These afternoons, I make sure that I get my face into the sunlight every morning that it’s shining.
I remember seeing something about people moving to sunnier, drier weather conditions for their health, and but I think that was more about respiratory health than it was about mental or emotional health. For me, I moved to improve my mental health, but living inside a small apartment with a gas water boiler running for like 5 months in a row played havoc with my emotions. But at the time, I didn’t realize that it was the hot weather and the lack of sunlight that played such a sizable job in how I was feeling. I finally started seeing a therapist and the more work I did, the more it became clear that I had to get myself to the sunshine… So I ditched the gas boiler in favor of a heat pump and I’m feeling so blissful that I did. It’s difficult for a lot of people to open up about emotional well being! Too often my friend and I relate emotional struggles with some sort of failure. I felt very unworthy for so long before I started doing things for me. Again, that’s a sizable part of this whole thing. Being able to trade all that heating for all this a/c was a sizable step because I was doing it for me. I wasn’t helping anyone or trying to just get along. These afternoons, I make sure that I get my face into the sunlight every morning that it’s shining. And that’s most afternoons around here, then even when it’s broiling and tepid outside, I get out of the central a/c of my apartment to get that injection of solar goodness. It’s still so nice outside that I can even slip out of the commercial Heating and A/C of the offices for time in the sun during my dinner hour. It’s made all the difference in my life.