Trick or Treat

Halloween is officially on Sunday, but if you are anything like us, you have been celebrating all month, decorations, parties, fall festivals, candy buying and eating, costume ordering and making…. For a lot of us, Halloween is the best time of year, because it allows us to be fun, frivolous and to have access to a lot of chocolate, which in our humble opinion, is heaven. If we have learned one thing from this pandemic it is this, life is way too fragile not to have fun.

Halloween is all about fun, but it is also the one day that allows people to be who they really are or want to be without fear or embarrassment. There is an ability to dress as a female or male perhaps for the very first time, to wear a costume depicting the uniform for the job you want more than anything, to make a child in your life laugh with delight as you are the Beast to their Beauty or Elsa to their Anna.

On Halloween you get to become anything that you want to be. -Ava Dellaria

Halloween is also a time where we can show compassion. Perhaps by helping a friend find or assemble a costume for their last minute idea, or by purchasing allergen free candy for children who might not otherwise be able to trick or treat due to life threatening nut allergies (you can mark your house as allergen safe by placing a turquoise pumpkin in front of your door).

Sticky fingers, tired feet; one last house, trick or treat! -Rusty Fischer

Today’s Blog is about this: Finding joy in the little things. Joy might be politely informing the kids in your life that they owe you Reese’s Peanut Butter cup candy in exchange for room and board this month. We don’t make the rules. we just follow them! Find joy in dressing up, holding a Covid responsible party, donating costumes and candy to a Women’s shelter, making a donation to a local Food Bank, taking a walk at night to look at your neighbor’s decorations, or watching Halloween movies if you are a brave soul (they personally scare us)!

Every day is Halloween, isn’t it? For some of us. -Tim Burton

Some tips for finding your joy as the days start getting darker earlier and the weather starts cooling off:

1. For some of us the darker, colder months are harder on our mental health, so if this has been the case in the past, prepare for it. Schedule your therapy, make sure your prescriptions are filled or if you need a new prescription, call and request a new one. Consider how best to get some natural light during the day and consider purchasing a light therapy lamp.

2. The holiday season ramps up very quickly after Halloween, so make plans. If being around your family is bad for your mental health, look into booking a holiday or taking a road trip. Consider volunteering with a service based organization in your community. Families aren’t always supportive and kind, others are toxic, so make sure if and when you see them, that you are doing the visiting because you want to, not because they have guilted you.

Halloween was the best holiday, in my opinion, because it was all about friends, monsters, and candy, rather than family and responsibility.
-Margee Kerr

3. Find ways to grab onto joy. If that means buying yourself a holiday onesie, do it! If it means making cookies for all the neighbors, do it! If that means taking off from work for a mental health staycation, do it! If you are no longer feeling a connection to your therapist, switch, that goes for doctors, dentists, hair stylists, religious leaders...if you don’t connect with them and wish to move on, politely break up and find someone new with whom you do connect with.

The farther we've gotten from the magic and mystery of our past, the more we've come to need Halloween.
-Paula Curan

We wish you all a very happy and safe Halloween. May your candy bowl be heavy and your night be delightful!

Happy Halloween,
Team SG