Here's the thing nobody tells you about Mental Health Awareness Month: there's no right or wrong way to celebrate it.
It's not a holiday with rules. There's no checklist. No grade at the end. It's just an invitation — to be a little more honest, a little more compassionate, and maybe a little more okay with the fact that most of us are figuring this out as we go.
I know, because I'm one of those people.
I'm Alyssa, the founder of Self-Care Shirts. I have Tourette's syndrome, narcolepsy, and AUDHD — just to name a few. Some days, just existing is genuinely hard. Not in a dramatic way. Just in a "getting out of bed took everything I had today" kind of way that a lot of people will recognize and never say out loud.
So this is what Mental Health Awareness Month looks like for me. And maybe some of it looks like you, too.
Mental Health Is Personal. Really Personal.
For me, mental health is embracing my feelings instead of running from them. It's being true to who I am — even the parts that are inconvenient or messy or don't fit neatly into what other people expect.
It's going to therapy every week. It's taking my medication without shame. It's taking a shower every day, hydrating, going on morning walks with my beagle Bailey. It's drawing on my iPad — phrases I need to hear, phrases other people need to hear — and putting them on shirts so we can all walk around a little more seen.
It's wearing an oversized hoodie that says Overstimulated and having a stranger at Target look at it and laugh because they get it completely.
It's cozy. It's soft. It's sometimes a cup of coffee and a candle and absolutely nothing productive happening for an hour and that being enough.
That's mental health. For me, anyway.
What Mental Health Awareness Month Actually Looks Like
It doesn't look one way. That's the whole point.
For some people, Mental Health Awareness Month means finally booking that therapy appointment they've been putting off. For others it's journaling, or setting a boundary they've been afraid to set, or telling someone they love that they're struggling.
For some it's collecting stickers with phrases that feel like relief and putting them on their water bottle where they'll see them thirty times a day. (We may or may not have a whole collection of those. Shameless plug. I warned you.)
For some it's wearing a shirt that says what they can't quite bring themselves to say out loud — and letting the shirt do the talking. Shirts like It's Okay to Not Be Okay or Mental Health Is Health or My Therapist Knows All Your Names — which, honestly, is just true.
The reason I make these shirts is to have the dialogue. So that someone walking by you sees something on your shirt, recognizes themselves in it, and feels a little less alone. That's it. That's the whole mission.
Humor Is a Valid Way to Cope. I Promise.
I want to say this clearly because I don't think it gets said enough: humor is a completely legitimate coping mechanism.
When the trauma is too great and you use laughter to make light of it — even though it isn't funny, not really — that's not avoidance. That's survival. That's your nervous system finding a pressure valve.
For better or worse, the trauma made me funny. I truly am hilarious.
And there's a whole lane of our collection built on exactly that — the therapy jokes, the "got trauma?" shirts, the designs that make you laugh before they make you cry. Because sometimes that's the only way in. If you need a place to start, our trauma humor collection is basically group therapy but make it fashion.
The Things Nobody Talks About Enough
Mental health is also the stuff that feels too small to mention but adds up fast.
It's putting boundaries in place — and then actually holding them. It's allowing yourself compassion when your body can't do what your mind wants it to. It's eating foods that nourish you and occasionally eating an entire sleeve of Oreos and not making it a whole thing.
It's indulgence and moderation living in the same house, not fighting each other.
It's having someone in your corner. A friend who sees you. A therapist who asks the hard questions. A community — even an online one — where you don't have to explain yourself from scratch every time.
It's reaching out to someone and saying "I'm a soft place to land if you need it." And meaning it.
It's talking about the things that are hard. Attachment styles and communication styles and love languages and the ways our childhoods show up in our adult relationships whether we invited them or not. It's cycle breaking — one of the most quiet, unglamorous, important things a person can do.
How I'll Be Celebrating This May
Mental Health Awareness Month falls on my favorite month of the year — partly because Self-Care Shirts was born on May 1st, and partly because spring in Florida means Bailey gets extra long walks and I get to sit outside with my coffee and feel like a person.
This May I'll be celebrating by doing exactly what I do every other month, just more intentionally:
- Going to therapy
- Wearing my softest shirts
- Drawing phrases I need to hear
- Donating 10% of proceeds to 988 and The Trevor Project — because mental health advocacy doesn't stop at awareness
- And reminding anyone who will listen that you are not too much, you are not broken, and you are not alone
However you celebrate — whether it's a therapy session or a bubble bath or finally buying that shirt you've had in your cart for three weeks — it counts. It all counts.
There's no wrong way to show up for your own mental health. Showing up is enough.
Self-Care Shirts donates 10% of proceeds to 988 and The Trevor Project. Every design is hand-drawn by Alyssa Ostroff — a graphic designer, mental health advocate, and trauma survivor who started this brand because she needed these words herself.
Shop the collection at selfcareshirts.com
