You are not the problem, our culture is.

This is me during a water therapy session. I've had quite the therapy in my life, but never had I tapped into depths like this before.

I roared like a lunatic. I roared all the roars that I had kept inside for many years. I roared for piles of pain, endured injustices, sickening sexism, physical and sexual abuse. I roared for mine, for hers, for his, for all of it and all of us.

It sure as hell made me look like I was crazy.

And for years I actually believed I was crazy - the body stores the memory, the mind acts it out. So it felt like it was me, the problem. That's actually literally what they told us, that something inside of us was broken:

Little over a century ago they still called it 'Hysteria', referring to exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement, derived from the greek word 'uterus', saying it was broken.

While women were physically and sexually abused by their own husbands, families and friends. And when pregnant through rape, we were in the wrong, forced to keep the baby. Women had no voice, no rights, no value. And to keep us silent

Women were broken
Women were burned
Women were hysterical

Hysteria and many other mental illnesses that we face today are nothing more than a formerly healthy mind succumbing to the constant tensions of oppression, abuse and unresolved trauma that were inflicted earlier in life - or still ongoing - in our deeply dysfunctional, racist and sexist culture. Yet they tell us that we're sick.

So we keep it in.
We suck it up.
We stay strong.

They tell us we are crazy.

So we fight against (our) nature.
We fight against each other.
We fight against ourselves.

They tell us we are wrong.
So we bite our tongues.
Until they are too broken to speak.
Or too bloody to be heard.

And so we kill. Ourselves and each other.

You are not the problem
Our culture is.

#mentalhealthawareness
Picture by the incredible @william_myl