Author: Janis Johnston

Janis Clark Johnston, Ed.D., has a doctorate in counseling psychology from Boston University. She has worked with children, families, and groups (ages 3-83) with presenting issues of anxiety, depression, trauma, loss, and relationship concerns. She initially worked as a school psychologist in public schools and was awarded School Psychology Practitioner of the Year for Region 1 in Illinois for her innovative work. She was a supervising psychologist at a mental health center, an employee-assistance therapist and a trainer for agencies prior to having a family therapy private practice. Recipient of the 2011 Founder’s Award for her dedication to the parenting education of Parenthesis Family Center (now called New Moms), and the 2002 Community Spirit Award from Sarah’s Inn, a domestic violence shelter and education center, Johnston is an active participant in numerous volunteer activities supporting children and families in her community. A frequent presenter at national psychology and educational conferences, Johnston has published journal articles, book chapters, and two books -- It Takes a Child to Raise a Parent: Stories of Evolving Child and Parent Development (2013, hardback; 2019, paperback) and Midlife Maze: A Map to Recovery and Rediscovery after Loss (2017, hardback; 2019, paperback). In addition to augmenting and supporting personal growth in families, Johnston is a Master Gardener and loves nurturing growth in the plants in her yard.

Procrastination Interruption

Are you tied up in knots by “I would have, I could have, I should have _______” self-talk? How often do you interrupt your progress in meeting a goal with procrastination? If you have ever relied on procrastination’s crutches, you have lots of company. The procrastination part of me lingers too long on some projects. Let’s interrupt our procrastination!

Retired professor and researcher of procrastination at Carleton College in Canada, Timothy Pychyl maintains that poor time management is not the cause of procrastination; rather, the culprit is our emotional regulation. The key reason we avoid doing something is not due to lackadaisical time management, but the task at hand generates some uncomfortable emotion – fear, anxiety, and/or self-doubt.

Research by Pychyl found another procrastination myth — that we work best under pressure. While stress might force you to complete something, it may not result in your best work. You may gain an adrenaline rush and believe that without pressure, it’s difficult to “find” motivation.

Pychyl prefers to call procrastination a choice. For example, we may choose to read some self-help book instead of addressing a distracting emotion. We may learn some information and tell ourselves, “I learned what I need to do!” When we take in some new information in this way, there may be a temporary relief that we are closing in on a solution. Brains love learning. In learning there is a sense of “solving” some concern. Yet, research suggests that this fleeting satisfaction might get in the way of actual motivation to follow up with actions. After all, most of us are elaborate excuse-makers.

It is good to learn about change! Actual change is the real pearl.

So, what is the procrastination story? Pychyl writes a “Don’t Delay” blog with Psychology Today. He advocates taking small, achievable steps to address both your stress level and deliver a jumpstart to your motivation. In an interview with Eric Zimmer, the creator of “The One You Feed” podcast, Pychyl offered tips from his book, Solving the Procrastination Puzzle: A Concise Guide to Strategies for Change:

Present-self explains there is benefit from procrastination. Future-self reaps the results.
Ask yourself, “How are you actually going to implement this goal?” Your implementation intention can start the engine of motivation.
Leverage a positive habit you already have: “After I brush my teeth, my next morning action is _______________.”
We do not do projects; we do actions.
Follow this quote by a monk: “You’ve got to give the monkey something to do.”
Most of us seem to believe that one must be in the mood to do something, that motivation proceeds action. However, it’s often the other way around.

Research offers ways to interrupt our procrastination: take action! I would add, be curious; greet your exiled emotions like old friends: “Ah, you always have my back. Let’s take baby steps together!”

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

524. When do you catch yourself procrastinating?

525. What project calls out to you to interrupt procrastination?

Pearls of Passionate Aging

“The Prima Ballerina Still Going Strong After 75 Years” (Wall Street Journal)

Yoko Morishita has the titles of “Pearl of the Orient” and “Prima Ballerina of the World” according to Jason Douglas and Junko Fukutome, writers for Wall Street Journal. Beginning lessons at age 3, Morishita has the distinction of being en pointe for 7 decades. Her esteemed teacher and idol, British ballerina Margot Fonteyn, retired at age 62. Retirement is not in Morishita’s vocabulary; as a disciplined dancer, she practices her craft 6 hours a day, 6 days a week (stretching the 7^th day). Morishita espouses the belief, “We can express passion in calmness.“ If you watch her online, you feel her dynamic passion. And you appreciate that she has persisted to polish her calm charisma.

Let’s admire grit (passion plus perseverance) in Morishita. She is the world’s oldest ballerina. She is rehearsing her beloved role as Clara in “The Nutcracker” for November, a role she has performed for 45 years. She maintains positive expectations: “Once today is over, I think about tomorrow’s lesson.”

We might look to Morishita’s childhood to understand her incredible drive. Born in Hiroshima, 3 years after the city’s deadly destruction from an atomic bomb, she references the resilience of her family and neighbors as her guiding motivation. Her grandmother sustained serious injuries from the blast.

Morishita was slight and frail in childhood. A physician prescribed physical exercise, so her parents enrolled her in ballet classes in a kindergarten (across the street from the family home) that taught ballet after school. Morishita’s first ballet performance occurred as a first-grade fledgling. With a strict “old school” teacher, the little girl endured strikes on her feet from the handle of a feather duster if she was clumsy from pain for enduring en pointe too long. Morishita described parents not complaining about such harsh treatment; instead, they applied ointment to wounds.

At age 12 Morishita asked her parents to send her to ballet school in Tokyo. Her career flourished over the decades. She performed with legendary Rudolf Nureyev for Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee Royal Variety Gala. The two renowned ballet stars danced together 200 times in one decade. Despite a 4-foot-9-inch frame, Morishita remains a powerhouse on stage. A dance critic describes her captivating style as “uniquely Japanese.”

The frightful attacks on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, remain as a terrifying reminder of the perils of war. Hiroshima lost 80,000 people instantly (with a total death count of 140,00 by the end of 1945). A 5-mile section of the city was obliterated. Nagasaki lost an estimated 74,000 individuals. Another 91,105 survivors alive today suffer from ongoing health challenges of cancer and radiation sickness; thousands die each year. Remaining survivors were infants or young children in 1945.

Morishita is like a phoenix rising from literal ashes in Hiroshima to remind us of peaceful possibilities in life.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

522. What is the background of your motivation story?

523. How might Morishita inspire your passion plus perseverance?

Self-Communication Grit

Social work researcher Brené Brown teaches employees how to fail. She calls this training “Daring Leadership.” Millennial employees and interns make up half of her staff. She reports that nearly every Millennial who works with her has confided some version of a kind of innocence: “I never learned how to have these kinds of conversations.” “I never learned about emotions or how to talk so openly about failure, and I’ve never seen it modeled.” “When you’re used to using technology for everything, these hard face-to-face conversations are awkward and so intense.”

If tough communication skills are not taught at home, then public education might pick up the slack. However, schools do not like the word “failure” any better than parents. This communication grit training then falls to OJT, or on-the-job training, the great teacher in most work settings.

I recently read that researchers report evidence for humans speaking as many as20,000 to 75,000 different languages in a timeframe between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago. I wondered if early humans had vocabulary for failure or disappointment in any of their languages. According to an internet search, every culture has a linguistic version of mistakes, or lack of success. However, it is impossible to know vocabulary from thousands of years ago! Many questions have few clear answers.

Irish organizational consultant Annette Clancy did her PhD research on emotion in organizations with a questioning focus on disappointment. She found that the wider the gap between expectation and reality, the greater the disappointment. Major disappointment entails a grieving process, even if the reality of some special thing happening never existed. This applies to one’s work as well as one’s relationships, but disappointment frequently is masked by distracting or numbing oneself. Most of us have little training in addressing our disappointments.

Disappointments need communication, often first with ourselves. And we need passion plus perseverance (grit) to be frank in our self-communication. Why exactly are we disappointed? It is only one part of one’s personality, but it can link up with a chain of personality parts that exude vulnerability, blame and/or anger, the other parts that we try to avoid.

Your disappointment has roots. This simple recognition is a starting place for some investigation. What were your expectations about a given situation? What were some earlier times when you were disappointed? Can you think of any disappointments from your childhood years? Was some failure ignored or denied at that time? It is time to admit failures, flubs, and disappointments. In fact, learning from failure may be key to creativity. Post-it Notes were created from “failed” weak glue.

Let’s adopt Brené Brown’s approach: “No vulnerability, no creativity. No tolerance for failure, no innovation. It is that simple. If you’re not willing to fail, you can’t innovate. If you’re not willing to build a vulnerable culture, you can’t create.”

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

520. When has a disappointment eventually led you to innovate?

521. What gets in the way of meeting your goals?

Self-Care Pearls

A survey of employees in the region of Delhi, India found that cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hypertension, anxiety, and sleep disorders are increasingly the norm in the population of 30–40-year-olds. The health of this age group in the U.S. also is remarkable for chronic issues, especially obesity, depression, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure; in 2023, 6 in 10 young adults and 8 in 10 midlife adults reported 1 or more chronic conditions. A steady rise in prevalence of early health concerns over the past 20 years in the U.S. is a canary in the coal mine for what may lie ahead for these individuals as they age.

While we have just “finished” World Health Organization’s Self-Care Month (June 24 – July 24), support for self-care needs continual daily recognition if we want to change the trajectory of overall world-wide wellness. This was the intention of the International Self-Care Foundation in naming July 24^th for special emphasis: the date was selected for the 24/7 nature of self-care. Yes, how one sleeps is one critical support in wellness (including productive, longer, and happier lives).

The Global Self-Care Federation based in Geneva, Switzerland, suggests that the self-care focus ought to be on resilience. Recalling lessons you learned from COVID-19 might apply here. Perhaps you discovered resilience in new dimensions. COVID was a world-wide epidemic. We learned from many countries how to create community-building in new ways. When everyone makes a commitment in support of global self-care, everyone will be better off. The skyrocketing costs of health care are not sustainable. But the real reason for supporting better wellness globally is about the quality of life for everyone.

International Self-Care Day 2026 (observed 7-24) lists their theme as “Self-Care Puts Your Health in Your Hands: Test. Track. Thrive.” Here is a simple way to show compassion and self-care for yourself: pick 1 thing for your resilient attention – your sleep routine, your diet, your emotional status, your exercise – and track it for 7 days. Notice what needs support. Resolve to work on one wellness promise.

Peggy Swarbrick, occupational therapist and researcher, defines wellness as “a conscious, deliberate process that requires being aware of and making choices for a more satisfying lifestyle.” She identifies 8 interconnected dimensions of wellness: emotional, physical, intellectual, environmental, social, spiritual, financial, and occupational. From setting aside time for a meditation practice to developing a new hobby (perhaps finding a pen pal for snail mail), you will chart your own course.

Indian yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar uses the musical word, “harmony” in defining health: “Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind, and spirit.” I call the resiliency process to achieve this complete harmony “rewiring.” Do not leave your rewiring actions up to chance! Consciously rewire your personality and ability skill set to evolve as you make day-to-day choices with self-care in mind.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

518. What does your self-care promise look like?

519. How will you gain more wellness this week?

What Makes a Champion?

Pearls of Peace was a “champion” blog multiple times in its every-Monday 5-year run of 500 words. Recognized by Illinois Press Women’s Association (IWPA) and National Federation of Press Women (NFPW), here are some reviewer comments:

“One of the more compelling and emotional statements I have read with an associated entry…the blog is…inquisitive…and with a firm perspective.” It is an honor to have positive acceptance of my musings on disparate topics. My goal is to offer curious connections that might lead readers to pause for mindful moments.

What does firm perspective mean to me? It encompasses my belief in cultivating a growth-and-grit mindset to live one’s life with meaning. It takes both continual learning and considerable grit – passion plus perseverance – to keep working on some goal for any extended amount of time.

Writing a blog is not the same as being a soccer player, but a firm perspective about one’s craft is also necessary for the passionate and persistent soccer players making their way to World Cup championship rounds. I cheered for many different teams, but mostly I cheered for players’ relentless resolve, their stick-to-itiveness in their performances. Being a champion is not just about winning accolades.

Another champion is a boy named Mattie J.T. Stepanek who died at age 13 from a rare genetic neuromuscular disease that also claimed the lives of all 3 of his older siblings. His mother, Dr. Jeni Stepanek, did not know that she possessed an adult-onset form of this genetic condition. Mattie lived with a firm perspective when it might have been otherwise. He embodied a growth-and-grit mindset in his short lifetime. Beginning to read and write at age 3, Mattie wrote poetry to grieve the death of his brother. He named his poetry Heartsongs and eventually published 7 books of poetry and peace essays. Here is his 9-year-old poem, On Being a Champion:

A champion is a winner, / A hero… / Someone who never gives up / Even when the going gets rough…Someone who overcomes challenges / Even when it requires creative solutions / A champion is an optimist. /A hopeful spirit… / Someone who plays the game, / Even when the game is called life… / Especially when the game is called life. / There can be a champion in each of us, / If we live as a winner, / If we live as a member of the team, / If we live with a hopeful spirit, / For life.

Mattie advocated for improved hospice laws for children. He referred to “global neighbors…in the mosaic of humanity.” His call for “pathways and choices” for personal and global peace were messages for world leaders. Mattie’s birthday on July 17^th is honored in his hometown (Rockville, Maryland) as Peace Day.

My blog’s 5^th birthday is July 21^st. Let’s share Mattie’s hopeful passion for peace among global neighbors.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

516. What are you passionate about?

517. Where does your resolve and perseverance take you these days?

The World Works Better When Equality Works

July is Disability Pride Month, celebrating a key civil rights victory since 1990 when the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was signed into law. Boston held the first Disability Pride Day, but the first official celebration of this important milestone happened in July 2015 when marking the 25^th anniversary of the ADA. The 2026 theme captures the best of inclusiveness: “The World Works Better With Us.”

As the Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Foundation points out, we are all “different” in some way: “Just as wearing glasses is a way to clear blurry vision, using a wheelchair is another way to get around if walking is a challenge. Approaching the concept of disabilities this way keeps the emphasis on ways we are similar, rather than on differences.”

Parents and schools educating children about disabilities is key to changing stereotypes about certain “differences.” Consider English astrophysicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, a genius who espoused “Multiverse” theory, offering a new mathematical framework for astronomers to discover the existence of parallel universes. At age 21 Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) that paralyzed him and confined him to a wheelchair. Losing his capacity for speech, his understanding of general relativity remained intact. Using cheek-muscle control, a computer helped him communicate. Disabilities often require swimming-upstream challenges.

All of us might consider conscious changes in our views of disabilities. Recognize that many institutions do not embrace employees with disabilities; unconscious prejudice is systemic. We must start with simple advocacy for those with disabilities: say that a person has a disability rather than a person is disabled. This connotes that disability or illness is just one aspect of a person, not their total identity. Those with disabilities who are people of color and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community face discrimination on several fronts.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 1 in 4 Americans (about 70 million adults) have some type of disability with 10% coping with invisible disabilities. You may not recognize that a neighbor or colleague suffers from chronic pain, mental health disorders and/or neurological differences. COVID may have shed some awareness on disabilities initially, but people tend not to dwell on infirmities; it is a reminder of what can “go wrong” at any age.

Barbara J. Howard is American Bar Association President-Elect. In a commencement address for Ohio Northern University Pettit College of Law, she urged new lawyers to speak out, because “silence is complicity.” She reminded law graduates that lawyers are uniquely qualified, as well as obliged, to uphold the Rule of Law: “Constitutional protections are a reality for all.” Howard and her associates specialize in family law, including custody and parenting issues. Her firm prioritizes use of collaborative processes.

My version of inclusiveness is this: the world works better when equality works.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

514. When have you advocated for an individual with a disability?

515. What is one change that you might make to foster equality for those with disabilities?

Land of Free or Land of Fear?

Why do so many people in America have fear riding shotgun in their jeans front pocket? Perhaps they cannot reflect upon President Harry S. Truman’s understanding: “America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.” But what exactly is our job at hand?

Let’s start with upholding The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This Declaration was written in 1776 and signed on July 4^th by John Hancock (President, Continental Congress) and Scots-Irish Charles Thomson (Secretary, Continental Congress) who was born in County Londonderry, Ireland. Most of the 56 signings appeared August 2^nd with the final signing on November 4^th.

It’s fascinating that an immigrant, Charles Thomson, was so instrumental in our country’s founding document. Who knows his story? His father set sail for America with his 5 children when his wife died in 1739. Charles was 9-years-old.

This Scots father died at sea, losing his possessions. The orphaned children were separated upon landing on American soil. Charles, initially taken in by a blacksmith, became a tutor in Latin at Philadelphia Academy (a predecessor of the University of Pennsylvania).

Charles exemplifies determination. He prepared the Journals of the Continental Congress, co-designed the Great Seal of the U.S. and was responsible for adding Latin mottos to the Seal’s reverse side – Annuit coeptis (“Providence favors our undertakings”) and Novus ordo seclorum (“New order of the ages”). Both refer to lines by Roman poet Virgil. Then after nearly 2 decades of work, Charles Thomson’s translation of the Bible’s Old Testament was published in 1808.

As the U. S. marks its 250th anniversary, we celebrate the 6-30-26 Supreme Court decision to strike down an executive order to end birthright citizenship. The Court (6-3) upheld the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment delivering citizenship to (almost) everyone born on U.S. soil.

As the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute notes, our 250^th celebration is “…about people, places, and stories—millions of them…[it] can be a unifying moment—not because everyone sees the past the same way, but because anniversaries help bring people together. They offer a shared starting point…this milestone is a chance for all Americans to learn more about the country and each other.”

Oh, at least 8 of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence where immigrants, born in England or Scotland, along with Alexander Hamilton who was born in British West Indies. Robert Morris, born in England, nearly bankrupted his assets to fund the Revolutionary War. Morris supplied Washington’s troops when the Continental Congress was unable to do so.

Courageous, imaginative, and unbeatable determined immigrants are a backbone of our country.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

512. What history have you learned about America’s founding?

513. What stories will you pass on about the 250^th year of the U.S.?

Personality “Weeds”

My definition of a “weed” is a plant in the wrong place. Ralph Waldo Emerson was more philosophical: “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.” As I pulled mighty weeds in my side yard with some that had fluff-ball heads getting ready to explode their seed, I wondered where they came from, as no other part of my garden had this pest. Then I peeked through the fence where a host of the rascal plants were blooming undeterred in my neighbor’s yard.

Perhaps the neighbor was a fan of Carey Salerno’s poem, The Weeds (Accidentally on Purpose): “I watched the ﬁrst weeds burgeon and decided this was the summer / I wouldn’t stop them, every inch of crabgrass, every foot higher / the woody stem of nightshade… / When faced with all that overgrowth, doesn’t some large part of you want to / watch it manifest more, just a little bit, to see how wild things really / can get… / if I can get myself to see it that way, to let myself feel what it’s / like to let anticipations go, to learn to revel in what might seem more like / mess but could just be learning….”

Or, perhaps the neighbor had read Jake Eagle’s and Michael Amster’s book, The Power of Awe: Overcome Burnout & Anxiety, Ease Chronic Pain, Find Clarity & Purpose – in Less than 1 Minute Per Day, where almost any topic might become awe-inspiring! Mindfulness author Amster finds the practice of tuning into weed awe instructive for teaching resilience to flourish in difficult conditions:

“Weeds are remarkable teachers. They grow in places where nothing else seems able to survive. They push through cracks in sidewalks, emerge from gravel, and thrive in harsh conditions with little water or care. Their resilience is extraordinary…some had delicate purple blossoms. Others displayed geometric patterns more beautiful than many cultivated plants…the only reason we call them ‘weeds’ is because they are growing where we don’t want them. How often do we do the same with people, things, experiences, or parts of ourselves?”

Yes, we do misinterpret “weedy” parts of our personalities on a regular basis. Do you have some part of your personality that seems like “taking-up-too-much space” might apply?

Let’s apply an awe exercise to ourselves: Turn on your imagination. Notice some part of you that seems bothersome. Imagine this part of your personality having color, shape, texture. Ask yourself when this part first showed up — perhaps in some momentous time. Consider the part’s tough resilience to flourish in difficult situations. Thank this hard-working part of yourself, likely trying to protect you from some real or perceived danger. Awe often hides in ordinary days.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

510. Is there a part of your personality that you regularly cast aside as “weed?”

511. What might shift in your mind’s eye if you took time to investigate how that part of you filled a purpose, likely years ago?

Grandma Pearls

I have entered Grandma territory! And what wonderful territory it is! We need more positive people-to-people connections in these challenging times. There is nothing like welcoming a new baby to bring smiles from absolutely everyone! Strangers — who might ignore you any other day — want to send good wishes to the babe. No one cares who you voted for. No one wants to talk about their views on wars, just “What’s Baby’s name?”

Grandma is a term of endearment. Early versions were Grandam (grand + dame) or Great Mother. Growth of a simple Great Mother idea was initiated by Mike Mathews in 2012 in Central Park. Mathews honored his Grandma, Eileen Wilkinson, by setting up a makeshift stand (painted purple, his 104-year-old Grandmother’s favorite color). He named his invention “Grandma Stand.” The wisdom of sage women, and perhaps the spontaneous decision of a passerby to have a listening ear at just the right time in their week, makes a compelling connection for strangers. An accompanying sign asks one question: “What’s something you’re working on?” or “What stands between you and happiness?” or “What’s a conflict you have right now?” or “Who doesn’t know how much they’ve impacted your life”? or “Who’s someone you wish was still around?” or “What’s a relationship I need to fix or let go?”

Grandma Susan has gentle grace in her empathy response to a young woman who had moved to NYC from out of state. A box of Kleenex appears on the stand when tears surface: “…Most people fear change…it is normal to go into a kind of grieving with change…but what are we going to do about it?…talking is very valuable …we write our narrative. We create in our minds a story…sometimes that is constructive; sometimes it is destructive.”

Mathews has 20 grandmothers who volunteer at Grandma Stand in NYC and the concept spread to at least 6 more states (and 20 other locations). Perhaps it is as important for the Grands as it is for the diverse passer-by clientele. Grandma Kathy espouses, “You can’t stop me from doing this. It’s the most gratifying thing I’ve ever done.” A satisfied “customer” told filmmaker Susan Polis Schutz, “Just a little love, a little talking. She’s speaking to my soul and my essence.” Another told his listening Grandmother that he told her things that he had never told anyone else.

Schutz made a documentary showcasing 20 individuals, ages 10-81, talking at Grandma Stand. Even these brief encounters can kindle hope, and perhaps ongoing awareness, for those who take a few minutes to stop by. https://www.kpbs.org/news/2026/05/07/grandma-stand

Babies and Grandmothers can bring about unlimited friendliness. Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön writes about unlimited friendliness in her book, Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears. While no particular religion is part of Grandma Stands, many who avail themselves of Grandmotherly pearls are in sacred territory.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

508. When do you talk to strangers?

509. What have you learned from a stranger?

Boys and Men Need Our Attention

Author David Deida has a new book, The Man of Zero. “Zero” Man is defined by Deida as arriving at “…a point where he’s no longer motivated by the same motivations as in the past…[he]could become depressed. A man can collapse when he’s feeling unmotivated. But if you don’t collapse, if you can stay very present with the moment, with what is, without collapsing—even though you have no sense of purpose or meaning—something else happens. You begin to live and think and move from a deeper place that’s not personal anymore.”

Some can identify with Deida’s philosophy; others might question its veracity for their life. Perhaps everyone can agree to attend to boys’ and men’s wellbeing. June is Men’s Health Awareness Month with the intention to emphasize a critical need for preventive health screenings. This year’s theme reflects how important it is for whole families to invest in men’s wellness — “Partners in Care: For Better Lifespans Across the Lifespan.” Men’s health is a special focus in the week leading up to Father’s Day.

The rates of male depression and suicide have risen sharply according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. More than 6 million U.S. men experience symptoms of depression every year; a recent survey uncovered that 49% of men feel more depressed than they admit to people in their lives. A further cause for concern, men are less likely to ask for help with mental health challenges.

Risks for male wellbeing include these identified factors:

Toxic masculinity — the stereotypical gender roles to be strong, silent, and self-sufficient.
Stress at work – long work hours, high-stress roles, job burnout and depression.
Financial concerns — often the primary breadwinner, yet men more likely to face unemployment.
Substance abuse – men more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, increasing their mental health concerns.

Victor Fontanez is a barber, motivational speaker and entrepreneur, who gave free outdoor haircuts when business collapsed during the pandemic, leading to his social media platform. He became a barber-turned-counselor in Atlanta. Fontanez is a strong role model for youth. He asks 11–12-year-old boys, “What would you change in the world?” They all say gun violence.

Fontanez shares how at age 23 he experienced a mental health crisis prior to his diagnosis of bipolar I disorder: “I thought I could physically push through anything. There was no need for therapy; there was no need to slow down…I pushed my body to the limits—and then I realized, it’s mind, body, and soul. It’s three things that a person needs to take care of.” He radically changed his behavior. Along with psychotherapy and medication assistance, he no longer compromises his sleep, eats a better diet, and exercises. He celebrates his positive changes.

Join “Wear Blue” on Fridays in June to show support for men’s bodymind health.

Pearls of Peace (PoP) Quiz

506. When are you a role model for wellness?

507. What further steps might promote wellness in others?