My Thoughts on World Mental Health Day
There I stood before two Renoir paintings, weeping softly. Two summers ago, we spent a week in Paris. Little did anyone really know, I was in the thick of Postpartum PTSD, suffering silently and trying desperately to muscle my way through extreme PTSD symptoms which also led to anxiety and depression, pretending I was okay. Looking back over my journey before I asked for help, I see glimmers of healing, “patches of Godlight”, moments and days and places and conversations and words I read and songs I heard and meals I ate and people I encountered that brought healing to my hurting heart and reeling brain. Starting therapy a year ago this month is the biggest game changer in my healing. And yet, looking back, I am grateful for the ways I kept going and kept hoping, kept fighting. Walking through Musée de l'Orangerie was one of those healing moments. The art surrounding us moved me, healed me. In a way only creativity and art can.
Later I read a story about Renoir. In the years before he died, he suffered from severe arthritis, always in pain. Toward the end of his life, Matisse visited him often. One day, watching Renoir paint through his severe pain, Matisse asked him, “Auguste, why do you continue to paint when you are in such agony?” Renoir replied, “The beauty remains; the pain passes.”
Keep going, darling. It’s okay to not be okay. Ask for help. You are not alone. The sunshine will come again. Hope is here. Healing is real. You are brave and worthy and loved.
Pain passes. Beauty remains. ♥️