What My Novels Taught Me About Mental Health (And What I'm Still Learning)

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Here's what I know, what I don't, and where to find help.

I didn't set out to write novels about mental health. I set out to write about people — broken, searching, stubbornly human people. But somewhere in the process of writing Ian in Waiting Impatiently and then again in Invisible Sun, I realized I was writing about the same thing: what happens inside a person when things don't go as planned, and the weight of living becomes almost too much to carry.

That's mental health. Not the clinical version. The real one. The one that doesn't announce itself with a diagnosis but shows up quietly — in the way someone stops returning calls, starts drinking a little more, sleeps a little less, laughs at things that aren't funny because the alternative is not laughing at all.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I want to mark it simply. Not with a lecture. Not with statistics. Just with a few honest thoughts and some resources for anyone who might need them.

What Writing Taught Me

In Waiting Impatiently, Ian finds himself at the bottom of something he can't name. He doesn't check himself into therapy. He doesn't have a breakthrough conversation. He finds that the universe is speaking to him in rhythms and practice — and slowly, painfully, he starts to surface. That felt true to me when I wrote it because healing rarely announces itself. It sneaks up on you between the mundane moments.

In Invisible Sun, Hugo, Ian's brother, never surfaces. But what Hugo's death does — unexpectedly, devastatingly — is force Ian to look at his own life and ask whether he wants to keep living it. Not in a dramatic way. In the quiet, corrosive way that grief works on a person when they're alone with it long enough. Ian's crisis isn't Hugo's. But Hugo's death becomes the mirror Ian can no longer avoid.

That felt true to me, too. Because loss doesn't just make us sad. Sometimes it makes us question everything — our purpose, our choices, the shadow of our own existence. That's not weakness. That's what grief does when it has room to breathe.

What I'm Still Learning

That asking for help is a practice, not a moment. That checking on the people around you — really checking, not just texting "you good?" — matters more than we know. That mental health isn't a destination. It's the ongoing, unglamorous, occasionally beautiful work of staying present in your own life.

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If you or someone you know needs support, these are good places to start:

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — Call or text 988 (US). Free, confidential, 24/7.

• Crisis Text Line — Text HOME to 741741 to reach a trained crisis counselor.

• NAMI Helpline — 1-800-950-6264 or text NAMI to 741741. Mon–Fri, 10am–10pm ET.

• SAMHSA National Helpline — 1-800-662-4357. Free, confidential treatment referrals, 24/7.

• Psychology Today Therapist Finder — psychologytoday.com/us/therapists — find a therapist by location, specialty, and insurance.

• Open Path Collective — openpathcollective.org — affordable therapy sessions ($30–$80) for those without insurance.