health
Going along with the same theme that's so close to my heart, youth mental health, I'm sharing a book I decided to read on my own when I was in grad school for social work.

I have to be honest, I was deeply disappointed by the formulaic, hoop-jumping curriculum from my MSW program, and I told myself I wasn't going to let school get in the way of my education. 

I was paying for my education, I had two years to learn and grow I told myself, and I ended up reading almost 90 books in my first year of grad school. 

The Transcendent Child was one of the best that I read. It gave me a deeper understanding of how to triumph over unfair odds.

Last week I shared a live performance by Paramore that I said I've watched at least 100 times.

Well, the number of times I've watched this stripped-down performance of  Nigerian-born English singer and songwriter Jacob Banks covering the song Say Something is pretty darn close.

I mean, come on.  How can anyone have a voice like he does?

The piano-playing is stellar as well. It's a shockingly beautiful rendition. 

Here's the original song by Great Big World, which is phenomenal in its own right.

But wait...I have two music videos for you this week!

The second one is also by Jacob Banks, and I'm including it because I think it touches on some sensitive mental health topics in a way that only great art can.

From drug use to unhealthy relationships, painting an emotional picture of difficult realities is one way that we fight stigma.

The Devil That I Know does that.