Before We Had Words for Mental Health; Dad Taught a Different Way to Feel Better in Life

When Dad took me for a walk into the woods, I thought I was in trouble, real big trouble, the kind where your stomach tightens before you even know why, and I remember my little legs walking behind him, trying to keep up while he moved ahead with those long, steady strides of his, saying nothing, not scolding, not explaining, just walking, which somehow felt worse at the time.

We had been sitting at the table trying to work through my math homework, one of those grade three problems that felt impossible, the kind where the numbers wouldn’t line up no matter how many times I tried, and I was already upset before we even started, angry that I couldn’t ride my pony, angry that my pants were secondhand and too short, angry that my haircut wasn’t what I wanted, angry that nothing felt right that day, including me.

Dad pulled my chair back from the table, left the cabin without a word, signaling to follow, walked straight out into the woods, and I remember thinking the whole time that I must have done something really wrong, because why else would we stop everything like that, why else would he take me away from the table instead of telling me to try harder, sit up, and explain it again for the 13th time.

When we reached a log, my stomach sank even more, because to my young mind that felt like the place where the conversation was going to happen, the one where I’d be told what I did wrong, or why I was dragging my feet, or why was I crying..

Instead, Dad patted the log beside him and said, quietly and without urgency,
“Just come sit. Come sit.”

I remember sitting down and picking at the moss on the log, the way kids do when they don’t know what else to do with their hands, feeling the dampness soak through my jeans, smelling the earth and the trees, and hearing Dad’s voice start to talk, not about the math problem, not about my attitude, not about anything important at all.

He talked about the trees around us, the sunlight making sun spots that danced on the shade of the forest floor, about the blueberries that were starting to ripen, wondering what bird was singing, about the woods doing what woods do, and I remember thinking how strange it was that we weren’t talking about the thing that had made me cry in the first place.

We just sat there, and slowly, without anyone pointing it out, the world stopped spinning so fast.

My breathing likely changed before my thoughts did, my shoulders dropped before I even noticed they had been tight, and the tears that had been welling to the surface started to dry on their own, not because I had been told to calm down, but because my body had decided it was safe to stop bracing as my little legs started to swing back and forth.

After a while, Dad looked at me and said something that I didn’t fully understand at the time, but that lodged itself somewhere deep enough to stay.

“Roxanne,” he said, “when the world feels crazy, and you’re feeling angry, and you’re frustrated, and maybe you don’t even know what you’re mad about, I want you to step off. Go sit on a log. Just let it all go. Let the world stop spinning so fast.”

He didn’t know then what he was giving me, and I don’t think I could have explained it either, not at that age, but almost fifty years later, I can see it clearly.

That day was never about the math problem.
It wasn’t about discipline.
It wasn’t about being in trouble.

It was about learning that sometimes the fastest way back to ourselves is to step away from everything that’s demanding an answer, to let the body stop fighting, because the mind can’t make sense of anything when it’s still in a tangled knot.

Even then, without having words for it, I understood something important.

The woods weren’t just a place.
They were a way back to myself.

I didn’t have words for it then, but I knew I felt better when I left than when I arrived.

Looking back now, I can see that moment in time for what it really was, my first mental health check in, long before we had language for it, and the beginning of learning how to feel better without fixing everything at once.

Because back then we didn’t call it mental health, we just knew when something was off, when our patience was gone, the desire to scream out loud was real, and we needed the world to slow down long enough for us to catch up.

Learning How to Step Off "Life's Circus Ride" Without Leaving the House

Life, of course, doesn’t always hand you a forest when you need one, and as the years went on, I figured out pretty quickly that I wasn’t always going to be able to walk away from the table, leave the room, or sit on an actual log when everything inside me felt tight and I was feeling beyond pissy at the world.

What I started to notice, though, was that the feeling I was chasing wasn’t the woods themselves, it was the pause, the stepping off life's tilt a whirl circus ride, the moment where nothing was asking me to fix it, solve it, or explain it.

So sometimes, stepping off meant turning things off.

Not in a dramatic way, just quietly. The television. The radio. The constant background chatter that seems to follow us everywhere now. Closing the laptop tabs that had been sitting open for no good reason. Muting everything possible. Putting the phone face down, not because anyone said I had to, but because I needed my own thoughts to to be mine.

We don’t give ourselves that kind of quiet anymore, not real quiet, and then we wonder why our minds feel jammed up, on edge and irritated, like a drawer that won’t quite close.

What I didn’t realize then was that these small pauses were a form of self-directed mental health check in, not dramatic, certainly not formal, just honest moments where I could notice what was off before it turned into something I couldn’t ignore anymore.

And when the quiet finally showed up, that’s when I noticed the other thing we don’t talk about much, the running commentary in our own heads.

(Could be a Gemini woman thing but I don't think so 😂)

That voice in our head that pipes up the second you sit down and says, Well, you didn’t do this, or You should have done that, or Here you go again, as if piling on the same negative unhelpful conversations I just had yesterday in my head was somehow helpful. (NOT!)

For a long time, I argued with that voice, tried to shut it down, tried to overpower it, which only made it louder. What finally worked was something much simpler, and maybe a little sarcastic in the way women of our era tend to be.

I started saying, quietly in my own head, Thank you for that thought.

And then, Do you have anything useful to add? A solution? New idea?

Most of the time, it didn’t.

So I’d move on and ask a different question, one that didn’t come from that nagging corner of my brain. What do you actually want right now? What needs attention today, not everything, just today before 12 noon or before bed time? What’s next?

And here’s the part no one tells you. If you keep asking, without letting the first answer shut you down, your brain will eventually respond. It's compelled too. Not with something flashy or dramatic, but with something honest. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Sometimes it’s inconvenient. Something we likely don't want to hear. But it’s usually true.

That’s also when another realization started to settle in, one that took longer to make peace with.

The plans and dreams I had in my twenties didn’t fit my life in my thirties.
What made sense in my thirties didn’t always survive my forties. And some of the ideas I carried into my late forties had to be set down in my fifties, not because I failed, or gave up, but because life changed.

Kids change things.
Other people not keeping their word to us.
Parents aging changes things.
Bodies change.
Health change.
Careers shift.
Money feels different.
Energy is different.

And that doesn’t mean we did it wrong.

It means we’re allowed to revise.

We’re allowed to (and should more often) look at the life we’re standing in now and admit, honestly, that some of the old goals, hopes, dreams, plans don’t belong here anymore. That some of the pressure we’re putting on ourselves comes from trying to live up to a version of ourselves that doesn’t exist anymore. (or worse a version of ourselves we live(d) for another person.)

Letting go of old expectations didn’t always solve everything, but it did help me feel better about the life I was actually living.. Bless and release. Giving gratitude of what was ..

There was a teacher who once asked me, during a time when I was particularly angry enough to break plates, irritated with everything and everyone, What are you not doing that you know you should be doing?

That question stuck, because it cut through the fog.

Sometimes the edge, the frustration, the feeling of being fed up isn’t about the world at all. Sometimes it’s about the thing we keep stepping around, the conversation we’re avoiding, the habit we know isn’t serving us, the small action we’ve been putting off while pretending it doesn’t matter.

I wasn’t trying to fix my life. I was just trying to feel better long enough to think straight.

And sitting with that question, without beating myself up, without making excuses, was another way of stepping off the spinning circus ride world and back into my own lane. And breath.

(This usually came with a lot of snotty tissues and uncomfortable conversations but felt like a whole beautiful new world the next day. Me at 42)

This Was Never About the Math Problem

So maybe that’s what all of this comes back to for me.

Not the math problem.
Not the anger.
Not even the woods themselves.

It comes back to the moment Dad showed me that I was allowed to step off. That I didn’t have to solve everything while my chest was tight, wanted to fight something or somebody and my thoughts were racing. That I didn’t have to push harder just because the world expected me to. I could pause. I could sit. I could breathe. I could feel better. I could let my body catch up to my mind before asking myself to do anything else.

Dad Quote: She who loses her head loses the fight.

And the truth is, most of us can’t just disappear into the woods on a Tuesday afternoon. We have jobs. We have responsibilities. We have aging parents, kids who still need us, bills that don’t care how overwhelmed we feel, and a world that keeps spinning around the sun whether we’re ready or not.

We don’t always get the luxury of a quiet log, moss under our fingers, the scent of the forest floor and a dad who knows exactly when to say, “Come sit.”

But over the years, I learned something important.

We can recreate that moment without the woods.

We can step off in smaller ways. We can lower the volume on the outside world long enough to hear ourselves think. We can give our body signals of safety instead of pressure. We can stop demanding answers from ourselves while we’re still wound tight and instead offer yourself the same love and grace you would give a tired child who’s had enough for the day.

Sometimes feeling better didn’t come from answers at all, it came from giving my thoughts a place to spill out so they weren’t stuck rattling around inside me.

Sometimes that looks like turning everything off and letting the house be quiet, even if the dishes are still in the sink. Sometimes it’s writing things down because your mind was never meant to carry every list, every worry, every unfinished thought.

Sometimes it’s asking yourself the harder question, the one my teacher once asked me when I was wound up and irritated and didn’t know why. What are you not doing that you know you should? And sitting with that answer, without judgment, without punishment, just honesty.

And sometimes, support looks like giving your body a little help instead of pretending you can muscle through everything on willpower alone.

Nature has always known how to nurture us. The woods. Closing your eyes and lifting your face to the sun. The trickling brook of water running over your hands. The steady presence of your fur baby who doesn’t need words to understand when you’re done for the day. And for me, in this season of life, it also looks like supporting my nervous system, "feel better" mental health from the inside out.

Giving my body something steady, grounding, familiar. Something built from the same earth that once taught me how to sit still long enough for the world to slow down.

That’s why the idea of nature to nurture matters so much to me.

Not because it’s trendy.
Not because it promises miracles.
But because it respects the body instead of fighting it.

A seven mushroom blend isn’t magic. It doesn’t fix your life. It doesn’t erase hard days. But it can support your system in remembering what breathing easy feels like. It can take the edge off, melt the stress just enough that you can think again, breathe again, focus, make one good choice instead of spiraling into ten bad ones.

It can feel like that small pocket of quiet Dad gave me on that log, recreated in a way that fits the life we’re actually living now.

And maybe that’s all we’re really looking for.

Not perfection.
Not constant happiness.
Not a life without problems.

Just ways to feel better, not all at once, not forever, but enough to step off and come back into yourself.
Ways to step off the tilt-a-whirl long enough to catch our breath.
Ways to come back to ourselves when everything feels like too much.

Because the world will keep spinning.
But you don’t have to spin with it.

And sometimes, the most powerful thing we can do to feel better in our day .. is sit down, breathe, and give your body what it’s been quietly asking for all along.

🌻 Cheers and chat soon,
Roxanne
(and meet my father Charlie.. thanks Dad 💗)

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