Focus on what’s going right in my life

I serve as the project manager for Kids Mental Health Pierce County, a community collaborative aimed at streamlining and coordinating behavioral health services for school-age kids in crisis.

I have had the unique experience of being able to really pull together some of those supports I didn’t know I needed during this pandemic to work on my own well-being and really create a team around me to help support my emotional well-being and really work toward some of the goals I identified for myself.

Some of the things that have allowed me to do that is the expansion of access to things I might not have had time for before in terms of being able to connect with a counselor or nutritionist and really kind of building up that collaborative multidisciplinary team around myself during the pandemic. And so having those natural supports, those professional supports has really allowed me to maintain and feel well during this time.

I live by myself so I have not had to deal with some of those additional stressors so it kind of goes back to focus on me and not feel so isolated. Of course, I had to get creative in what that would look like, spending so much time alone and I got transitioned to working from home so everything was kind of all in one space. I had to get really creative and try to stay connected to those I could get connected to.

I was one of those workers that didn’t get to stop. I work in an emergency department, so I was still going out and seeing patients and still helping support their behavioral health needs. And so I think part of that kind of allows you to have this built-in empathy for others like knowing, “yes, this is terrible, this is not fun, but other people are really struggling in other ways that I’m not.” And so finding the grace in that and finding things to be grateful for and really making an effort to focus on what’s going right in my life instead of focusing on what I can’t access or the things that I can’t do, but really trying to focus on those positive things that we can find.

And even if it’s the small things, small moments that we have with people and just being able to get out in the car, maybe go for a ride and even something simple as putting on clothes today. I got to put on jeans, so that was exciting.