LIVING HERE
May is recognized as Mental Health Awareness Month, which started in 1949 to help promote mental wellness and reduce stigma.
Mental Health America’s theme is “More Good Days, Together,” providing tools for mental health support, while organizations like NAMI encourage sharing personal stories and advocacy to ensure no one struggles alone. The theme “More Good Days, Together,” emphasizes building community, finding personalized coping strategies, and creating “good” days; however, individuals define them.
The theme highlights that mental health is strengthened through connection and shared experiences. It encourages individuals to define what a “good” day means to them personally. Mental health conditions are medical conditions, and people living with them are more than a diagnosis. Serious mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and major depression are medical conditions, not personal failures. Learning helps increase understanding. That’s what this month is about. Understanding and helping one another. Language matters. Choosing supportive words can help people feel seen, heard, and respected. When we focus on the person and not the diagnosis, we create more supportive conversations about mental health.
Mental health impacts everyone in our communities. Your experience, your journey, and your voice can help break stigma, build understanding, and create hope and healing for others. Stigma grows in silence. Healing begins in community. This Mental Health Awareness Month, share your story to help break the silence. Be the reason someone realizes they don’t have to face this alone.
For immediate, free, and confidential support, individuals can contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988 in the U.S. and Canada.
Please, bikers, do not get your head bashed in by not wearing a helmet.
May is Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month, highlighting the return of riders to the roads and emphasizing the need for drivers to share the road safely. The annual campaign aims to increase the awareness of motorcycles on the open road, making Motorcycle Awareness Month the perfect time for traffic safety professionals and advocates alike to advocate for increased measures that keep riders safe on our nation’s roads and highways. Established in the early 1980s, Motorcycle Awareness Month serves as a monthlong campaign to create a dialogue between all roadway users — including motorcyclists, car drivers, and truck drivers — regarding best practices to ensure safe roads and highways for all users across the country. The goal is to reduce accidents by encouraging drivers to check blind spots twice, increase following distances, and be extra vigilant at intersections.
Motorcycles are small and easily hidden in blind spots. Motorcycles may appear farther and travel faster than they seem. Always use turn signals and check mirrors before changing lanes. Allow a 3-4 second following distance. The month also serves as a reminder that motorists and motorcyclists must work together to reduce the potential for accidents on our nation’s highways.
