My mother once told me she wished she could take my brain out of my head and scrub it clean before putting it back. It was difficult not to recall the conversation the first time I heard of mental hygiene: a loving bit of body horror with scrubbing brushes and dish towels sopping up grey juices, some light skull spring cleaning.
I still regret that it isn’t physically possible; it would make life, and writing, so much easier. Up until recently, I’ve always thought of writing as a pursuit separated from any kind of self-care-friendly work-life balance. When I first started writing my poetry manuscript, I regularly berated myself when I wasn’t producing new work, especially if I wasn’t writing because I didn’t feel my best. If I wrote when I felt like it, I told myself, then I would never write. I could balance myself at some distant later point. This was a lie, and actually a fairly dangerous one. I have the standard tortured poetry to prove it.
So, what to do when the good scrubbing you need can’t be literal?
Mental hygiene, as I understand it from my very non-professional standpoint, is made up of small daily activities to promote or better one’s mental health. Personally, I find that means doing pleasant little things for myself, or planning those pleasant little things to look forward to, so that’s what I delve into here. Mental hygiene can mean a lot of things, but this is the area I need to practice the most, so it’s where my focus lies.
A note on wording: sometimes it feels like if I hear “self-care” or “mindfulness” one more time, I’m going to burrow under the earth and sleep until human language is forgotten. “Mental hygiene” will probably become overused to that extent at some point, but what I appreciate about it right now is how… banal it sounds, how utterly clinical and medical and ploddingly repetitive. Alongside that, how utterly nonjudgmental it is. You don’t brush your teeth because you have dental health problems and there’s something you’ve failed to do so now you need to fix it. You brush them to prevent problems later. At the same time, you don’t put off brushing your teeth until Saturday afternoon because you’re off work and you finally have time, you make the time twice a day so your teeth don’t rot out of your gums. Applying that logic to things that feel good and promote happiness feels so counterintuitive, but I’m discovering that it can work.
I’ve listed below some of the ways I practice these daily little tidbits of good below, in rough order from lowest to highest energy requirements, in the hopes that maybe someone reading might find some inspiration.
The smallest way I plan pleasant things for myself is by keeping track of what content I like to watch. I spend a lot of time on YouTube, so that usually means being aware of when creators I like will post. This seems so small, but a hard Tuesday becomes less hard when I remember I have a video from my favourite fashion YouTuber to watch after my workday is over. Often, the act of watching something that I enjoy leads to other pleasant feelings or plans. I might be inspired to put together an outfit I feel good in the next time I go outside, because I so enjoyed watching someone else have fun with their fashion. I might ask a friend if she’d like to go to the mall and have lunch, because planning an outfit caused me to think about where I might like to go while wearing it.
Funnily enough, what a past version of myself would have called “procrastinating” actually makes it easier to write as well; I’ve paused videos from my favourite horror channels more than once to quickly draft a poem that popped into my brain without prompting, born from the ambience and the freedom my mind had to roam. Allowing myself to relax and have simple, everyday fun makes me more creative, not less.
Another way I build in daily fun is with some simple DIY projects. I’m not a particularly crafty person by nature, but taking on small projects can be very fulfilling even if you’re not a master seamstress or the type of sorceress who can turn a trip to Michaels into one-of-a-kind decor pieces. Recently, I’ve been trying to spruce up a simple black purse without damaging the material or spending a lot of money.
Whenever I have the time, even if I don’t have very much energy, I might pull up YouTube videos from people who have personalized their own bags, or brainstorm what I want my bag to look like by browsing Pinterest or noting what styles I prefer while window shopping. I can ask my friends how they would approach this task, and start up a conversation when I otherwise might have said nothing and gone the evening without talking to anyone. If I have slightly more energy, I can dig through drawers and old craft supplies to see what I can find that might work. There’s something about rediscovering old scarves or a pretty strand of beads in my own home that feels a bit like a treasure hunt, and piecing them together into something new leaves me feeling accomplished.
What ends up happening is that this one focal point of wanting to decorate my bag can sprawl into so many tiny activities that make me happy and hopeful for the future, even for something that seems as insignificant as having a personalized accessory.
The final example I want to share definitely takes the most planning and effort, but it’s also one that does the most good for me. Spending time with people I care about probably scrubs my brain cleaner than most things. Recently, I went vintage shopping in Kensington Market with friends. I bought absolutely nothing, and it was the most fun I’ve had in a very long time. We lingered in every store, and I tried on every single thing that looked pretty to me, no matter the price tag or how I thought it might look on me. It felt like playing dress-up as a child, or becoming my own personal Barbie doll. It also gave me hope and excitement for a future, albeit a nebulous one, where I could sit in the sun somewhere and wear a pretty dress while laughing with my friends over dessert. The clothes themselves didn’t matter so much as the effect that being outside and having fun had on me. I was able to imagine other days I could have fun and other activities I might like to do. I find that when I write, I tend to forget my physical self, and outings like these help me remember that there’s more to me than my words, and the rest of me is also worth investing time in. My friends and I loosely planned another similar trip for a yet-unestablished date, and looking forward to that helps me when I’m struggling.
As you can imagine, there are dozens of other examples. Finding new recipes I’d like to try, going to a new bakery, watching a two-hour video essay on a brand-new topic that vaguely interests me, streaming a show with a friend, all of these are activities I’m reconfiguring in my mind as necessary, as hygienic.
Activities that bring us happiness shouldn’t be treats for when we’ve been “good”, when we’ve done all our writing and our homes clean and we’ve eaten all our vegetables, but as necessary aspects to a healthier and happier life.
Leah Duarte is a Portuguese-Canadian poet and fiction writer. She is a graduate of the University of Toronto’s MA in English program, where her focus on diasporic narratives and women in speculative fiction shaped her poetic focus on diasporic distance and the violence of female identity. Her recent work has appeared in The /tƐmz/ Review, untethered magazine, and The Four Faced Liar, among others. Her poetry has received a 2023 Best of the Net nomination, and her flash fiction piece “Passengers” won the 2022 gritLIT Youth Flash Fiction contest. She is currently working on her debut poetry collection intertwining Portuguese folklore, religious themes, representations of mental illness, and depictions of girlhood through a speculative lens, funded by the Ontario Arts Council and the Mississauga Arts Council.
The views and opinions expressed in blog posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of all WiT members.
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