Mental Health Awareness Month: Guest Blog By Abby Kurszewski

As Mental Health Awareness Month draws to a close, we are sharing our final blog post in the series - this one written by 8123 family member Abby Kurszewski.

Trigger warning: talks of suicide

Coping Through Expression

May is the month that I’m most passionate about, as I’ve been clinically depressed for years now. Throughout my mental health journey, I’ve tried residential treatment, inpatient, outpatient therapy, and an intensive outpatient program. Still, I find myself battling against my darkest inner demons regularly and struggling to hold onto hope. The one constant throughout these moments has been self-expression. For the last day of Mental Health Awareness Month, I’d like to talk to you about why it is so crucial to express feelings in a healthy, fulfilling way.

There’s a multitude of ways to express yourself. For me, it’s primarily through writing poetry, doing makeup, playing the bass, dyeing my hair, and listening to music. These are just as powerful for me as traditional CBT and DBT coping skills. During the moments where I’ve seriously considered death, the thing that’s kept me going has been my desire to help people and my methods of self-expression.

Music has pulled me out of those moments where I was on the balance between life and death, and yes, there are songs by The Maine that I can say definitely saved my life, like (Un)Lost and 24 Floors. My makeup has helped me rebuild my self-confidence during recovery from an eating disorder. Through my high school’s literary magazine, I’ve found that writing is one of my most useful outlets for letting out painful feelings. I’ve been thanked for being real and honest by people younger than me, and that’s an experience that I’m immensely thankful for. It’s times like these that only solidify my desire to become a therapist. This fall, I’m heading down to Memphis to start my college journey of studying psychology, and I couldn’t be more excited. For the longest time, I didn’t think I’d live to make it to even graduating from high school. Now that I’ve lived to see it, I’m extremely proud of myself. I’m proud of you, too, for making it this long.

We are both survivors. We’ve survived all of our hardest days, and while I don’t know how you got here, I’m still glad that you are here. Hope is out there. I have to remind myself of that sometimes, and that’s okay. Hope can be found in the smallest of things -- you just have to be open to finding it. If you ever need ideas for healthy coping skills, the internet is full of them. Expression really does help us survive and thrive. Here’s to self-expression and healthy coping skills. You’ve got this.

Thank you for being you.

Abby Kurszewski