🖤 Rewriting the Story…

❤ Somewhere along the way, mental health stopped being a human experience and became a list of adjectives people feel entitled to use. Unstable. Toxic. Dangerous. Too much. Crazy. Once those words are spoken, people step back — as if they’ve explained you. As if a diagnosis is a biography instead of a small window into a much larger life.

A diagnosis is not a definition of your worth. It is only a description of a pattern — not your identity.

Nearly one in five American adults lives with a diagnosable mental health condition each year, and almost half of all people will meet the criteria for one in their lifetime. Mental illness is not rare. It is not fringe. It is not something that only happens to “other people.” It is woven into humanity itself. And yet stigma persists. Labels are still used as reasons to dismiss instead of invitations to understand.

I’ve felt that dismissal. I’ve watched people decide who I am based on paperwork instead of presence. I’ve had my pain turned into warnings instead of questions. I’ve been treated like my nervous system was something to fear instead of something that had learned survival too early.

People fear what they do not understand — and they judge what they refuse to learn.

⚠️ The Lie of “Dangerous”

One of the most damaging myths is that mental illness equals danger. The truth is, most people with mental illness are far more likely to be hurt than to hurt anyone else. We carry bruises no one sees. We fight wars inside our own minds. We learn how to function while bleeding quietly. Pain does not make someone unsafe. Silence about pain does.

There were seasons of my life where I was fighting so much inside my own mind that I barely had the energy to hold myself together — let alone harm anyone else. I wasn’t dangerous. I was drowning. And there are so many people walking around right now who are quietly drowning behind polite smiles and everyday routines.

🧷 What They Call “Manipulative”

Another word people love to use is manipulative. It sounds clinical. Clean. Final. It lets people stop listening. But what often gets called manipulation is fear — fear of abandonment, fear of being misunderstood, fear of disappearing emotionally.

I know this one personally. I’ve reached for reassurance not because I wanted control, but because my nervous system learned early that love could vanish without warning. My body learned survival before it learned peace. A scared nervous system does not speak gently. It speaks urgently.

That urgency isn’t manipulation. It’s memory living in the body.

🌱 Healing Is Real

Healing does not look like perfection. It looks like learning. It looks like falling and returning. It looks like choosing to keep going when your body is tired of surviving. Your worst season is not your permanent identity.

I am not who I was in my darkest chapter — and neither are you. We are allowed to outgrow our symptoms. We are allowed to heal in quiet ways that don’t look impressive to anyone else.

🗝️ You Are More Than a Label

A diagnosis is a map, not a cage. It helps explain patterns — not define worth. You are not your symptoms. You are not your lowest moment. You are not the words written in your chart.

You are not broken — you are becoming.

🕊️ Leta’s Change the Language

When we change the way we talk about mental illness, we change how people live with it. Language shapes belief. Belief shapes treatment. Treatment shapes lives.B

Let’s speak in ways that heal instead of harm. Let’s see people, not paperwork. Let’s make room for becoming. Let’s rewrite the story together.