October 2025 Director's Corner: Healing as a Process and the Life Box as a Tool for Recovery

Mental health healing and recovery is a process. Although this may seem self-evident, I often feel we want it to be finite. I do. I wish my recovery were more like the flu, you have it, you recover from it, then you don’t have it. But in my experience, it doesn’t work that way.

My mental health is impacted by many things: how much time I have to focus on healing, how many stressors are pushing against it, how smooth or bumpy my life is going. It’s challenging because my depression and anxiety are unpredictable at times and creep into my daily life. This is when I am glad that over the years I have gathered tools to help mitigate the distress that I feel when I am not doing well.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember the tools we have in our toolboxes, which is why a number of years ago I developed my Life Box. It was during a very difficult and dark time in my life and I was suffering with suicidal ideation and deep depression. I was active in my recovery in that I was using both Western and Eastern modalities of treatment. I was in therapy, taking medications, and receiving acupuncture and Reiki. These were the ways that others were helping me, but I know that to really heal I had to help myself.,

I know when I am suicidal that I forget why I want to live. I forget the things that give me purpose and I forget that I am loved. At those times, depression and PTSD clouds my perspective and makes me feel like I am unworthy, undeserving, and that the world would be better off without me. I have learned that I have to challenge these feelings because they are not true and if I spiral down into them, I will only feel worse.

So, I created a box (and decorated it) to put things in so that I could remember why I want to live, my purpose, and that I am loved. It may see trite or insignificant but having tangible reminders is powerful for me. In my life box I put:

-          pictures of my daughter

-          pictures of family and friends

-          loving and supportive notes and cards

-          an angel charm that my therapist gave me

-          my daughter’s artwork

-          a card that says “courage”

-          Affirmations to encourage my healing

I also put about ten index cards with healing activities like read a poem, go outside, do an art project, write in your journal, listen to music, watch a comedy, write a letter or call a friend, or ride my bike. These cards were to encourage me to do something to move me outside my depressive state. I would choose one, sometimes two if I really wasn’t up to my first choice and do it – even if I didn’t feel like it. My therapist always told me that I should do self-care activities even if I didn’t want to with the idea that your body, mind, spirit knows that you are caring for it even if your cognitive brain is saying you don’t deserve or it’s hopeless.

I do believe that I need to be an active participant in my own healing. Too often folks want a pill or someone else to save them. But the only person that can really save me is me – not alone, not in a silo, but I have to commit to my healing and use the support and resources available to me to promote my growth.

Healing is a growth journey, which I believe we are all on – as this TOO is mental health. However, for those of us with lived experience of mental health challenges, I believe we often have to be more intentional in our choices and need to focus on choosing a healing path when we are being pulled into despair. This is not easy. However, my healing path has allowed me to move from disability to working and from despair to hope (at least most of the time). A healing journey is not linear and is messy, but for me, it is really the only choice if I am going to make the best of my life and time on this earth.