by Kayla Myers, Peer Support coordinator

June 24, 2025

I’m a mom of boys, loud, messy, hilarious, curious, deep-feeling boys.

And if I’m honest, one of my greatest hopes, besides them eventually learning to do their laundry and clean up after themselves, is that they grow into men who feel safe being whole. Not just strong or stoic or successful. But soft when they need to be. Honest. Vulnerable. Supported.

Because here’s the truth, one I’ve heard from every mom of boys and quietly carried myself: the world still struggles to let our sons be fully human.

We tell our kids, “It’s okay to cry,” but somewhere between kindergarten and manhood, that message gets lost. Replaced by phrases like “man up,” “don’t be soft,” and “real men don’t talk about their feelings.” And those words don’t just bounce off; they sink in. They settle deep.

As moms, we see their hearts before the world tells them to hide them. We see the quiet anxiety before the tough-guy mask forms. We know the pressure they carry in silence, the self-doubt buried behind humor, the frustration when they don’t have the words to explain what’s going on inside.

June is Men’s Mental Health Awareness Month. And if it reminds me of anything, it’s this:

We don’t just need to raise good men.
We need to raise whole men.

Men who know it's okay to ask for help.
Men who’ve had practice expressing what they feel.
Men who’ve seen someone care about what’s happening beneath the surface.

Here’s what I’m doing, or I should say, what I’m trying, daily:

• I ask them how they’re feeling, and I try not to rush past the silence.
• I talk about therapy like it’s normal, because it is.
• I praise emotional honesty just as much as achievements.
• I work on asking for help myself, because they’re always watching.

In my eyes, no boy should grow up believing his feelings make him weak.

So, whether you're a parent, an aunt, a coach, a teacher, or a friend, be part of the voice that says:

You don’t have to pretend you're okay when you’re not.
You’re not less of a man for needing support.
You’re more of one for knowing when to reach out.

To my sons, and all the boys growing into men:
Your mind matters.
Your emotions matter.
You matter.

Let’s raise them to believe it.

(Edited and Enhanced with ChatGPT)

by Kayla Myers, Family Peer Supporter

December 19, 2023

Spirituality has been my compass while I learned how to get back into the driver’s seat of my own life. I have always recognized in myself that I am a deep thinker and feeler, but it felt like a curse for a long time. I learned to dim my light within, not listen to my sense of self, and this caused me to sway away from my core values and beliefs. Through hardships, I found myself extremely distanced from my mind body, and soul.

Unfortunately, drugs took control of my dad’s life when I was a young girl, leaving my mom to raise two kids on her own. As a kid and into my early adolescents, I knew my dad not being involved in my life hurt me, but I was still hopeful for his recovery and had deep love for him even though he didn’t have that for himself. I know now, I stuffed that pain so far inside of me because I couldn’t feel or deal quite yet. I was only focused on what my mom, brother, and dad must been feeling or going through. All things must come to the light though and it eventually caught up with me when I became a mom myself. It hit me like a wrecking ball and then I was angry with him, for me. How could he let drugs become more important than the two beings he created and brought into this world? It was hurt, confused, angry, and at a loss.

My dad’s mom and dad have now passed on. They did the best job they knew how. with staying connected to my brother and I while we were growing up. Now that I am a mom myself, I now have insight on how painful that must have been to watch their son who was so full of life and love, just to watch drugs take all of that from him. Now I have grace in my heart for them and what that must have felt like. I have also reconnected with my dad in the past year, which I never thought would have happened. Now here is where divine timing and spirituality have become so loud in my life and now, I can’t stop trusting in it and myself.

When I found myself in a massive life change over three years ago, my mom said to me, “Your grandma Donna would be so proud of you and wouldn’t want you to take crap from anyone.” Those words stuck with me and almost became a force field surrounding me while I honestly felt like my strength was going to crumble out from under me at any point. A couple days later I saw a video and it was a tarot card reading that said, “A grandmother/mom/aunt is coming through and she has been watching over you. She is so proud of you and wants to remind you to keep standing in your strength. She wants to remind you to not take crap from anyone. She will always be watching over you but your strength with get you through this. You’ll know it’s her because she will come to you in the form of a butterfly.” My jaw about hit the ground and I got chills all over my body. I was at a kid’s birthday party a week later and it was about 102 degrees out. I was keeping an eye on my son, and I felt really disconnected from the world around me. Suddenly something hit my nose and caught my attention. It was a butterfly. It was almost like it got my attention on purpose and kept flying around me. Once again, I got chills and knew it was for me because one too many coincidences had now happened. After that, on my hardest days, I always see butterflies especially when I am disconnected from my present self. Whether it’s in real life or a picture, she always comes to remind me to keep going.

Fast forward, reconnecting with my dad has been very healing and came at a time where I was truly able to let him back in because I knew I trusted in myself again and that I would know how to navigate the journey. We have had very meaningful and deep conversations about life, and it has felt like I got a piece of myself back, that was lost for a very long time. This summer when we were floating on the river, I kept seeing an eagle. Not when I was looking for it, but it would just randomly be sitting in different places on the river and somehow catch my attention. After a couple times of seeing him/her, I was like “Ok spirit guides, what are you trying to tell me.” My dad has a beautiful soul, he’s hilarious, and full of life. Through my early conversations with him, he would say little positive lines to me, make me belly laugh, or he would tell me what his parents would tell him or say. One day he said, “Well your grandpa would always tell me, I am already insecure enough, so I’m not going to surround myself with people who make me feel more insecure about myself. I am an eagle; I am not going to let the seagulls bring me down.” This past summer, I told my dad about how I kept seeing the eagle on the river. He said your grandpa loved eagles and he told me the eagle not a seagull line again. That weekend we were floating on the river and for the first time all summer, I didn’t see the eagle. I got a call from my dad later that next week and he said, “Kayla, you are never going to believe what happened. I still have chills thinking about it.” I must preface this part that my dad is currently serving a long prison sentence due to his drug use. The prison is in the middle of nowhere, in the Nevada desert. He continues, “We finally got to go out in the yard, and I was walking the track. We never see animals out here. If anything, we see desert critters or seagulls. We were turning the corner and up on the light post was an eagle just sitting there staring at me. I have never seen anything like it out here and I stopped dead in my tracks, and I got so emotional. Thank you for sending him here to see me Kayla, I think he was reminding me that I have been acting like a seagull for far to long and its time to be an eagle.” The very next weekend not only was the eagle back, but he also had a companion with him. They were sitting in the same spot I spotted the first one.

Spirituality has given me the gift to trust in myself, the strength to be fully present, and subtle reminders that everything will work out just the way it is supposed too. I don’t need to have all the answers, all the time. It’s a practice of connecting within, to find the answers to guide me on the path that was designed for me. I can’t keep diming my own light, my diving time was calling, and now its time to trust in the process, and soar to new heights.

by Lea Wetzel, Drop-in Center Coordinator

May 2, 2023

When I think of radical acceptance, I think of when my only brother passed away. I was in Montana’s Women’s Prison and didn’t have a chance to go to his services. It hurt, and I was sober for the first time since I was a teenager. I was sober, but I wouldn’t say I was in recovery, because I was still living in a way that had many, many character defects.

When I think about the multiple situations in life, where there was no choice but to have radical acceptance, I really can see the reasoning behind the trauma responses, and multiple trauma bonds I continued to have with others.  One thing I can say about myself back then, I had a lot of survival reactions, and I learned to use substances to numb the years of pain, and that was one of my many defense mechanisms back then.

My growth and healing journey was stunted because I was unable to accept, heal, or work through anything. It wasn’t until I had nobody to enable me, save me, and make excuses for my actions, that I was finally able to accept that these situations happen in life.

Radical acceptance was the choice I took, to accept the fact that my brother was gone, and that it didn’t matter if I was there to “save” him, or not. The fact was, I was right where I needed to be to start to slowly accept life on life’s terms and move into one of my first stages of growth.

This process in my life wasn’t gentle, it wasn’t perfect, and it certainly wasn’t pretty. I would take one step forward, to turn around to take a few more back. But I continued, and learned through my own recovery lens, that my brother passed when Creator was ready to take him home to the big lodge in the sky.

Being able to utilize radical acceptance as a tool that I have learned to incorporate into my life has been helpful in my healing journey. It helps me through, especially in areas that I have no control over. It’s like they say, “It is what it is,” and sometimes that’s the best frame of mind for me, in certain situations. I can better accept it and realize that I have no control in the situation, whatever it is, and that it’s time for me to continue to work on myself, because that is what I do have control over.

Here are some great examples of ways to utilize radical acceptance, in a Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) format. These are some examples I found, in researching radical acceptance. I hope they are as helpful for you as they have been for me.

Here are the 10 steps to practicing Radical Acceptance according to DBT’s founder, Marsha Linehan:

1. Observe that you are questioning or fighting reality (“it shouldn’t be this way”)
2. Remind yourself that the unpleasant reality is just as it is and cannot be changed (“this is what happened”)
3. Remind yourself that there are causes for the reality (“this is how things happened”)
4. Practice accepting with your whole self (mind, body, spirit) - Use accepting self-talk, relaxation techniques, mindfulness and/or imagery.
5. List all of the behaviors you would engage in if you did accept the facts and then engage in those behaviors as if you have already accepted the facts.
6. Imagine, in your mind’s eye, believing what you do not want to accept and rehearse in your mind what you would do if you accepted what seems unacceptable.
7. Attend to body sensations as you think about what you need to accept.
8. Allow disappointment, sadness, or grief to arise within you.
9. Acknowledge that life can be worth living even when there is pain.
10. Do pros and cons if you find yourself resisting practicing acceptance.

In allowing myself to implement some of these examples in my life, I have found peace within areas that I have struggled with accepting.

Utilizing radical acceptance can be a gift, that we in recovery can have and use when we see fit. Allowing ourselves to accept what is, and that we have no control, is okay. We don’t need to feel helpless, or any other negative reaction, we can continue to heal and work within our lives, to find answers.

Maybe these specific examples are not what is helpful for you. I suggest to keep searching, and discovering what works for you, because there is a life of peace and tranquility out there for everyone, in their own time.

Sometimes those hard and uncomfortable feelings are what we need to lean into. With the right support, we can heal. I have shared before, that it takes a “Tribe” to keep one individual up. It takes me a sponsor, three mentors (all for different leadership skills), a counselor, peer support, Elder (spiritual), and multiple peers and support.

Sometimes it may take trying multiple avenues of support, or even multiple counselors to find the one that works best for you. It’s worth the work, because we are all worth having a life with some space, of peace of mind