Alex Barankevych

Physical activity is not just beneficial for maintaining a healthy body, but also for improving mental health. In fact, research shows that exercise is one of the most effective tools to manage mental health issues like anxiety and depression. Even modest levels of physical activity or low-intensity exercise are beneficial.

Supporting healing for veterans navigating the transition to post-service life.

Imagine, if you will, that you woke up one day and your life was completely unrecognizable. It could happen, for so many reasons, good and bad. What then? Do you fall apart or keep going? Or do you re-imagine what’s possible?

Mental health is a vital aspect of your overall health. As you grow older, you can experience changes in your physical health, social connections, and daily routines that can significantly affect your quality of life, your mood and well-being. 

As a white woman, my culture is slowly moving towards an acceptance of mental health and an understanding of mental illness while persons – particularly men – of colour still struggle under the weight of unbearable cultural stigma.

How would you rate your ability to focus right now? More importantly, how are you feeling? After bathing in anxiety for a few years, are you feeling a little frayed around the edges? Are you making enough time each day to relax, reflect, and renew yourself?

When someone says, “you’re so brave” (as they do all the time) all I hear is that to them, my life is pitiful, and I feel diminished and reduced to my diagnosis. It makes me think of an after school special on “never giving up” (remember those cheesy posters from the eighties and nineties with a cat hanging on a rope? Yeah, that.)

Stigma leads me to write this under a pseudonym. Why? Because my child is kind, caring, generous and resilient, among many other great qualities.

I was born with hydrocephalus and spastic cerebral palsy, permanent neurological disabilities that affect information processing speed, coordination, speech, balance, and walking ability. I have chronic pain from increased muscle tone. I consider myself fortunate as I can walk and have achieved some significant milestones.