Wrapping up Mental Health Awareness month

If you’ve been reading the blog regularly, you know that MySouthborough sponsored Southborough Youth and Family Services’ Mental Health Awareness Month initiative by sharing a “Mental Note” from SYFS every weekday in May. (See those posts here.)

Well, the month ended yesterday. I thought it deserved a special wrap up. Those of you who also follow my twitter feed may have noticed the quotes there didn’t match up with ones on the blog. That’s because many of the quotes here exceeded the 140 character limit.

For those of you who missed the twitter “notes”, below are more quotes chosen to educate us about mental health, reduce stigma, and/or inspire us to seek help or support others who need it.

Of course, SYFS doesn’t just offer community support in May. All year round, SYFS offers free mental health services for residents of the town, and can also help refer to outside clinicians as appropriate.

If you have any concerns about mental health for yourself or your family, please reach out to them at 508-481-5676.

Now, here are those tweeted quick Mental Notes:

• “I am not what happened to me, I am what I chose to become.” –Carl Jung (The People Project)
• “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you chose.” –Dr. Seuss
• Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help and brave enough to ask for it. –Unknown
• “You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” –Martin Luther King Jr.
• “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” –Dr. Brene Brown
• “Be somebody who makes everybody feel like a somebody.” –Kid President (Robby Novak)
• “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” –Maya Angelou
• “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” –Aesop, The Lion and the Mouse
• “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” –Desmond Tutu
• “When you are kind to others, it not only changes you, it changes the world.” –Harold Kushner, author
• “Always stop to think whether your fun may be the cause of another’s unhappiness.” –Aesop, The Boys and the Frogs
• “Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. Right is right even if no one is doing it.” –St. Augustine
• “Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.” –Mother Teresa
• “Stand up for what is right, even if you are standing alone.” Suzy Kassem, author
• Instead of judging people by their past stand by them and help repair their future. –Unknown
• No one is perfect. That’s why pencils have erasers. –Unknown
• “Get the inside right. The outside will fall into place.” –Eckhart Tolle
• Your struggle is part of your story. –Unknown
• “Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we’re all in this together.” –Dr. Brene Brown
• “It’s time for us to speak up and let people know it’s okay to seek help.” –Brian Cuban, author and keynote speaker (Be Vocal)
• “Together we can use our voices to advance mental health in America.” –Demi Lovato (Be Vocal)

For an album of the quotes shared on the blog throughout this month, click here.