When It’s Cancer, We Bring Casseroles. When It’s Mental Health, We Go Quiet.

— For Mental Health Awareness Week

When someone is diagnosed with cancer, people gather.
They make lasagne, they send flowers, they rally around the family with messages and fundraisers and hope.

But when someone struggles with their mental health, it’s different.
People don’t know what to do with that kind of illness.

There’s no meal train. No “you’ve got this.”
Just silence, polite distance, or fear disguised as discomfort.

Kahlia struggled with her mental health.
And yet, most people only ever saw her smiling.
They saw her laughter, her kindness, her light. She hid behind that smile, because she knew how the world reacted to brokenness.
Smiling was her way of saying “I’m fine, please don’t run.”

But people ran anyway.
Not because they didn’t love her, but because it was too much.
Too big, too heavy, too confronting.

It’s easier to show up with flowers than with words for what you don’t understand.
Easier to comfort someone with a diagnosis than someone whose pain is invisible.

Mental illness isn’t weakness.
It’s not a lack of gratitude, or strength, or willpower.
It’s an illness of the brain, as real, as terrifying, and as deserving of compassion as cancer.

But we treat it differently.
We expect people to fix it, to think their way out, to “get help,” as if that’s simple.
We tell them to stay positive, as if positivity cures chemical imbalance or trauma.

No one tells a person with cancer to try harder.
No one asks if they’ve manifested health lately.
No one blames them if the treatment doesn’t work.

But when it’s mental illness, blame sneaks in quietly; through judgement, avoidance, or the words we don’t say.

Why Do We Run?

Maybe because mental illness is untidy.
Maybe because we fear our own darkness.
Maybe because grief, pain, and despair are mirrors, and looking at them means seeing ourselves.

But running doesn’t save anyone.
It isolates the people who need connection most.

If we can sit beside a hospital bed, we can sit beside someone’s pain.
If we can rally for chemo, we can rally for therapy.
If we can shave our heads for cancer awareness, we can speak openly about depression and suicide without shame.

How We Help

• Speak, even when it’s awkward. Ask “how’s today?” not “are you better yet?”

• Show up. Bring a meal. Send a message. Presence matters more than perfect words.

• Learn. Educate yourself on mental health — and unlearn the myths.

• Remember. If someone dies from mental illness, don’t say they gave up. Say they fought like hell. Say their illness was bigger than their body could hold.

Mental Health Awareness Week isn’t just a reminder to “check in.”
It’s a call to change how we see illness — and how we love people through it.

Because Kahlia’s smile was real.
But so was her pain.

And maybe if we stopped running from what’s hard to look at, fewer people would have to hide behind their smiles.