Loving Someone With Mental Illness: Choose How You Show Up
We Get to Decide How We Show Up
We get to decide how we show up—every day, and every moment.
Especially in the difficult ones.
Mental illness in someone you love can be unpredictable.
Hard. Isolating. Frustrating. Lonely. Heavy.
Sometimes you never know when it will creep back in. Sometimes it never fully leaves.
If this is part of your life, nothing has gone wrong. You’re responding normally to something that is legitimately hard.
The Choice Point
We can choose stories of unfairness and hardship. We can justify our pain and our anger.
Or we can own it. Accept it. Allow it. Feel it. And it still hurts.
We can nourish ourselves with self-care and breathe…and still feel lonely.
We cannot always change our circumstances. But we can choose how we respond.
What “Mindful Love” Looks Like Here
When the situation is hard, the practice becomes simple - which is not always easy.
Choose learning over struggling
Choose acceptance over resistance
Choose hope over hopelessness
Choose to love and feel loved, even when it looks different from what you think it “should.”
Choose connection and vulnerability over silence and isolation
Your power is always in your choices and in your mind.
Allowing Pain Helps It Move
When we allow the pain and frustration, they often move through us faster.
Not because it isn’t real, but because resistance adds a second layer of suffering.
Everything is temporary. Even the hardest seasons shift.
After the Storm
We can choose to remember: after the storm is when the rainbow appears.
We can choose to bloom amidst the manure and in the cracks of the cement.
We can even choose to decide that manure is nutrient-rich soil.
And that a flower blooming out of a crack in the cement is stunning.
If you’re carrying the weight of loving someone with mental health challenges—especially as a woman physician—consider joining me for Mindful Love marriage and relationship coaching.