Jenni Berrett

This chihuahua protecting her tater tot added a solid 5 years to my life, I'm pretty sure.

Last week I had a bit of a meltdown. It was not a good time. Luckily, I was able to calm myself down with one of the most beautiful pastimes to have been born out of the Internet.

Culturally speaking, though, it’s pretty much set in stone. Even if I left the church entirely, there’s no getting out of my heritage. Cut me open; I’ll bleed funeral potatoes. I’m what you call a “legacy Mormon” — my ancestors migrated across the frontier and settled in Utah (then Mexico) after facing unspeakable persecution from countless communities in the United States. You probably know my ancestors best as the people with the wives.

More than any other unsolicited mental health advice I’ve received over the course of my life is the admonishment to “fake it till you make it.”

I’ve been mentally ill pretty much my whole entire life, and it isn’t something I see going away any time soon. I don’t see that as an inherently bad thing.

There has been a lot of discussion about the who of this ten dollar bill. We have until 2020, but there are already some popular suggestions: Harriet Tubman. Rosa Parks. Eleanor Roosevelt.

I don’t think the bar is low enough. We obviously need a way to work up to the Bechdel Test. Baby steps. And we all know women love babies.

The premise is pretty simple: We each give you one thing to watch, one thing to listen to, and one thing to read over the weekend.

At some point intellect has to make room for something bigger, for something scarier than just about anything. In order to truly learn something, you have to be vulnerable. You have to walk in and set your broken parts on the table and say, “Here, fix it. Or at least be broken with me.”

"...Mental illness isn’t that exclusive. It doesn’t care how your day is going."