Acclaimed artist and best-selling author Morgan Harper Nichols joins Cheddar News to discuss how she's helping others embrace their next adventure in her latest book, and how to focus on prioritizing your mental wellness.

Ways to Prioritize Mental Wellness

This segment is brought to you by jpmorgan Chase celebrating Women's History Month and empowering all women to thrive. Well, many of us are working to prioritize our mental wellness, but sometimes life gets in the way. So our next guest is here to help offering lessons and affirmations to get you ready for that next leap. So joining me now is acclaimed artist and best selling author of Morgan's Harper Nichols Morgen. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much for having me on the show. We're taking a look here at your book, your fourth and latest book. You are only just beginning all about embracing your next adventure. What do you hope readers take away from this? You know, there is of course a lot going on at all times and as someone who is a human who is experiencing all of it, I've made it my practice as an artist to say, what are the small things that I can put out there? Not only just for others, but even for myself and other people in my life so that we can all be reminded to just Slow down and take a moment to recognize that we're not in this alone and we're free to pace ourselves through all of it. Yeah, I think that pacing so important, Morgen, you bring up a good point. You were diagnosed with autism in 2021. What was your journey like getting diagnosed after all those years? And how do you hope that your journey can help others? Yes. So I grew up dealing with a lot of different aspects of what things that were symptoms of autism. However, a lot of the diagnosis criteria for someone that looks like me, such as a black woman that is not always like the most research demographic. So as a result of that, I was often told, even though my parents, I would ask the doctor, hey, we think that, you know, some social things or just, you know, regular things even related to school that I struggle with. I was just saying, oh, well, she'll just grow up, she'll just, you know, figure out how to move through this. But when I got 27 I was like, I'm still struggling with a lot of the simple things like even just speaking. And it was At age I was at age 30 that I actually received a diagnosis. Wow. Well, we so appreciate you sharing your story here to help others on Cheddar News. I know your followers ranging from the biggest names out there, Jennifer Gardner Reese Witherspoon, Joseph Gordon Levitt, the Michelle Obama Foundation. So many more. What does it mean to you that these people love your work? You know, I think that we all have more in common than we think at times it can be very hard to feel like what, you know, what am I part of? But I think what I found in seeing different people who follow my work and shared my work is that at the core of it in one way or another, we are all moving through a story of our life and we are all trying to figure out how to move through this and how to pace ourselves and breathe through all of it. So I found a lot of inspiration knowing that people I haven't even met from people that I look up to are connected with the things that I'm saying. Yeah, I'm liking some of these words that I'm picking up here moving through, right? A key phrase, breathing. Certainly that's something that's helped me in a busy, fast paced environment as well. How can others focus on prioritizing their own mental wellness? Yes. Focused on the small things for me being autistic. This is something that is very, very prevalent in my life. It is the small things that help me cope with the big things and whether that's for some people, it might seem really silly, but even just having something like a stress ball always nearby, just having a motif that you're drawn to, whether it's elephants or the ocean and just finding those things and just spending a little bit of time reflecting on them and what you can learn from them and those small things can help us as we move through the big things as well. What's your inspiration, Morgen? What drives you to do the work that you're doing? Yeah. I'm inspired by a lot of things and I will say that my three year old is probably some of the biggest source of inspiration right now. I work from home. I spend a lot of time at home. And at the same time, I have this three year old person in my house who's not bored by that at all. Like he's always finding a million things to do. And it just makes me realize I'm like, you know what, there's so, so much to learn, it's so easy to get stuck in a routine in a daily life and think, oh, you know, I'm just here, there's nothing going on. But he really reminds me, I'm like, oh, we're just getting started. There's a lot of room for growth and possibility here. So, yes, I would say that that childhood curiosity, that childhood joy. It is a, it requires me to take a lot of naps, but it's all also has a lot of inspiration as well. Yeah, it definitely feels good to More Gun Harper Nichols author of you are only just beginning, take a look at the book on screen. Morgen. Thank you so much. Jpmorgan Chase is committed to advancing financial equality and empowering all women to thrive. Visit jpmorgan chase dot com slash W O T M to learn more.