Afi Ruel If you haven’t seen Disney’s Encanto, you’re missing out! It’s colorful and beautiful. The music is phenomenal and the story will probably make you think deeper about your own family.
Today let’s talk about Pepa Madrigal: she who controls the weather by way of mood. Or at least that’s what her family reduced her to. I perceive, though, that Pepa is mentally and emotionally ill. While her gift is obviously connected to what she’s feeling in the moment, I don’t think she ever knew how to harness it because she never learned emotional control. And it’s hard to learn emotional control when everyone closest to you cares more about how your illness manifests than they care about the cause of it.
The sad truth about mental and emotional illness is that most of us suffer in silence when affected by it because it makes other people uncomfortable. Now, obviously it’s just inappropriate to air emotional and metal grievances in certain settings such as a workplace or a public setting with strangers. Additionally, it is unfair to expect even those who love you to endure your instability indefinitely when they’ve done everything to help you and you’ve done nothing to help yourself. But it is cruel to demand that someone you say you love to hide their mental and emotional struggles because you don’t want to be inconvenienced by how it manifests. Which is what I suspect is the case with Pepa. Just like we have a hard time accepting weather we don’t like, Pepa’s family didn’t fully accept the unpredictability of her gift and the cause of it. No one wanted to call and thing a thing. No one wanted to admit that most of the family members under Abuela had their own way of manifesting less than desirable characteristics in the name of winning her love and approval (which they were never going to get anyway). Round and round the family Madrigal goes…no stops…just an endless hamster wheel of trying to be perfect for Abuela. If that’s not crazy making behavior, I don’t know what is.
If you or someone you love is suffering from mental and emotional illness, seek help. There is a lot in life you can’t control, but you can control what you do. And if it’s your will to be healthy and whole, take that first step and seek help despite what someone else may think. What did you think about Pepa’s gift?
