About

Hello! My name is Chari, a 30-year-old living with MDD and GAD in Bangkok, Thailand. Somehow you've stumbled upon my website. Welcome!

Main header photo by Evan Kirby on Unsplash

 Why 'Well, Well, Wellness'?

Well! I hate to be the "Webster's dictionary defines..." girl, so instead I'll use Wiktionary.org which describes the phrase "well, well, well" as Indicating pondering or consideration, often with sarcasm or mock surprise. (and in parentheses: current in Britain, but dated in the US and Canada. Well, well, well, look at you Americans and Canadians.) And thus describes what started out as my rather reluctant journey to wellness. This is where I'll be documenting my exploration of mental health and wellness, as stated in the blog's tagline up there, with equal parts snark and wide-eyed optimism. It's much like my approach to life in general; I am a former INTJ turned INFP after all (or so the online MBTI test I took 10 years apart tells me).

My wellness journey is relatively new. Ever since I was a teenager, I always felt like something might be up, that my bad days were too "bad" and my good days were becoming fewer and further in between. But I didn't have the means (mentally and financially) to be properly diagnosed by a mental health professional until I was 29. Now, I am living with Major Depressive Disorder and Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and what a whirlwind it has been since that diagnosis. As I grapple with what it means to be a person living with a mental illness/mood disorder, this site is just me trying to marry my aptitude for writing, my interest and personal connection with mental health, and my sometimes skeptical, sometimes reverent views and attempts at this whole "wellness" thing.

I created this blog in the hopes of offering some kind of insight, visibility, and inspiration, while at the same time navigating my own wellness journey. If you can take something useful away from my writing, if only the feeling that you are not alone in this world, then I will have already accomplished what I set out to do.

That said, I am still learning. And aren't we all? I feel like anyone who isn't a mental health professional (and hey, even they practice a lot of trial and error on the regular) and speaks on it with any kind of holier-than-thou, special snowflake authority needs to reevaluate what their goals are; to educate and inform and learn and grow, or to isolate and marginalise those with mental illness even further? It's all a process, and I hope we can keep our minds and hearts open, whether it's on this site or in our approach to life and other people's views in general.

Comments and questions are always welcome, either on the blog or email me at wellwellwellnessco[at]gmail.com

 Also feel free to follow along on Facebook and Instagram.


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