10/10/2026
On this World Mental Health Day, I keep returning to something that isn't particularly flashy, trendy, or complicated:
We cannot skip the basics.
There is an extraordinary amount of information available to us about mental health, resilience, nervous-system regulation, healing, and wellness. Yet sometimes all that information can leave us searching for the next thing that will finally make us feel better.
After more than 30 years of working with peopleāand through my own lived experienceāI continue to believe that many of the things that help us heal are remarkably consistent.
Sleep. Nourishment. Movement. Rest. Connect.
Breathing, stretching, and learning how to care for our nervous systems.
Being connected to people who see us, hear us, and support us.
Telling the truth about our experiences and having our stories witnessed.
Finding places where we belong.
And developing agencyāadvocating, participating, organizing, creating, and working to change conditions that harm our individual and collective well-being.
Because mental health isn't only an individual responsibility.
Sometimes we can develop extraordinary coping skills and still be affected by environments, systems, workplaces, communities, or conditions that are not healthy for us.
Individual practices matter.
Relationships and community matter.
Structures and systems matter.
And resilience isn't a magical state we finally achieve.
It is something we practice.
I have started calling this the verbing of healing.
We can read about healing.
Think about healing.
Understand our patterns.
Watch another video about healing.
All of those things can be useful.
But eventually, we have to do something.
Connect.
Rest.
Breathe.
Move.
Speak.
Ask.
Advocate.
Practice.
Pause
And then practice again.
These ideas are at the heart of my upcoming presentation at the 100 Black Women Fall Conference: Rooted Leadership: Resilience in times of change and complexity.
https://www.top100mostpowerfulblackwomen.com/karen-crawford
Over the next several days, we'll share some practical tools and ideas from that conversation here as well.
At TRU Healing Solutions and the Trauma & Resilience Initiative, we want these conversations and tools to be accessible. Much of what we share is freely available because we believe in democratizing access to knowledge about health, healing, trauma, and resilience.
So please follow along, explore our previous posts and resources, visit our websites, andāmost importantlyātry the practices.
There may not be a shortcut to healing.
But there are practices.
There are people.
There is community.
And none of us has to do all of this alone.
