I have more than one favorite restaurant depending on the type. While I have never been to any real fancy ones other than this one at a 4 star hotel in Florida (that went badly, I was left hungry and feeling out of place). But my favorite restaurant that you get waited at has slowly become Texas Roadhouse.
This is a place my family traditionally goes to for celebrations, other outings, or any occasion we can thing of. It is the one place we can all find something we like and the portions are huge.
My favorite pizza restaurant now that my local mom and pop restaurant closed, is Pizza Hut. This is another restaurant with good family memories (biological and adoptive families) and it has the most stuff I like.
My favorite Chinese food place is one local to my area and while I don’t like the chicken much (except the sweet and sour) , I love the rice, lo mein, and pork egg rolls
Finally, my favorite fast food restaurants are Taco Bell for non burgers and Burger King for my favorite burger the whopper!
Some runner ups are
Chipotle
Chick-fil-a only because of the food not because of what they support
This post is only going to be photos I took at the zoo this past weekend.
This weekend I made the previous post on gratitude, but I wanted to also spend the weekend doing things I enjoy that aren’t the blog or related to school. I wasn’t planning on doing anything for the blog, but as I was taking pictures and videos for my own fun, I ended up getting the urge to turn it into a YouTube video.
I haven’t posted a new video on the channel since last year when I made the guided meditation on grief following my aunt’s death, but I left all of the past videos up in case anyone would find them useful.
While I have not gotten really any kind of following on my YouTube channel and not too much traffic on here, I’m not going to stop making posts, and videos, and I’m not going to stop exploring my creativity and trying new things.
The whole reason I started this blog and the YouTube channel were because I feel I have a lot of knowledge and educational experience in the areas of mental health, social work and human services.
I also have general life as a white, non binary person born female, in their late 20s who had been through a variety of life situations and lived life with different roles and responsibilities all at once.
I’ve been almost all of the familial roles a person fits in in a biological and adoptive family, a best friend, a student, a roommate, an employee, an intern, a community member, a church member (now full of religious trauma), a citizen of many towns in Connecticut and New York, in the United States of America, of the planet Earth, within the Milky Way Galaxy, within the universe.
I have experience with mental illness and developmental disabilities, poverty, child abuse and neglect in various ways and adult abuse in various ways, discrimination and oppression due to sexism, homophobia, and non binary/trans phobia.
I also have experienced average everyday life events like losses we all go through from various things, like ends of relationships, deaths of loved ones, angsty teenage drama (with some unfortunate bullying), family struggles (non-abuse related), and other normal life inconveniences like surgeries sicknesses.
I know it seems like I am only focusing on the negative stuff I have been through, but I also know one fact, I’ve been through all of that and survived, and am doing pretty well right now and I think I have some good advice to give someone about these issues and life situations.
Layered in this post of amazing animals were some facts about me and why I do what I do even though I don’t see many results. I am not going anywhere so get ready for a ride, and I promise it’s won’t all be so serious, I will talk about fun light hearted topics in addition to discussing more serious matters. Stick around and I’ll try not to dissapoint ya!
Check out the full video of my self care trip to the zoo/conservatory in my town!
What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness?
The five things that bring me happiness are…
My family, (certian members of my biological and adoptive family who come together as my chosen family)
All kinds of music. Music is a big part of my life even though I am not musically gifted.
Great weather depending on how I’m feeling. Some days when I want to curl up and read I like a nice snowy or misty rain kind of day, but on days I want to get out and explore or have outdoor fun I like a sunny warm, or slightly warm (if in winter) day.
My favorite comfort shows and movies when I am sad or stressed and want to relax.
A great desert, comfort, or junk food (this is my guilty pleasure).
For all of the good things, positive people, and opportunities in my life.
One thing that can be difficult to find when you are struggling with mental illness and crisis after crisis is gratitude. When it feels like the world is giving you so much pain and anguish, when it feels like everything that can go wrong will go wrong (Murphy’s law), it can be hard to find anything to be grateful for.
While this is true it is also the reason it is so important to train ourselves to always find something to be grateful for even when times are dark.
This may seem like toxic positivity, where you are overly positive and don’t take time to process your painful emotions, but that is not the case. There has been much research done showing the mental health benefits of approaching life from a lens of gratitude.
As I mentioned before, I was in a place in my life for a long time when it seemed like a personal attack when people told me to find things to be grateful for when I was in a very low plays mentally and emotionally, so I understand if you are skeptical of my claims that gratitude can help improve your life.
If you, however feel like what I am saying could be true, and that opening up your heart to gratitude could benefit you, I’d like to invite you to complete this gratitude challenge I found while preparing for this week’s blog post.
12 day/week gratitude challenge! I created the canva, but I did not come up with this challenge. I found it from an organization called A Window Between Worlds.
As the caption says I got this challenge from a list of 12 journal prompts about gratitude on the website for the organization A Window Between Worlds. This is an organization that teaches people to use art to heal from trauma.
They had this challenge that I just loved. You can answer a prompt a day for 12 days or a prompt a week for 12 weeks (privately, no need to share unless you want to).
Over the next 12 days I am going to do this challenge and by the end of the 12 days I am going to make a video post sharing how I feel by the end of the 12 days. To ensure there are no outside influences affecting the results, this journal is the only thing I will change.
I hope you all join me in this challenge. Each day I will post my answers up in a mini post to give you all some examples of what kinds of things you may write about.
Mental Health Blog | Fight4mylife | United States 