Mental Health Awareness Month: A Reminder to Look Up

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and this year’s national message feels especially meaningful for those of us who live and work in healthcare, caregiving, and service to others. SAMHSA’s 2026 theme, “See the Person. Support the Journey,” speaks directly to something we know but sometimes forget in the pace and pressure of care: behind every diagnosis, behavior, outcome, role, and responsibility is a person carrying something we may not fully see.

That includes our patients and residents. It includes their families. It includes the caregivers standing beside them. And it includes the nurses, CNAs, therapists, social workers, leaders, and providers who keep showing up day after day, even when they are tired, overwhelmed, grieving, worried, or stretched thin themselves.

Healthcare and caregiving are sacred work, but they are also heavy work. They ask a lot from the human heart. They require skill, competence, patience, compassion, judgment, emotional control, and the ability to keep moving even when a situation is uncertain, painful, or unresolved. We talk often about quality of care, outcomes, education, systems, and processes, and all of those things matter deeply. But Mental Health Awareness Month reminds us that the people inside those systems matter too.

Because at the center of it all, this work is still humans taking care of humans while trying to be humans themselves.

That truth is part of the heart behind LOOK UP and the companion journal. They were created out of real-life moments when the weight of responsibility, fear, grief, and uncertainty can feel like too much. Moments when your face is buried in your hands. Moments when your knees feel like they may buckle. Moments when the room feels like it is spinning and you are just trying to process the next piece of information, make the next decision, or take the next step.

I learned this in a very personal way when my father suffered a massive hemorrhagic stroke in 2018. My sister and I were both healthcare professionals, a nurse and a physical therapist, but in that season, we were not the ones guiding another family through a crisis. We were the family sitting in the waiting room. We were the ones trying to understand complex information through fear. We were the ones holding our breath between updates, trying to stay strong while everything felt uncertain.

That experience changed me. It reminded me that even when you understand the healthcare system, you can still feel lost inside it. Even when you have knowledge, you can still be afraid. Even when you are used to being the strong one, you can still need support, prayer, quiet, space, and someone to simply sit with you in the unknown.

That is why LOOK UP: A 30-Day Devotional for Healthcare Providers and Those Who Care for Others is not about pretending hard things are not hard. It is not about rushing past grief, stress, burnout, fear, or exhaustion with a quick phrase or forced positivity. It is about creating a place to pause long enough to be honest about what is heavy, reflect on what is happening within us, reset our focus, and realign with faith, purpose, perspective, and the next right step.

The companion journal follows that same rhythm: Pause. Reflect. Reset. Realign. It is designed to work with the Devotional to give you space to explore your experiences and discover ways to navigate your calling. Pause. Reflect. Reset. Realign. are simple words, but they matter. In healthcare and caregiving, we are often trained to keep moving, keep answering, keep solving, keep supporting, and keep producing. But there are moments when the most important thing we can do is stop long enough to notice what we are carrying.

Mental health is not separate from quality of care. Stress changes how people hear information. Fear changes how families respond. Grief changes how residents participate. Burnout changes how caregivers communicate. Anxiety, loneliness, exhaustion, and emotional overload can affect healing, trust, decision-making, safety, and connection.

That does not mean every hard moment has a simple answer. It means we need to be willing to see people more fully.

To see the resident beyond the behavior.

To see the patient beyond the diagnosis.

To see the family beyond the frustration.

To see the caregiver beyond the task.

To see the clinician beyond the competence.

To see the leader beyond the responsibility.

And maybe, just as importantly, to see ourselves beyond what we produce, manage, fix, carry, and accomplish.

Mental Health Awareness Month is an invitation to make room for that kind of seeing. It is an invitation to speak with more compassion, listen with more patience, support one another more intentionally, and recognize when someone may need more than encouragement. Recognizing when they may need professional help, community support, spiritual care, rest, or simply permission to say, “I am not okay right now.”

For me, LOOK UP was born from the belief that sacred work still requires human support. The people who care for others need places where they can be honest, breathe, pray, write, release, and remember they are not alone. The companion journal was designed to hold that space, not to fix every circumstance, and to help create a moment of reflection in the middle of it.

Because sometimes the situation does not change right away.

Sometimes the diagnosis is still uncertain.

Sometimes the family meeting is still hard.

Sometimes the grief is still fresh.

Sometimes the shift is still long.

Sometimes the outcome is still unknown.

But even there, we can pause. We can reflect. We can reset. We can realign. We can reach for support. We can take the next step with a little more steadiness than we had before.

This Mental Health Awareness Month, I hope we remember that awareness is not only about campaigns, colors, or calendar recognition. It is about people. It is about the quiet battles we do not always see. It is about the emotional weight carried in exam rooms, nursing homes, hospitals, family homes, hallways, offices, and waiting rooms. It is about the caregiver who keeps showing up. The family member trying to make sense of hard news. The healthcare worker who gives compassion all day and sometimes forgets to leave a little for themselves.

And it is about the gentle reminder that we do not have to carry everything alone.

Sometimes the first step is not a solution.

Sometimes the first step is a breath.

A prayer.

A journal page.

A conversation.

A moment of honesty.

A decision to ask for help.

A reminder to look up.

The LOOK UP devotional and companion journal were created for those moments. They exist for healthcare providers, caregivers, families, and anyone walking through heavy seasons who needs space to pause, reflect, reset, and realign. One page at a time. One breath at a time. One next step at a time.

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