Prefer to watch instead? The YouTube video is linked at the bottom of this reflection.
Yesterday I caught myself saying something I’ve said for years.
The weather changed again here in the Midwest. Warm and beautiful one day. Cold, damp, and miserable the next. Without even thinking about it, I joked, “Mother Nature must have gone off her meds.”
At first, I didn’t think much about it. But later, it stayed with me.
Partly because it’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Partly because a few months ago I wrote a reflection about how the words we use matter. And partly because I’ve started paying more attention to the kinds of things that come out of my mouth automatically.
In that earlier reflection, I wrote about casually saying “I’m so OCD” when what I really meant was that I was organized or set in my ways. Over time, I stopped finding that funny. I began to understand how casually using something real and difficult in someone else’s life as shorthand for a personality quirk could minimize what they actually live with.
This feels different, though. With the “Mother Nature went off her meds” comment, part of me still thinks it’s kind of funny. That’s the part I’ve been sitting with.
I don’t think I said it with cruelty or mockery in mind. I know I didn’t. But I also know that intent and impact are not always the same thing. And honestly, I don’t know exactly what to do with that tension.
I take medication myself that was prescribed by a mental health provider. Mental health struggles are not abstract to me. Neither is recovery. But that doesn’t automatically answer the question either.
Maybe that’s why this stayed with me longer than I expected.
Not because I suddenly think I need perfect language. And not because I’m trying to become the kind of person who analyzes every sentence before speaking.
It’s more that I’ve noticed how easy it is to move through life without ever really examining the small things we normalize: phrases, reactions, assumptions, jokes. Things we inherited from culture and repeat without much thought.
Some of them are harmless. Some probably are not. Most, I suspect, live somewhere in the gray area in between.
And maybe maturity is not pretending that gray areas don’t exist. Maybe it’s becoming willing to sit with them honestly.
One thing recovery and mindfulness have changed for me is this: I notice myself more often now. Not perfectly. Not constantly. But enough to occasionally catch something in the middle of happening instead of years later.
Sometimes that awareness leads to change. Other times, it simply leaves me with a better question.
And honestly, maybe that’s enough.
Not certainty. Not perfection. Just a willingness to remain open, curious, and honest about the ways we move through the world and the ways our words land inside it.
I’m still figuring some of this out.
But maybe that’s part of the practice too.
To ponder this week:
Have you ever caught yourself rethinking a phrase, habit, or assumption you once never questioned at all?
Prefer to watch? YouTube reflection here.
