05/31/2026
It’s the last day of Mental Health Awareness Month… I realized I haven’t really said much at all. Truth is, life knocked the wind out of me. The last two and a half years were brutal. Just straight up Heavy. Loss stacked on top of loss and more loss. An endless stream of letting go and getting punched in the face. Stress has sat in my body like concrete. Followed recently by an exhaustion that drags you full speed in to a brick wall…
And like a lot of people, I handled it the human way:
Keep moving. Work harder. Stay productive. Push through. Smile. Dissociate when you can’t. Convince yourself burnout and exhaustion are not acceptable.
Get. Your. S**t. Together.
Until eventually the machine breaks, and not all at once, it’s more like a slow unraveling. A dimming of yourself. You wake up one day and realize you’ve been going and going for so long that you don’t even remember what it feels like to feel at peace.
That’s where I’ve been recently.
These past few months I have been quieter. Smaller. I’ve been slowing down to hear myself think. Trying to recognize the difference between perseverance and burnout. Trying to understand why so many of us run ourselves in to the ground, then feel guilty for needing to rest.
I’ve talked openly about mental health for more than half my life. I’ve talked to classrooms, kids, strangers and those struggling too. Partly because silence never helped me much, but even more because I think there’s something deeply dangerous about pretending people are ok or shunning them away.
I struggled with anxiety as a little girl, they called me a worry wart. I tried to push it down. Then as teen, I finally saw a counselor. This changed me. The fact that you could talk to someone about emotions without fear. It became a turning point for me.
Self Awareness.
There shouldn’t be shame attached to saying:
I’m overwhelmed.
I’m anxious.
I’m depressed.
I’m burnt out.
I’m not okay.
That’s not weakness. That’s awareness.
When you or anyone - is critiqued for that, dismantled, diagnosed, broken down, ridiculed, or even made fun of. When someone makes you feel crazy for struggling - this is not on you. It’s on them.
All you can do is work on you. All you can do is keep showing up. You ARE worth it.
More importantly - you are NOT alone.
- and to the people who do make you feel crazy or ashamed — its just a reflection of their own insecurities; because we all to some degree struggle. So let them go.
I don’t have some polished ending. I’m still figuring out life everyday and trying not to drown in this crazy ass world; because life truly is a precious and in the end all the small s**t doesn’t matter. The gossip, the judgement, keeping up with the Jones’s, the worrying to death about a future that hasn’t happened yet - none of it matters. It’s all bulls**t.
What matters is love, the love you give and the love given to you.
And I do know this:
The world will take everything from you if you let it. Your energy. Your joy. Your sense of self. And it will applaud you while it happens. That’s just the nature of the beast.
So healing starts by refusing to disappear inside your own life.
It starts by admitting you’re tired. It starts by having a conversation. It starts by becoming self aware and realizing that everything will be ok.
As far as the next design collection for Betty, it’s one that I have wrestled with for the past few months while looking inward. So in the coming week when I release the summer designs, think back to this post. It will still have that coastal nostalgia that we’re known for… but with a deeper meaning moving forward. I think the world needs it more now than ever.
Thanks for listening and Thanks for showing up.
❤️
