Mental Health Awareness Month – Entry #8

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IMPORTANT NOTE: I am NOT a mental health professional. I’m just a person who loves you and has been through some things myself. If you need professional help, please start here.

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This is the last Mental Health Awareness Month post. And it’s the one I’ve been most careful about writing.

Everything else this month — the shame, the anger, the voices, the broken system, the moment I finally told someone the truth — all of it has been personal. But this one is personal in a different way. This one is about the people who matter most to me in the world (outside of my wife, of course).

My kids.

I have five of them. Ages 21 to 34. They came to me in different ways and through different roads — some through my first marriage, one with my wife of 23 years, one from her previous marriage, and one we took in as our own when he was a teenager and needed a place to land. Nine grandchildren between them now.

Every single one of them is different. Every single one of them is someone I would walk through fire for without a second thought.

And every single one of them is going to face — or already has faced — something hard in their mental and emotional lives. Because that’s just what it means to be human. And I haven’t always said what I needed to say about that directly enough.

So this is me saying it. Not just to them — though I hope they read this — but to every parent and grandparent out there who has things they’ve been meaning to say and just haven’t found the words yet.

I Didn’t Get Everything Right

Let me start there, because anything else would be dishonest and they’d know it.

There were years when I was carrying more than I let on — the addiction, the anxiety, the ADHD running unchecked — and instead of being honest with my kids about what was going on with me, I performed okay. I showed them the capable version and hid the struggling version. I thought I was protecting them. I thought that’s what a good parent did — kept the hard stuff out of sight so it didn’t become their burden.

What I didn’t understand then is that kids see more than we think. They may not have the words for what they’re picking up on, but they feel it. The tension under the surface, the distance, the moments when a parent is physically present but somewhere else entirely — they register all of it. They just don’t have anywhere to put it. So sometimes they put it in themselves.

I can’t undo those years. I can only be honest about them now and hope that honesty counts for something.

What I Wish I Had Said Sooner

I wish I had told them earlier — much earlier — that struggling doesn’t mean you’re broken.

I grew up in a world where you didn’t talk about that stuff. You pushed through. You handled it. You certainly didn’t burden other people with it, and you absolutely didn’t let it show in a way that made you look weak. I absorbed all of that without even realizing it, and then I passed some of it on without meaning to.

The message I should have been sending — and that I want to be loud and clear about now — is the exact opposite.

Struggling is not weakness. Asking for help is not weakness. Feeling things deeply, even the hard and messy and inconvenient things, is not weakness. It is the most human thing there is.

Mental health is health. Full stop. The same way you’d see a doctor for a broken arm without shame or embarrassment, you go get help for a brain that’s struggling without shame or embarrassment. There is no difference. Anyone who tells you otherwise is passing on a lie they were told themselves.

To All Five of Them

Here’s what I want you to know.

I want you to know that whatever you’re carrying — whatever is hard right now, whatever has been hard for a long time, whatever you haven’t said out loud yet because you weren’t sure how it would land — you can bring it to me. Not the cleaned-up version. The real thing. I can handle it. And I’m not going to look at you differently. I’m not going to love you less. I’m not going to be disappointed in you for being human.

I want you to know that the way our family came together — the different paths, the different histories, the fact that we built something real out of pieces that didn’t necessarily start as a set — is one of the things I’m most proud of in my life. Not proud like a trophy. Proud like something that cost something and was worth every bit of it.

I want you to know that the conversations we haven’t had yet are not too late. I’m still here. I’m not going anywhere. And if this month has taught me anything, it’s that the longer you wait to say the real thing, the heavier it gets. So let’s not wait.

I want you to know that I see you. All of you — not the performance, not the version you put together for the world, but the actual person underneath it. The one who’s figuring it out. The one who’s scared sometimes. The one who’s stronger than they know and doesn’t always feel like it.

That person is who I love. Not the version you assembled for everyone else.

To the Nine Grandchildren

You’re young. Some of you are very young. You won’t read this for years, and that’s okay.

But when you do — when life has gotten complicated in the way life always does, when you’re carrying something heavy and not sure where to put it — I want you to know that your grandfather has been through some things. And he made it. And he wants the same for you.

Talk about the hard stuff. Find people you trust and tell them the real thing. Don’t suffer in silence because someone somewhere told you that’s what strength looks like. It isn’t.

And if you ever need someone to talk to and you can’t find the words or you don’t know who to call — call me. I’ll pick up.

The Reason for All of This

I started this month with a simple idea: that we need to talk about mental health the way we talk about everything else. Openly, honestly, without the stigma that has cost too many people too much for too long.

I’ve lost friends to suicide. I’ve watched people I love suffer in silence for years. I’ve done my own share of suffering in silence. And I am done pretending that’s just the way it is.

The conversations we refuse to have are the ones that do the most damage. And the conversations we’re brave enough to have — even when they’re scary, even when we don’t have it all figured out, even when we’re saying the true thing out loud for the first time — those are the ones that change things.

I hope something in this month’s posts changed something for you. Even one thing. Even just the sense that you’re not alone in what you’re carrying.

Because you’re not. Not even close.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for being here. Take care of yourselves — all of yourselves, including the parts nobody else sees.

–Evan