World Mental Health Day (+ Art Prompt #193)

A Special Announcement + Offer

This week is another special edition of MCDT because today is World Mental Health Day! World Mental Health Day is an international day to raise awareness and educate about mental health, while also advocating against social stigma. It was started by the World Federation for Mental Health and first celebrated in 1992. Since then, people and organizations from around the world have come together every October 10th to shine attention on mental health.

If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you know that mental health is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. I’ve struggled with multiple bouts of mental illness over the years, mostly based in the world of depression.

Depression is something that never quite goes away—it’s more something you gain the skills to cope with and live alongside. Sometimes it’s a low, manageable simmer, and sometimes it flares up into a rolling boil. The potential for painful emotions is always there. That never changes.

But what can change is our ability to cope with those painful emotions. As we pay attention to and dig into our thoughts and emotions, we can equip ourselves with tools to cope and methods to weather the storm.

That’s one very important lesson I’ve learned (and have to remind myself of often): emotions are like the weather—they come and go, like stormy days and sunny days.

Fighting the weather doesn’t make it change. The only thing we can really do, the only thing that actually helps, is to make room for it all. Over the years, I’ve discovered and developed many tools to do that for myself, chief among them being drawing and writing.

And I’ll be honest, I’m in a space right now where I need to be using these tools more than I am. I’ve been having bouts of what psychotherapist Russ Harris calls an “emotion storm.” An emotion storm is when we are swept away by intensely difficult thoughts and feelings. The feelings become so powerful that the storm totally overwhelms us. Russ describes an emotion storm with the following metaphor:

“While you’re being swept away by that storm, there’s nothing effective you can do about the issues you’re dealing with. So the first thing you need to do is drop an anchor. The anchor doesn’t make the storm go away; the anchor holds you steady, until the storm passes in its own time.” –Russ Harris

So, to weather an emotion storm, we have to drop an anchor—we have to ground ourselves. Some people use tactics such as deep breathing or stretching. As an artist, the process of drawing is what grounds me best. But when we’re in the midst of an emotion storm, stopping to breathe deeply, stretch, or draw can feel impossible. It’s not easy to pull ourselves out and do the thing that we know will help us.

A New Class

And so, I’ve decided to start a new project today, on World Mental Health Day. For the past few months I’ve been working on my jellyfish picture book, under the weekly publication here, Might Could Make a Book. I am going to pause working on that book (temporarily!) to focus all my attention on making a new class I’m calling, Therapeutic Art: Rooting Yourself in Drawing. This class will guide us in using the act of drawing to ground ourselves when we are in the midst of intense emotions.

Previously, my picture book process publication (wow, alliteration!), Might Could Make a Book, was only available to paying subscribers. And so, while I work on this class, that publication will be paused and replaced with my class production publication, Might Could Teach That. I’ll be serializing this class and sharing the content as I create it every Thursday, and this content will only be available to paying subscribers. (Head over here for a reminder of what is paid vs free on my Substack publications.)

So, if you’d like to follow along with the creation of this (and future) classes, please consider becoming a paid subscriber today. For the next 24 hours, I’ll be offering a 30% discount on annual subscriptions to celebrate World Mental Health Day.

Art Prompt #193: Nintendober 2️⃣

Speaking of drawing… we’re still going strong on Nintendober! We’re now in week 2 of 4, so here are the next 7 prompts as we keep trucking along:

In case you missed it last week, we’re doing our own MCDT October monthly drawing challenge with 31 daily prompts, all revolving around the world of Nintendo characters. I’ve split the 31 prompts up into four weeks, and we are now on week 2: October 10–16.

Personally, I haven’t been able to draw every day, but I have been drawing much more than normal, and that’s the whole point, right? Not perfection y’all, just moving in the direction we want to go in. Here are the 6 characters I’ve drawn so far, above. After I send this email I’m grabbin’ my sketchbook to draw a few more and catch up a bit!

If you’re drawing with us, whether Nintendober or whatever else, come share your art with us in our private artist community, Might Could Studiomates!

Ok, that’s it for today!

Remember, if you want to receive my weekly publication as I create my new class, Therapeutic Art: Rooting Yourself in Drawing, for 30% off, be sure to upgrade your subscription in the next 24 hours!

Now let’s draw!

<3,
Christine