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From the challenge of an end-of-year mental health column that encourages and inspires
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From the challenge of an end-of-year mental health column that encourages and inspires

Nora Hille
Von der Herausforderung einer Jahreswechsel-Kolumne zur mentalen Gesundheit, die ermutigt und inspiriert-Artikelbild

So, did you have a good start to the new year 2025? With New Year’s resolutions or without? How did you experience Christmas and the time between the years? Harmonious and enriching, relaxed or mentally challenging? Have you set yourself goals for the new year or perhaps made a vision board? Or are there soft, gentle wishes whispering inside you? Perhaps you have opted for an expectation-free openness, as I gently suggest in the following haiku.

Start of the new year
Day by day,
blossoms like a flower

Nora Hille

Basis and content of the column

The idea of writing a mental health column for FemalExperts at the turn of the year has been on my mind since the end of November. But how can I do that when I’m in the middle of a mental health crisis myself? How can I inspire or encourage others when I feel uninspired and discouraged myself? I don’t think there have ever been so many question marks in one of my columns…

As you can see, I tried anyway. As always, with a lot of authenticity and openness – and hopefully also with a pinch of encouragement and inspiration for you. Here’s what it’s all about:

Annual wishes and goals

In recent years, I’ve had a nice tradition: around the turn of the year, I’ve done some soul-searching and formulated my wish or goal for the new year. I then focused on it again and again during the year. Perhaps you also do this in your own personal way?

A quote fits in with this approach:

The best way to predict the future is to shape it yourself.

Alan Kay (American computer scientist)

But this year I’m just lost. Maybe I don’t dare to formulate big wishes right now? And another question mark… The last few years it was so easy for me to focus on my annual wish, which sometimes related more to external goals, sometimes more to inner growth and mental health.

For 2022, it was to find a way to publish my book of encouragement “When Light Conquers Darkness” about dealing with my bipolar disorder – which was published by Palomaa Publishing in the fall of 2023. For the following year, I wished for mental growth, because I would need so much more self-confidence and strength to go public with my story. And last year, I wished for lightness – maybe you still remember the column?

My review of the year: From lightness to crisis

For the first six months, it worked out wonderfully with ease, I danced through life with my husband every Sunday at a discofox class and laughed so much with him. Our 25-year harmonious and loving relationship blossomed. I felt infinitely comfortable in my body. What an enriching, happy time!

Until a completely rainy summer vacation in Denmark (there’s a column about that too), when I was knocked out by an illness in my right arm that has lasted for more than half a year, with chronic pain around the clock. Staying mentally balanced was and is an enormous challenge, which I initially managed for three months. But then the emotional strain added up in the fall. On top of that, a cortisone treatment unpredictably put me in an exceptional psychological situation, which caused me severe inner stress and unbelievable sleep disorders for weeks. I am still struggling with this, and despite continuous progress, I have not yet regained my balance and sufficient sleep. Together with the chronic pain in my arm, it is simply grueling in the long run. Even a confident person like me loses heart from time to time.

Nevertheless, I am an encourager

And yet I am and remain an encourager – for big people as well as small ones! In the second half of the year, I realized more clearly than ever before that I want to be an author and ambassador for mental health, that this is exactly my role at the moment, that it fulfills me and my life in a meaningful way.

I was able to experience several times this year how I can encourage other people: a reading on the subject of human dignity at the Mental Health Week in Flensburg, readings from my book at the DGBS annual conference and at a courage café, an “Evening for Joy” with piano music by Bach and a fairy-tale essay text collage, with which I was able to touch the souls of the audience so much that there were tears of emotion and loud laughter. And seven more readings in front of primary school children with so much interaction because of a very special manuscript…

My personal ray of hope for 2025: Nora’s first children’s book

Because here comes my magical outlook and ray of hope for 2025: this spring, my first children’s book with encouraging short stories about mental health will be published by a publishing house. The creation process from June 2024 onwards has already been a great pleasure and has given me many positive moments in this last six months of a challenging year, in which creativity and enthusiasm have been able to flare up despite my inherent mental pain and have carried me through hours and days.

And yet, of course, the upcoming book release is not the answer to all my question marks. Not the answer to where to find the inspiration for the new year that I would so like to give you and myself with this column.

What next?

Inspiration on Instagram

Between all the online reviews of exciting, interesting, successful or supposedly successful people, which often leave me perplexed and sometimes ashamed, I actually stumbled across a comforting inspiration for the new year and for taking good care of our mental health, which I would like to share with you. Because it is calm, full of mindfulness, promotes self-love and is therefore infinitely comforting.

I found this inspiration from Dr. Laura Vogel. She is a founder, author and mom with ADHD. Her account is called @zendou.de (a slim 33,1000 followers, I didn’t know her before). Laura is the inventor of the scented clay of the same name to reduce tension and anxiety. On December 28, 2024 she posted:

  • 2025 doesn’t have to be your big new beginning. Maybe it will simply be your year to
  • Deepen friendships
  • to stay on your path
  • to become healthy
  • take up a former hobby again
  • take more care of yourself
  • to give things more time
  • heal your wounds
  • live more often in the here & now

What do you think? Do you feel as picked up by Laura’s words as I do? (And two more question marks, I’ll add them up at the end of the column for a little statistic including a guessing game, I promise).

Of course, this post went straight to my story on my Insta account @norahille_autorin and just a few hours later I received a message from a follower: “This is really helping me right now. Always take small steps.” And a friend wrote back: “That’s exactly my plan for 2025: to enjoy life in whatever way it can be.”

My quiet wishes for the new year

Although I don’t dare to formulate a big wish for the year at the moment, or rather, I’m not able to bring all my topics down to a common denominator, there are many small, quiet wishes and good intentions that lie dormant inside me – in fact, it’s a whole wish list:

  • Try to keep my daily cell phone time under two hours and generally do as much as possible with my left hand to take the strain off my right arm
  • Not to give up on the healing process of my arm, but to support it with two to three sessions of very gentle neck movement gymnastics every day (I have been doing this every day since December 28) and positive thoughts (affirmation: My soul, my mind and my body have the strength and the power to heal. You, my dear right arm, have the strength and the power to heal).
  • Learning to sleep better and better
  • Working on my traumas with therapeutic support to achieve a better quality of life
  • Finding the way into the hearts of as many children and young teenagers as possible with my children’s book on mental health

I wish you that

For the new year, I wish you many bright moments of confidence, joy and gratitude. Loving, touching and intense encounters with familiar and new people. The strength to get up again and again and face your challenges. An intimate contact with your soul.

See Also
Vacation frustration and mental health article image

And I discovered another magical wish on Instagram, on a very brave account that I’ve been following for a long time and that I really appreciate. @dennis.talksabout wrote on December 30, 2024 in his post entitled “I’m not just a great rocket on New Year’s Eve”:

I wish you fewer moments of pain and many more moments of happiness in 2025.

There is nothing to add to that. Because that’s exactly what I wish for you and me.

All the best
Nora

P.S.: Question mark statistics of this column – want to guess?

32

15

9

27

Correct answer:

15! But it feels like at least 32

About the author

Nora Hille
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Nora Hille was born in 1975, is happily married and has two children. She studied history, literature and media studies, worked in communications/public relations for 12 years and has now retired for health reasons. Today she writes articles on the topics of mental health and mental illness as a sufferer and experience expert. She also writes literary essays, poems (preferably haikus) and short prose. She regularly publishes her mental health column here at FemalExperts Magazine and is Editor of eXperimenta - the magazine for literature, art and society. Anti-stigma work is close to her heart: she is an encourager at Mutmachleute e.V. and is committed to Anti-Stigma-Texts against the stigmatization (exclusion) of the mentally ill in our society for more togetherness, tolerance and equality. In autumn 2023 her book "When Light Defeats Darkness" will be published by Palomaa Publishing. A book of encouragement about how to live a good and rich life despite bipolar illness - and the enormous challenge that this means every day for the inner balance of those affected.

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