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Lily Cornell Silver knows that being in your 20s is hard. Being in your 20s and navigating COVID-19, college, grief, and your mental health can feel completely overwhelming. Lily, a 21-year-old mental health advocate, and Claire talk about how open, honest conversations with Lily’s mom, Susan Silver, are a key part of her mental health regimen, including as Lily continues to process losing her dad, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, to suicide. This week’s practice is all about mental health and self-care — for parents and for kids, in your 20s and beyond.

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Resources from the show

• The Jed Foundation provides resources for protecting the emotional health and preventing suicide for teens and young adults.
• If you’re a parent or a friend of someone struggling with their mental health, check out The National Council for Well Being.
• Have you had suicidal thoughts? Check out Now Matters Now for support.
• Read To Write Love On Her Arms mental health blog.

Learn more about today’s guest:

• Listen to Lily’s podcast, “Mind Wide Open” where she interviews guests of all types that speak to their struggles with mental health and moments of grief, trauma, depression, etc.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Lily Cornell Silver, Claire

Claire  00:09

Hi, I’m Claire Bidwell Smith. Welcome to NEW DAY. In the years after my mom died, I really struggled as a young college student living in New York, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, these were all present for me. And there were very few people in my life who seemed to notice, and even fewer, who suggested I should worry about my mental health. The main message I received from the adults around me at that time, was that I would get over my mother’s death soon enough, that I was young and have my whole life ahead of me. But I now understand that the loss of a parent is a grave event, and that there’s no getting over the death of a loved one. We move forward. Yes, and we can still have meaningful lives despite loss and trauma. But it takes a lot of work and support and attention. I’m heartened to think that things are different these days. I believe there is an ever-growing awareness that we need to pay more attention to our mental health and to those who are struggling around us.

Claire  01:02

My guest today is evidence of that changing culture. She too lost a parent at a young age. Lily Cornell silver was just 16 years old when her father Soundgarden front man Chris Cornell, died by suicide. She is now a 21-year-old college student with a mission to help other young people who are struggling with mental health. In today’s episode, you’re going to hear us talk about what it’s like to be a college student during COVID generational trauma, how to practice self-care in your 20s, what it’s like to lose a parent and using mental health as a superpower. This is an amazing episode to listen to if you’re in your 20s but also if you’re the parent of someone in their 20s, you’ll hear about Lily’s transparent relationship with her mom. And I just think it’s such a great model for how we could all be parenting.

Claire  01:59

Hi, Lily,

Lily Cornell Silver  02:00

Hi, Claire.

Claire  02:02

I want to start by asking you how are you doing? But like how are you actually doing?

Lily Cornell Silver  02:07

I just finished my first week back in college, back in person. It’s been a total trip definitely feeling super tired today was the day that the tiredness wave hit me I woke up I was like, oh shit. Okay, the adrenaline, the adrenaline is officially run out. We’re back. We’re in it.

Claire  02:29

What is it like to be a college student right now? It’s been, oh my gosh, I’m gonna date myself. It’s been like 20 years since I was a college student. But now particularly in this time in our lives.

Lily Cornell Silver  02:42

It is truly such a strange time to be this age at all. And then also to be a college student. But it’s been really interesting. It’s been kind of like my own little ethnographic project talking to my friends and talking to professor’s and witnessing and experiencing firsthand what it’s like to be back on campus. Because college in and of itself is already very overwhelming, like a very difficult thing. But we’re all kind of flying blind right now. No one really knows what the perfect protocol is. Everyone’s so desperately wants to be back together wanted to be connected. But it’s also there’s just this air of stress and all I don’t want to be dramatic, but almost like an impending doom. Like when’s the other shoe gonna drop? You know, I’ve already had I’ve had multiple friends who are fully vaccinated get COVID in the first we’ve been here for a week. But yeah, it’s it is there is that kind of sense of like, okay, we’re in it. We’re living it. But what when is it going to fall apart? When are we going to get sent home?

Claire  03:41

Yeah. So you talk a lot about mental health, you have an amazing podcast called Mind Wide Open. And I want to talk about that. I want to talk about what it’s like to be a mental health advocate?

Lily Cornell Silver  03:53

Sure, yeah. So to give a little background to on my mental health advocacy work, I created this podcast Mind Wide Open in honor of my dad, actually. And I launched it in May of 2020. At that time, I was really struggling to find like a centralized mental health resource because the world was in flames. And, you know, everyone was struggling, but it was kind of like, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? And I created this interview series, where it was just me talking to mental health experts or public figures or friends of mine, about their own mental health and about mental health in general. And the main thing that I wanted to provide was like tools, you know, and a space for people to feel really validated and really heard and really understood, because a lot of the time all it takes is hearing one other person that has had some kind of similar experience to be like, oh, wow, okay. Yeah, I’m not the only person.

Claire  04:47

No, it’s so cool to have it coming from you at this time in your life at this age, in the midst of still struggling in all kinds of ways. And, you know, I think a lot of times we hear all this stuff from experts and therapists Even people like me who’ve been through their own stuff, it’s still different, you know, for someone your age to be talking about these things, I think it’s so incredibly helpful to so many people. Do you feel like people are struggling more than, say, five years ago? 10 years ago? I mean, you’re, this is the only time you’ve ever been a college student. But, what do you feel like is happening?

Lily Cornell Silver  05:21

I mean, I think the conversation around mental health wasn’t necessarily a topic of discussion unless you were specialized in that topic, or unless you had specific reason to be talking about mental health. So now seeing it as something, you know, just even just all-over social media, like you open social media and in front page of The New York Times has a section about mental health or a different celebrity is talking about their experience with suicidal ideation. And now mental health is like the cool thing to talk about something that part of it exists, that it is almost like a trendy, and I don’t say that, you know, with any kind of negative connotation, like, it’s become more of a trend in the sense that it’s in the spotlight.

Claire  06:00

No, that mean, that’s such a good thing. When I was in college, my college experience, my mother died when I was a freshman in college. And then 9/11 happened when I was a senior in college. And, you know, mental health, I don’t feel like was, as talked about, or as accessible, you know, and so, I struggled enormously with anxiety and depression, but people around me were too and so I’m heartened to hear and to know that, you know, people are talking about it so much more now.

Lily Cornell Silver  06:29

Totally. And then seeing it just with everything going on with COVID, that it kind of needs to be more at the forefront of the conversation. Because, you know, as we saw statistically, and I’m sure as you know, as a professional, the rates of suicide attempts, increasing rates of people seeking, seeking support for their mental seeking resources increased drastically. So I think, you know, definitely part of it has been born out of an absolute necessity.

Claire  06:53

Yeah. So again, I’m going to continue dating myself. A lot of my friends right now are going into empty nesting. I have a whole like group of friends who just are sending off their children for their freshman year of college this year. What do you think parents don’t understand about what it’s like to be that age? Or what do you think they need to know that could be helpful for their kids?

Lily Cornell Silver  07:19

Something that I talk about with my mom a lot is kind of the weird place in the world that we’re at, it’s very difficult for her and I think for a lot of parents to not just be terrified all the time. Honestly, my mom and I just having open conversations around the fact that both of us have fear and both of us have stress and both of us have overwhelmed has been really healing this summer was really probably one of the most difficult for me mental health wise. And so it was a pretty long process trying to get myself feeling prepared to come back to school in person. And my mom and I had a couple really like vulnerable conversations where I was explaining to her this is super overwhelming, I feel really scared, my anxiety super heightened my PTSD, super heightened, and then to be able to hear from her and her saying I’m scared to and these are the emotions that are coming up for me and I want you to be safe and I want myself to be safe. And so for me as a young person, being able to honor the fact that my mom is a human being, she’s gonna have her own emotional reaction made it a lot easier for us to communicate because I think when she’s also trying to hold it together so intensely for my sake, then inevitably, like she hits that kind of breaking point and it becomes like a big argument whereas if we had both taken the time to acknowledge that both of us are having these understandable feelings, like it makes it a lot easier to communicate.

Claire  08:44

Yeah, what was happening this summer for all of you that was bringing up so much?

Lily Cornell Silver  08:51

Honestly, for me, I think it was just around like early July I turned 21 at the end of June and then early July, I had this really intense panic attack and I have a panic disorder so it’s not uncommon but it was this panic attack that kind of sent me into a spiral of consistent like panic and detachment depersonalization for about two months and I’ve kind of just in the last week and a half coming out of that knock on wood

Claire  09:23

Wow. Can you explain a little bit about what that means to listeners who maybe aren’t familiar with detachment or disassociated?

Lily Cornell Silver  09:31

Yeah, totally, for me, the depersonalization, de-realization detachment, whatever you want to call it looks like either kind of looking in the mirror and feeling like I do not know that person like I’ve seen her before, but I feel no connection to who that person is. Or even like, not being able to really feel like my hands or like my limbs feeling I’m not in my body. And then on the flip side of that kind of looking at the world around me like everything feels really weird. I feel like I’m in a dream. My mom doesn’t like my mom, my boyfriend isn’t like my boyfriend like I know intellectually that I know these people, but it truly feels like I don’t like it truly feels like I’m have never been here before I’ve never met them and from what I’ve learned that’s just totally like a fight flight freeze response. I had a therapist once tell me like, I don’t want this to freak you out. But that’s your brain preparing itself to die. Like that’s your brain preparing.

Claire  10:29

You’re putting distance between yourself and the things that are important to you so that you can’t get hurt if you lose them.

Lily Cornell Silver  10:34

Exactly, exactly. And it I wish it was a conscious like okay, I’m going to detach now you know, but, it’s something that comes on for me a lot more intensely when I am pushing it really hard. Or when I’m not practicing the self-care that I should be, which for me when I think of self-care, like it’s literally like making sure I’m going to bed early enough and sleeping enough making sure I’m eating three meals a day, making sure I’m drinking water and taking whatever meds or supplements I need to be taking, like that’s super baseline for me.

Claire  11:06

And these things are really important. A lot of us skip them all the time. Most of them, some of them. Do you think that college students, young people today could be going through this same kind of detachment? Just because of COVID? You know, like you were talking about, like, you’re all kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop at school right now? Do you think that’s causing anyone else to detach, you know, from school or from their life experience? Because they feel like it might get ripped away again at any moment?

Lily Cornell Silver  11:59

I would totally think so. And I think there’s a lot of people that are experiencing these feelings. For the first time, it was a really important lesson for me in like newly being 21. And in learning how to set boundaries for myself and how to create self-care. And I don’t know how many other people experiences I know a lot of my friends and I talked about this that around April or May as things kind of started re-opening. Like we were all turning 21 or 22. And so is this, like the world is reopening and we’re turning this age where we want to go out and be social and like practice self-discovery, and we’re all at home with our parents. You know, it’s just such a weird, it was just such a weird, like, this is so strange, like you can’t help but laugh at it because it’s objectively just so strange. So that I think I just pushed it super hard. I was like I’m in the prime of my life. You know, I want to like be a 21-year-old I want and also is, as you know, so well, like that experience of being young. And having dealt with grief and trauma from a really young age, it can kind of, I’d be super curious, hear what you have to say about it, it can. For me, it felt like not only that I had to grow up a lot faster, but like that I missed a lot of like the carefree parts of childhood. And then it’s like you turn a certain age and you have to start worrying about bills and stuff. Like it wasn’t like that. It just when you’re thrown into trauma from a super young age. It ages you like physiologically, like my brain is set up in a totally different pattern than most people that I know who haven’t experienced trauma, because I’m in this like cycle of hyper vigilance all the time.

Claire  13:36

But it also puts you into a really different space than your peers. I mean, your dad died four years ago. And so you know that right away just puts you into a completely different life space. Not that you weren’t already, because you grew up in a really kind of eclectic way. The daughter of Chris Cornell. But I think that when something like that happens, it just gives you this knowledge that other people don’t have at that age, which is life is precarious. Life is unexpected, life can be short, which I think for me, did two things. It made me incredibly anxious and terrified of the world and also want to live as fully as I could, which was this really insane dichotomy that I still struggle with. Like, I’m scared of everything, but I want to do everything.

Lily Cornell Silver  14:26

That’s Oh, my God. So that basically, that is a perfectly eloquent and concise way of saying what I’m trying to say, which is that that was kind of, I think, the weird line that I hit this summer was like, acknowledging that through all this weird shit that I’ve been through, I have learned so much and I feel lucky, just in the sense of like the life lessons that I’ve learned from such an early age, but also, my brain and body are still wired to be super afraid and super hyper vigilant and constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop and constantly self-monitoring like, am I okay? Am I gonna die? Is my mom gonna die? Like it’s not gonna happen? So I think I was really wanting to like step out into the world and just put a lot on my plate and be like, I’m want to figure out who I am and live life to the fullest, you’re saying, and then I feel maybe by physiology like grabbed me by the ponytail was like, no, go back, no, no, no, no, you need to, you need to be in bed for two months and like chill.

Claire  15:31

How was it to turn 21 without your dad here?

Lily Cornell Silver  15:34

it’s, you know, obviously not something that I ever thought I would experience. And it’s, it’s been interesting in the topic of grief. I know quite a few, you know, just people that I know who have also dealt with grief in their lives, um, the dates that you think are going to be like the really difficult dates like my 21st birthday, or Father’s Day or his birthday, I spent all this time like preparing myself to totally fall apart on those days. And typically I don’t fall apart on those days, I fall apart like three days after. So it’s like, okay, wait, I’m like, actually, like, I’m fine. And then like, a few days later, I’m totally puddle of tears.

Claire  16:16

Birthdays have always been hard for me. And both of my parents died when I was young. And just like the two people that brought me into the world not being here on that day. Gosh, it really flattens it for me. Now that I have kids, it’s a little different. They get very excited. But what do you think your dad would think of how you’re doing now like, look at you, you’re you are thriving, for all intents and purposes. Yeah, you’re in college, you have this incredible podcast, you’re a mental health advocate for kids your age, I mean, you’re doing so much more than I ever did at that age. It’s incredible to see.

Lily Cornell Silver  16:47

Thank you so much. I am really like trying to work on giving myself credit. And I know for a lot of people my age too, there is a culture of kind of over performance.

Claire  17:05

We’re so hard on ourselves.

Lily Cornell Silver  17:06

So hard on ourselves and that you know, for everybody, but I think like especially people my age, like we grew up in that, the expectations seemed at least from what I’ve talked about, like with my mom expectations are a lot higher now than they may be once were. But I’m working on, on giving myself credit. And at the same time, acknowledging that I will be able to do so much better and feel so much better. If I am able to practice self-care.

Claire  17:34

What does taking care of yourself look like?

Lily Cornell Silver  17:36

I am learning that it’s different for everybody. And that my form of self-care. And also my capacity as a 21-year-old is going to look a lot different than my peers like what we talked about especially when you’ve experienced trauma. My psychologist gave me a really beautiful metaphor, she was like you should get an orchid for your dorm room and think of yourself as an orchid is like this really beautiful, beautiful flower that everybody’s drawn to. But it has a different set of needs and different set of circumstances than like a dandelion, you know, that can really thrive anywhere. And that’s not to say one’s better than the other. But it’s you know, not being super hard on myself for not being able to totally burn myself out and bounce back really quickly. And you know, capacity looks different for everybody. But that’s something that I’ve definitely learned over the last year.

Claire  18:29

But to know that is half the battle, right? I think a lot of people don’t know what their capacity is they don’t know how to take care of themselves.

Lily Cornell Silver  18:38

Right. And also not to beat myself up over it. Because that’s been my main thing. This lesson was like, I just want to be good. Like I want to go out I want to be able to have fun and you know, travel and like do these things that really scare me and push myself and not being able to constantly do that. Like I’ve felt pretty shitty about myself for a while.

Claire  18:58

If someone your age or a parent, were listening to this conversation right now. And they were like, okay, this is what’s happening for me or my kid? Where would, what would be the first thing they could start to do wherever they go from here? Like what would they type into Google?

Lily Cornell Silver  19:11

One website that I’ve found to be super helpful is towriteloveonherarms.org I don’t know if you know that one. But I’ve given that one to quite a few my friends because there’s a Resource Finder on there, they have a ton of information, but there’s a Resource Finder on there where you can find different practitioners in your area that and you can you know, filter by insurance, you can filter by what exactly it is that you’re looking for, whether it’s a psychiatrist, psychologist, therapist, you know, whatever. And then more specific filters like if you want us to someone that have a specific gender identity or specific race specific ethnicity, specific sexuality. So that’s a really good website towriteloveonherarms.org and then I also I’ve worked with Dr. Whiteside on nowmattersnow.org where they have a ton of resources for young people, but for anybody to, to know what to do for themselves or for a loved one when it just gets to be too much, which I think we’ve all experienced.

Claire  20:11

Yeah, absolutely. Can we talk about your dad a little bit?

Lily Cornell Silver  20:41

Yeah, so I lost my dad very publicly to suicide and addiction when I was 16. He was the front man for Soundgarden, Chris Cornell. So it’s been, I’ve definitely experienced a lot of loss and a lot of trauma.

Claire  20:59

Your dad had struggled with, with depression and mental health prior to his death.

Lily Cornell Silver  21:04

Yeah, since he was a teenager

Claire  21:06

So what do you now know about mental health that you had no idea about at the time? I mean, it sounds like you were already in therapy, you were going through your own struggles with things but then this must have changed everything that you thought and knew about life and mental health and how we move through the world.

Lily Cornell Silver  21:26

Definitely, yeah, I had an experience lost by suicide. And then when I was 15, one of my close friends from school, took his own life. And then exactly a year later, when my dad passed. So it was just a lot on top of a lot on top of a lot and to be, you know, as you understand to be an age where you’re trying to, like, go through puberty and like finish high school and apply to college, and also mourn somehow and grieve and you know, tried to reconcile the fact that your world has just completely shattered, and then go to fucking calculus, and like, not get a good grade, you know, it’s just like the we it is the weirdest, the weirdest. And I will say, I did get a good grade in calculus, and I want to put that out there. But just the experience of like, losing someone to suicide is not something that I’d experienced before. And then, probably a year after my dad died, I started experiencing like, suicidal ideation and just honestly like terror around suicide, and I think when someone that you love so much, and you know, someone like I love my dad, I love, I present tense, love my dad, so much. And I felt that we were really similar. There was a lot that we struggled with parallel, like, he struggled with a lot of the same, like panic and anxiety and depressive stuff that I do. And then his brothers and sisters do too. And so when he took his own life, and when he started with addiction for so long, I get kind of felt like, I think after he died, it felt like there was this time bomb on me now, like, when is that going to happen to me, like when is it going to get to the point that I can’t handle this anymore. And that was definitely like the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced.

Claire  23:27

What has helped you understand that, cope with it?

Lily Cornell Silver  23:32

Understanding that in many of the ways that I’m really similar to my dad, you know, in good ways and difficult ways. There are also a lot of ways in which I’m different than my dad, and I think having this conversation is one of them.

Claire  23:45

But I think that generational trauma that can get passed down is really terrifying. I was just having a conversation with Billy Lord, who’s Carrie Fisher’s daughter, and we were talking about, you know, what is it that we inherit, from our parents stuff that we inherit? That’s great, and stuff that we inherit that’s really scary that we don’t want, you know, and how do we how do we find that balance? How do we not become the versions of them that we don’t want to be? How do we keep those at bay? Or how do we recognize that we aren’t in the first place you know, and how do we not pass it down to our own kids? Their generation was so different you know, what the resources they had the ability to talk about it the shame they carried.

Lily Cornell Silver  24:25

Just an understanding of even what it was.

Claire  24:27

Right? And that was very different. So I think that recognizing just like you said, like that you’re having these conversations is putting you into a completely different space.

Lily Cornell Silver  24:37

And allowing myself to feel I think has been another thing. I mean, honestly, like in full transparency like I don’t even feel like the shock of my dad dying wore off until this summer. Like truly I think I think a big part of that kind of bottom dropping out and having this really intense episode that I did, was because Has it like it kind of felt real for the first time like I felt like. And it was interesting the day that I had that first really bad panic attack that kind of sent me into that spiral. I have this astrology app called CoStar, which is like kind of a joke. But you know whether it gives you these super like ominous notifications every day. Like sometimes it’ll just be like, watch yourself or like, it’ll say also the weirdest shit. And people who haven’t know exactly what I’m talking about. But that day that I had that panic attack, the notification that I got from CoStar said, trauma makes you feel unsafe in your body. That was like, Whoa, that’s so interesting, because that’s truly my experience. And anyone who struggled with mental health, in any capacity probably knows what I’m talking about what it’s like, it’s not even just a fear of the world around me or whatever. It’s just like, it’s a feeling of unsafe and constant discomfort in my own body, and in my own experience, and so when that’s kind of the underlying feeling, it’s really hard to let myself feel big emotions and process things. If I feel like it’s gonna totally, like, overwhelm me, you know what I mean? Like, it’s terrifying to feel those feelings. Because I don’t know, if it’s gonna, like, send me off the deep end, you know what I mean?

Claire  26:14

And that goes back to this whole, how do you live with that all the time, that uncertainty that this thing might happen? At any time?

Lily Cornell Silver  26:21

Exactly. Exactly. And that’s the thing is like, you can’t, you know, you can’t know like, I think for a long time, I was like, okay, once I get to a place of certainty, then I’ll be okay. My therapist was like, laughing. Like, oh, no, you know, I’m not in a mean way. She’s just like, you know, it, that’s the thing that everyone wishes they could have, and they can’t have. So that became kind of the baseline for me.

Claire  26:46

But it’s learning how to manage it. It’s learning how to live with it, you know? Totally. Yeah, I was interviewing an anxiety specialist at one point for a book I was working on. And I asked him if it was possible to get rid of anxiety, and he laughed at me, you know? Anxiety is not going anywhere, we’re gonna learn how to manage it.

Lily Cornell Silver  27:08

Which is actually such a powerful thing, and honestly gave me so much more self-love. Like when I don’t say I definitely don’t like I’m there. I’m not I haven’t figured out how to manage things. But once I learned, like, I, in order to be the best version of myself, I don’t have to get rid of my anxiety. Like, I don’t have to be a not anxious person or not traumatized person to be the best version of myself, which was like a huge eye opener for me.

Claire  27:33

And that goes back to this idea that, or this truth that we are so hard on ourselves, when we are going through thing when we’re struggling, we are so hard on ourselves. So self-compassion is something I am constantly preaching, what are your avenues to self-compassion.

Lily Cornell Silver  27:54

I would like to hear from you. Your avenues was on compassion. I mean, honestly, that that is like the biggest one for me that I you know, when I’m journaling, or when I’m in therapy, or talking to people that I’m closest to, and the people in my life are so amazing about, you know, bolstering me and I would say one of my biggest avenues for sure is having those people in my life that can bolster me and remind me, because when it comes to mental health stuff, it’s tricky. Like the all your logic can kind of go offline. So to have people that are there to remind me, like, this is who you are, like, you’re a loving spirit with so much light inside of you. And just because you feel like you’re not your feelings. And just because you feel this way, or because your brain chemicals are doing this thing doesn’t mean that, you know, you’re not good, or you’re not the best version of yourself that you should be kind of thing. So having a support network is huge.

Claire  28:51

Self-Compassion, for me has been like a lifelong pursuit. You know, something about losing my mother caused me to hate myself for several years, many years. I wasn’t there the night she died, even though I could have been there were just a lot of things around that. And I mean, I couldn’t even write a college essay without writing. I hate myself three times, and then deleting it for years. So it’s taken me a long time. And I still, as a therapist, now see, so many people struggle with the ability to care about themselves and to love themselves and to think that they are worthy of taking care of themselves. And I’m constantly just trying to figure out how we can do a better job of that.

Lily Cornell Silver  29:33

Right. Yeah, that’s so interesting, that I totally resonate with just like the internalizing of, of things that you can’t necessarily control.

Claire  29:45

So what do you want people your age to know right now who are struggling either with COVID or, you know, they’ve lost somebody by suicide or just going through something mental health related? What do you want them to know?

Lily Cornell Silver  30:01

At this age I’ve found, especially, you know, in high school years, it can be so hard to truly understand and believe that everything is temporary. And when I first started really struggling with like suicidal ideation and anxiety around suicidal ideation, you know, I think we’re just like too young to understand that things come and things go and feeling shift. And, you know, things will always change, like no experience you have is permanent, which goes hand in hand with the fact that that’s like, you know, being young, you have no real way of knowing that. And also, when you struggle with mental health, stuff like that’s, you no matter what age you are, like, that’s what mental health issues will tell you, most of the time is like that this is permanent, and you’re gonna feel this way forever. So just things being temporary, and the seasons change and feelings come and go is has been, like my mantra, especially this last summer is keeping hope and keeping faith that, you know, change inevitably comes.

Claire  31:04

Are there aspects of the struggle with mental health that are positive in any way, you know, that fuel different aspects of your life in a good way?

Lily Cornell Silver  31:15

I totally agree with you in in what you were saying about it, providing so much wisdom and knowledge and just like information and life experience that other people don’t have, especially from a young age, and thinking like, you know, I’m learning to think of anxiety as like an ally and when I am able to manage it and not be afraid, be afraid of it or try to tamp it down, being able to use it as almost like a superpower of intuition or a superpower of you know, knowing what’s right for me or what’s not right for me in any given moment. But I think when it comes to the grief and the trauma stuff, specifically, just like a whole lot of empathy, and a whole lot of understanding of what’s important and what’s not important. And yeah, I feel like I know a lot about myself in a way that I wouldn’t. Yeah, had I not experienced what I’ve experienced.

Claire  32:19

There is a lot in this conversation about how to take care of our mental health and how to support your child when they’re struggling with mental health. I’m so grateful that Lily is doing the work she’s doing. She’s seriously contributing to meaningful change around these issues, becoming such an important voice for her generation. And she’s creating really valuable resources, including her podcast Mind Wide Open. For today’s lesson, I want you to think about your own self-care. Maybe self-care looks different than what you thought it would look like. Maybe you don’t even know where to begin with self-care. Start by asking if you think you could be taking better care of your own mental health? Are you sweeping things under the rug? Experiencing bouts of anxiety or depression? Are you self-medicating with things like wine or TV? If so, start acknowledging that this is going on and consider turning towards healthier options like trying to get more sleep each week.

Claire  33:09

Exercising regularly carving out some alone time. I know these seem basic, but they are the underlying foundational ways that we can take care of ourselves. I know that when I don’t get enough sleep, I’m really irritable. And that when I make time to get a run in or go to a yoga class, I’m much calmer. The second part of this lesson is for those out there who have a kid in their 20s. Do you feel like you really know how your kid is doing? Do you know if they have enough resources around them or if they know where to turn if they’re struggling? Maybe they don’t want to open up to you directly but even just making sure they have the right resources at hand can be game changing. Here’s some recommendations and these will all be in the show notes. Mental Health First Aid from the National Council for mental well-being they offer resources for parents, and the Jed Foundation provides incredible resources for protecting the emotional health and preventing suicide for teens and young adults. As always, thank you again for listening. Next week, I’ve got a conversation that I’m really excited to share with BJ Miller. He’s an incredible physician in the end-of-life space days also a really good friend of mine who’s really changed the way I think about my relationship with my body and with my mortality.

Claire  34:20

NEW DAY is a Lemonada Original. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer, our associate producers Erianna Jiles, […] our engineer, music is by Hannis Brown. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer, Lily Cornell Silver and Claire Bidwell Smith. NEW DAY is produced in partnership with the wellbeing trust the Jed Foundation, and Education Development Center. Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review. Follow us at Lemonada Media across all social platforms or find me at ClaireBidwellSmith.com Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow NEW DAY listeners. Hear advice on how to live with more purpose and satisfaction and suggest tools that have helped you. You can join at facebook.com/groups/newdaypod. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada premium. You can subscribe right now and the apple podcast app by clicking on our podcast logo and then the subscribe button. Alright, that’s it for us. Thanks for listening. See you next week.