menty health check-in

making our silly little checklists so we can be present for the end of society and the birth of something new

Hello! This is a little check in / discussion post for paid subscribers. If you like my work and appreciate all the incredible guest posts, please consider subscribing and supporting this content. Times are tough for everyone, so if you can afford to support autistic queer writers it truly means so much!

I know my mental health shouldn’t be dependent on tomato sandwich season but sometimes it is

I have missed writing to you all but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been enjoying the guest posts I have been publishing! I am astonished at how nice it is to hear from other folks who are deconstructing these systems and beliefs that shape our lives in a million different ways.

But today I thought I would just do a real quick check-in about mental health and getting through these tumultuous times. Anyone who has followed my writing for a hot minute or two probably knows I am uniquely drawn towards obsessing about issues of injustice, religious authoritarianism, Christian zionism, capitalism and more. So it’s been a struggle to not stay locked in my mind all day and to try and be in my body. My body that is caring for multiple smaller humans this summer and who maybe doesn’t want to doomscroll for hours on end? Yeah that body deserves all the care and softness in the world (and so does yours!)

My partner Krispin is a therapist who works with a lot of ADHD folks and he has slowly, slowly converted me to the checklist routine. If someone has a busy little brain it can really help to write down your list of tasks and know that it will be there. You don’t have to keep worrying about it/checking it like a sore tooth in your mouth. When you do the task, you check it off! It’s like outsourcing a bit of your brain space.

So here’s a very quick checklist I made for my own mental health this summer: