Encouragement

I sat on the couch with the laptop. Voices came from the speakers, people talking about mental health during the time of covid-19. I abruptly closed the case and started to cry. My husband, Jean-Claude, asked, “What happened? Is the meeting over?”

“No, my anxiety was so intense from waiting for over an hour for my turn to speak that I couldn’t sit here anymore.”

Jean-Claude knew that the meeting, one on schizophrenia advocacy, was important to me since I myself suffered from the disease, and that I had waited weeks to participate. He also knew that when big things go wrong for me, my self-esteem takes an enormous hit.

“It’s okay,” he said.

“Sometimes this illness is too hard.”

“I know, but you’re successful at so many things, don’t let one setback get you down,” he counseled me. “Let’s count all the things that have gone right these past few weeks.”

He listed the article I turned in to a magazine on deadline, the class I taught for the writing nonprofit in our community and the poetry workshop for a college class. His approach had me feeling better about myself in no time. His encouragement helped me recover swiftly and return to an attitude of blessings and abundance instead of failure and loss.