Let’s get naked… mentally!

Today isn’t just World Mental Health Day. Around here, we call it Mental Fitness Day.

Because health sounds like something you check once a year, but fitness — that’s something you train for. And trust me, it’s the kind of training no one hands you a medal for. You don’t get ribbons for showing up to therapy, or hydration packs for walking through heartbreak, or applause for finally saying, “No, actually, I’m not okay today.”

Mental fitness is built in the quiet reps — the nights you sit with your thoughts instead of running from them. The mornings you crawl out of bed, brush your hair, and face a world that has no idea how heavy your mind feels. It’s walking across the country with a lime-green emotional support chariot named Gertrude and realizing somewhere between California and South Carolina that you weren’t walking away from your life — you were walking back to yourself.

People ask how I kept going. Truth? I didn’t always want to. There were days when my strength looked like crying into a half-melted bag of peanut M&M’s or whispering to the sky, “Just one more mile, please.” But that’s what mental fitness is. It’s not about feeling good all the time — it’s about staying kind to yourself while the storm passes.

We talk a lot about physical fitness — about core strength, heart rate, endurance — but your mind has muscles too. They just flex differently. They grow in silence, in surrender, in self-compassion. You don’t see six-pack abs of resilience on Instagram, but you can feel them in the way you choose peace instead of panic.

So today, take a breath. Stretch your patience. Hydrate your hope. Rest your mind. Check in with your people — and with the voice inside you that’s been waiting to be heard.

Because mental fitness isn’t a finish line. It’s a lifelong marathon, and you’re still running — messy, magnificent, and undefeated.