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Meg Moynihan joins The Moos room to discuss her mental health journey in the agricultural world. This is episode 2 of 4 in our mental health month series!
Hosted by members of the University of Minnesota Extension Beef and Dairy Teams, The Moos Room discusses relevant topics to help beef and dairy producers be more successful. The information is evidence-based and presented as an informal conversation between the hosts and guests.
[music]
Emily Krekelberg: Welcome, everybody, to The Moos Room. OG3 here with another guest for our main Mental Health Awareness Month series. We are joined today by an amazing colleague of mine, a friend of mine, and a neighbor as well of my family's. Meg Moynihan from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture is here with us today. Hey, Meg.
Meg Moynihan: Hello.
Emily: We're so happy you're here.
Meg: I am very happy to be here, but I have to tell you that I've been listening to this podcast and I feel like a total nerd that I don't know what OG3 is. What is that?
Emily: Well, that's the original three hosts, so me, Joe, and Brad.
Meg: Oh okay, well, I kind of picked up on that, but I thought this was some trendy thing the kids were all saying. I didn't know what in the world it was.
Bradley Heins: Don't worry. I had to ask him the same question one day when I'm on the podcast.
Joe Armstrong: It's not really trendy because it's definitely a '90s, early 2000s thing.
Meg: Well, I've been in the hole for a while, but I am honored to be with the OG3.
Emily: We are honored to have you here. Before we dive into all the good stuff, I'm going to have Joe start with the two super-secret questions.
Joe: The super-secret questions that aren't super-secret because I think Meg has listened to enough episodes that she knows and I'm not--
Meg: I'm a fan.
Joe: I'm not looking forward to asking them because I don't think the answers are going to agree with Bradley and I, but it's okay. We'll go with the beef side first. Meg, what is your favorite beef breed?
Meg: I bet you, nobody has ever said Jersey, have they?
Joe: Jersey beef.
Emily: A beef breed.
Bradley: No.
Meg: It is darn tasty beef. I know that, technically, it is not a beef breed, but it is the beef that I eat on my farm. I'm going to say Jersey.
Joe: I like it and it is. It's incredibly tasty.
Meg: Start a new column for me.
Joe: I got you. I got the new column set.
Meg: My direct market is in beef. I think our customers like it because it's a smaller animal. There's not quite as much sticker shock when they buy a quarter or a half. It's a little bit more manageable for them, but I think it's delicious. Okay, so start a new column for Jersey on your small spreadsheet. What's the next question?
Joe: Well, the next question is your favorite dairy breed.
Meg: Well, I'm going to get points to Brad's column by saying Montb�liarde.
Bradley: Oh yes, Montb�liarde.
Meg: What did you think I would say, Brad?
Bradley: I always thought you would say some sort of crossbred, but sure.
Meg: Well, that's not a breed, is it?
Emily: It's not a breed.
Bradley: No, not really, but we'll take it.
Joe: Well, that's a good answer.
Meg: We started with the montes because of the West Central Research and Outreach Center's organic dairy program and the cross-breeding that you guys have done there. We decided that we'd give it a whirl.
Emily: Bradley, how much are you paying her?
Meg: I'm a pro.
Bradley: Exactly.
Meg: I'm a pro.
Joe: All right, let's hit those totals real quick before we move on. On the beef side, Angus at eight, Hereford at six, which is very important. Herefords are not in the lead. Black Baldy at two. Belted Galloway at two. Brahman, one. Stabiliser, one. Gelbvieh, one. Scottish Highlander, one. Chianina, one. Charolais, one. Simmental, one. Dolores, one. Now, Jersey with one vote. On the dairy side, we've got Holsteins holding strong at 11. Jerseys at eight, which is the correct answer. Brown Swiss at four, Montb�liarde at three, Dutch Belted at two, Normande at one.
Meg: I was surprised to find out that Emily was a Dutch Belted girl.
Emily: I am. That is the dream. Emily's going to milk 40 head of Dutch Belted cows one day.
Meg: Awesome. I would love to have you in my neighborhood doing that.
Emily: [chuckles] Yes, it would be in your neighborhood, so there you go. Here's the problem when we have people that we're friends with on the podcasts is we just chit-chat the whole time. I want to dive into it. Like I said at the beginning, I am so excited to have Meg on today. As you know, this is episode two in our series on farm mental health in honor of May, which is Mental Health Awareness Month. We are in this really cool position with this awesome podcast to talk about all sorts of things farming, yes.
Normally, we talk dairy and beef, but we need to talk about the farmers as well. Meg comes from a really cool perspective. As you've probably picked up on, she has a dairy farm herself. As I mentioned, she also works for the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. I actually want to start there and then we'll go back. Meg, for the Department of Agriculture, I know that you are a specialist in a specific area. Just briefly, what is your main charge for the Department of Ag?
Meg: My main charge is nebulous. I work in strategy and innovation, which is, it's a diffuse way of saying, I work on whatever the emerging issue that needs attention is. I try to figure out what we've been doing for too long that we need to stop doing and where are the opportunities that need some care and feeding and attention and, very importantly, partnerships with other organizations around the state.
I would say, for the last three years, I have been heavily involved in issues around farm and agriculture stress. That's everything from, well, all the stressors that we know. Everything from financial stresses to weather stresses to family stresses to market stresses to livestock health stresses to family and children, all of it. I think we recognize that this is a tremendously challenging profession that we're in. It's a profession and it's a lifestyle and it's a heritage. It's many things and we have a lot of expectations for it.
We also think that the rest of the world has a lot of expectations of us and sometimes are, quite frankly, more challenging than others. We decided that we needed to, as I said earlier, partner with some other organizations around the state, commodity groups, farm organizations, places like extension on veterinary associations and really come together and say, "What is it that we can do collectively to help support farmers and other people in our agricultural communities?"
Emily: I would say, Meg, many people, myself included, consider you one of the pioneers of talking about farm stress, especially in the state of Minnesota. As I can recall, your work through the Department of Agriculture was some of the first to really dive into the topic really deeply and really poignantly. I know it all started with the Down on the Farm Program, I believe it was called. I remember I went to it because I was--
Meg: That was a lucky strike.
Emily: I just remember, those were so popular. That was just three, four years ago. It's been so interesting to see where things started and where they've gone as well.
Meg: I think we look around and we see, and by "we," I mean those of us in agriculture, we see other people that are like us who we think are in trouble. We just don't know what to do about it. We have a great mental health specialist in the state called Ted Matthews, who a lot of your listeners may even know. He likes to say, "When we don't know what to do, we don't do anything."
Our goal with that workshop was to really talk about what are some of the sources, what are the manifestations to help people outside agriculture understand what makes farmers and other people in agriculture tick because it's a very unique kind of culture that farming is, and by the same token, to help people who are heavily involved with agriculture learn a little bit more about the interpersonal dynamics. It was just something we tried. We improved it as we went along. That really was foundational to doing a lot more and learning about who all the people in Minnesota were who had a dog in this fight and were really interested in being more helpful.
Emily: I don't want to call it shocking, but something that really surprised me and continues to surprise me is how many people outside of direct agriculture still have some buy into it or still feel the need to support it. I think of how much support we have gotten from our faith-based communities, from local law enforcement organizations. There are a lot of players in this.
Like you said, a lot of people have a dog in this fight because it's so uplifting to me to see how these communities really realize how vital these farmers are. When they need help, they want to try to provide it. The amount of communities that just independently did farm stress programming and are still trying to do different things is really astounding to me. Meg, I don't know if you've seen the same thing. I'm guessing you have. I think of the variety of people up and down on the farm workshops and the workshops you've had since.
Meg: I absolutely do. I'll tell you, the inspiration for taking that tack came actually from a podcast. Speaking of podcasts, I was milking cows. I had a period of time that I was farming here by myself because of some disruptions and some challenges that we're having on the farm. I found myself in a position that I really had to run things here for about six months. I was at the end of my rope.
I was best friends with podcasts because I was alone all the time. They connected me to new ideas and work the world and entertainment and things. I wish there had been Moos Room back then, but I was listening to a podcast from England called Farming Today. It's about 12 minutes. It's every day. They go all around the United Kingdom. It's really interesting to hear about farming in a different land where they speak English so I could listen in.
They go to Wales and Scotland. They were talking to a woman. She was a farmer. Actually, she was more of a farmwife than a farmer. Her husband had been the farmer. She considered herself to be a farmwife. He died by suicide. She was the one who found him. She went through a tremendous amount of grief and anger and confusion and the things that happen after we lose somebody we love.
She started thinking back on the note that he had left her, which said, "I know how hard you tried to help me and you couldn't, but you might be able to help other people." She really took that seriously. She started reaching out to people who work with farmers, to veterinarians, to clergy, to the people at the feed stores, whatever they call the feed stores in England, probably feed shops.
All of the people who make up the fabric of the community saying, "How do we recognize and respond when we see farmers in trouble?" I thought, "Well, that's brilliant. I wonder who does that here and how we could do that in Minnesota." I started looking around and then I started talking to people and we thought, "Well, there really isn't anything that similar, so why don't we try to build that?" It was just a shot in the dark. We tried to see what would happen.
I mentioned veterinarians. I can remember during that time when I was here by myself and crawling the walls and worried about everything and not sleeping. One of the most helpful people in my life was our vet Dan and his red truck. He would pull in to take care of a cow, take care of something, and he'd spend a few minutes after we're just talking to me. I'd say things like, "Well, how's everybody else doing? Is anybody else on the brink like I am here?" He'd tell me he'd never break any confidence.
He would tell me what people were battling with and the good things and the bad things. He was like a little mini-counselor. I thought it's people like that that farmers already know and trust, you're far more likely to open up than necessarily having to go out and find a professional. Now, as you've mentioned in a lot of the podcasts that I've listened to, Emily, there is a real role for a professional sometimes. Sometimes we need a listening ear, a doorway into that.
Maybe it's a pastor and maybe it's the right neighbor. Maybe it's your veterinarian. I think those people would like to be in a position to help, but they really don't know like, "What is my role? How do I deal with somebody sharing their deep, dark secrets with me? What's my responsibility here?" We wanted to help people be more comfortable with that and have them know, "You don't have to be a psychiatrist. You just have to be there for each other."
Emily: That's such a great point, Megan. Tying back to the Farming Today podcast and that farmwife and her husband, that note is just gut-wrenching.
Meg: It chokes me up every time I talk about it. He was right. He told her that and she started doing that. I was listening when she talked about it. I imported some of that. I had tons of help around the state with other people that nobody's doing this themselves. It's just one of these wonderful things that everybody's pitching in and doing a piece of it. I hope that it's having an impact. I really do.
Emily: I for sure think it is. Your work really started my work into this as well. Like you said, Meg, it takes all of us and there are so many people doing cool things around the state and around the country too.
Meg: The other thing that I do want to point out is that I am absolutely not a professional in this. I am not a psychologist. I am not a psychiatrist. I do not have an MD. I don't even have a PhD. I'm just have been doing a lot of work and interacting with the people who are both the providers and the users of a lot of these services. I feel like a facilitator or a hostess. I'm a hostess to some degree.
Emily: Meg, I don't think you give yourself enough credit here. One thing that you have that a lot of psychologists and therapists don't is lived experience. You've talked about that a little bit. I hope it's okay to ask you about it a little bit more because I know you spoke at one of my very first farm stress programs and shared your really powerful story of what you've been through as a farmer that I think was reaching the end of their rope and wasn't sure where to turn and was able to get the help that you needed.
Meg: In that experience, and I'll tell you a little bit about it, that experience really is directly what led me to having a conversation with the Department of Agriculture and saying, "There are some challenges going on in the landscape that I think we are in a position to do something about. People are hurting and people are in trouble right now." I have only been a dairy farmer since about 2012.
I married my husband late in life. Neither of us had any kids. He is from the east side of Saint Paul, Minnesota. I'm from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He bought this farm that we're on in Le Sueur County in 1988. He started milking cows in 1994. I had a richful, professional, devil-may-care, live-in-the-city girl life. I was working for the Department of Agriculture when we met and had been in agriculture for, I don't know, 20 years at that point.
I didn't grow up on a farm. I am not of the farm. I am not of this place. I have a really different perspective. I got to say, that's been very helpful. Because sometimes when you're a stranger and you parachute into a new land, you notice things that the inhabitants don't see about themselves, right? Sometimes I can see some dynamics going on that I might not notice otherwise. We are organic dairy farmers. We had been shipping to a co-op for a number of years.
In 2016, March 1st, 2016, we got a letter from the co-op saying they were stopping our route. As organic dairy farmers, there weren't a whole lot of other options available to us at that time. I was a little bit smug because up until that point, I'd been the organic lady at the Department of Agriculture. Brad and I go way back on doing projects and programs and efforts and focus groups.
I was a little smug and I thought, "Well, I'm the organic lady at the Department of Agriculture. I'll make a few calls. Somebody will take our milk." That was not true. We called and did research. My husband was on the phone. He was thinking about buying a truck and taking our milk somewhere. We were talking to buyers. We were talking to cheesemakers. The clock was ticking. On April 1st, we had to start dumping milk. We dumped milk for almost two months and then NFO got us on a conventional truck.
At least the milk was leaving the farm, but with an organic system selling conventional milk and particularly, it was about $13 then, and organic was up close to $40 when we lost our spot. It was a huge, huge financial kick in the teeth. It didn't take my husband long to come home and say, "You know what? We can't keep doing this. I need to go out to work. I'm going to go back to over-the-road truck driving, which is how he earned the money to buy this farm in the first place."
He felt like to save the farm and to save his own mental health insanity, he was going to have to go and do something else. The most terrifying words for you to hear from your spouse, and here I'm feeling a little emotional again, are, "I have failed." Those were the words that I heard from him. I knew that he was pretty close to the edge there. He took this extremely personally because he built this whole place. We didn't inherit this. Every hole, every broken-down manure spreader, every old John Deere tractor we have is something that he acquired.
He felt like he had done his best and it wasn't enough. He fired up a semi and went back out on the road. He said, "Do what you want." He said, "If you can milk the cows yourself or hire someone if you can find someone or sell them, I just can't do this anymore." I really kicked in and started in a short-term need of, "We need to buy some time here. We can't make this decision. Maybe it's time for the cows to go. We can't decide this at the moment of crisis. We need a little breathing room."
I took a leave of absence from the Department of Ag, which is super understanding. It turned into six or eight months. I came home and ran the farm. Initially, I said, "I'm a city girl here, but I know how to move them on pasture." It's summertime, right? Most of the time, they're on pasture. You can teach me how to mix feed. I can keep them fed, bred, milked. I know how to call the AI guy. I know how to watch for heats. I can't do the field operations, so somebody's going to have to help me with that.
By God, I did it. It was a great personal cause partly because I was by myself and partly because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Everything was a challenge to me. If you grew up on a farm or you've done this all your life and the skid steer won't start, you pretty much know the things it could be, right? For me, I would have to step back and be like, "Oh God, I have to go through troubleshooting." Could be A or could be B or could be C. Is it out of fuel? Is it the battery? Is it the starter?
There were a few people in the neighborhood that I knew I could call, but I never wanted to call anybody too frequently, right? I didn't want to wear all my welcome. I'd cycle. I'd call Dave for some things and then I'd call Owen and then I'd call Chuck and then I'd call Randy. They got me through this. It's not like they were here every day like, "Oh, are you okay? Are you okay?" They left me to my own devices. If I needed help, I knew I could call them. The hours were long and I just got more and more frazzled.
I had one long weekend off the farm. I went to a wedding of a childhood friend in Nashville, Tennessee, where I lived for some time. A mutual friend and I were rooming together. It just kind of came out of the blue. She said, "I just went through this terrible depression." She said, "I had moved back from Japan. Then we were going to move back to Japan and I went into a tailspin. I could barely get out of bed and I had to go on antidepressants, and thank God for them." I hadn't told her anything about the struggles that I was having and slamming doors and crying and not getting any sleep and losing weight and all this stress that I was doing.
I'm like, "Whoa, she seems really normal, but she took antidepressants." I think that planted a seed in my head. I came back to the farm. During one of the slamming doors or yelling at the dogs or bursting into tears episodes that I was having just because I was frazzled, I sent a note to my doctor and said, "This is what's happening. Do you think I need antidepressants? I can't really afford to come in for an office visit anymore because I'm not making any money and I don't have my health insurance anymore because I am on leave from my job."
They said, "Well, we'll send a prescription into your pharmacy. It's for anxiety and it might be helpful for you. I was like, "Oh." I found time that day to go to the grocery store, which was always a challenge like, "When am I even going to go and get groceries?" I just felt like there was no time. I went in and I can remember going to the pharmacy. I walked right over to the water fountain, which we call a bubbler in Milwaukee where I grew up.
I walked right over to the bubbler and I took one pill and I was like, "Oh, I feel so much better." These things take six or eight weeks to build up in your system to make any difference, but I'm like, "Oh God, I love the placebo effect." It was just this one thing. I took those for, I don't know, probably a year until I felt like I didn't need it anymore and then I stopped and it was fine.
Some people need medication, some people don't. Some people need it for the rest of their lives. For some people, it's incidental. I had to get over this, "Oh, if I have to take a pill, it's a bad thing." I did and I was so happy that I had done that. I heard you talking, I think, on Episode 14, Emily, talking about medication. You were afraid that you would not be yourself anymore. I had the same feeling like, "Is it going to turn me into a comatose person?" It didn't. It just took the edge off and I didn't worry so much.
Emily: I think that's a great point to make. I maybe said on that podcast too where I told my doctor. I was like, "I'm afraid of not being myself." She looked at me and she goes, "Do you feel like yourself right now?"
Meg: "How is that working out for you?"
Emily: [chuckles] I'm like, "All right, touch�, write me the prescription."
Meg: "How is that working out for you?" Ultimately, our situation resolved itself and another company decided to take our milk, right? We were snatched from the jaws of the volcano or the void or the monster or whatever it was. The Department of Ag welcomed me back with open arms, which was really lovely. I said, "Well, I've been fighting the organic fight here personally for nine months and I don't want to do that anymore in my other job." They said, "Fine, we need you to think about new things and what's going on."
I said, "Well, I'll tell you what's going on." It's really hard out there because when I was girl farmer here on the farm and I was now a peer of all the farmers in my neighborhood, I wasn't just Kevin's wife, I was also farming, right? We had a different peer-to-peer relationship. I also had a different relationship with other farmers around the state that I knew that, now, I was one of them. I began to see the cracks in everybody's fa�ade. For some of them, they were financial cracks.
For some of them, they were, "I can't get out to plant or to harvest because I can't get off the couch cracks." For some of them, they were, "Dad and mom are in different nursing homes and we're not quite sure how we're going to afford this. We're going to have to sell some land cracks." For others, it was, "We're going through divorce cracks." Everybody was having some real hard struggle. I went back and I said, "It's hard out there. I don't think anybody knows how many farmers are on the edge." They said, "What can we do about that?" Then we started trying stuff. That's the end of my story. Thank you for letting me finish that.
Emily: Yes, no. Meg, I just want to thank you. You have always been really open about sharing your story. I want to back up a little bit to some of the harder, more gritty stuff, and just Kevin, your husband, feeling like he had failed and, no doubt, the strain that was on you as individuals, you two as a couple, and everything with your farm. I hate to say it this way, but what I like about that is it's very human.
I think that we probably have some people listening right now that heard your story and were nodding along thinking like, "Yes, a lot of this sounds really familiar." I know, for me, that was a really startling point when I started in this work. I would talk to people or people would privately send me emails or messages or would write on a program evaluation. I just always felt like I was the only one going through this. I just realized now, I'm not.
That isolation, we've talked about that in previous episodes, so we don't need to go into that in-depth. That isolation, it starts so small. It just grows bigger and bigger and it exacerbates all of these issues. I think your ability to go, "Yes, I've been through this," and "Yes, I'm going to be totally open and honest about what I've been through with it," I think has really led to a lot of the changes we've seen. I think you and I both know, there's more work to be done, but I also think that progress has been made.
Meg: We like to say, "You are not alone." I think that really has a double meaning. I think, number one, it means you are not alone in the fact that other people are going through this too. You just don't know it. Also, you are not alone and that you don't have to do that yourself. If you want to, there are people out there that will support you, listen to you, give you advice, drive you somewhere. There are people who will just be there to have your back while you face some of these tough decisions that you are going to have to make because they can't make those decisions for you, but they can help you stiffen your spine while you have to do that.
Joe: Meg, I'm really interested in-- you talk about going on medication and that taking the edge off. Emily's talked previously about how medication isn't the fix a lot of the time. The fix is, it's a way to help you get to the practices in your daily life or your day-to-day life and help you manage the problem. What else did you change that helped you get over the hump besides just taking the medication?
Meg: Well, the situation changed and then there came a point at which I began to identify what were my problems and what weren't my problems. I came up with this little mantra when something would go wrong. I would look at it. Sometimes it would be something that I could do something about and sometimes I would just say, "You know what? That is not my problem to solve."
Occasionally, I just had to repeat that because I didn't always believe it. I'm wired to be a worrier and a fixer and so that's just my baseline. I really had to consciously repeat that to myself that sometimes you see a train wreck happening and you can and should do something about it. Sometimes it's just not my problem to solve. Now, if it were a real train wreck, of course, I would do everything I could to stop it. I think you know what I mean.
We cannot do everything. I just came to be a little bit more at peace with that. I completely agree that, for some people, medication makes sense. For other people, it doesn't. Some people need to go to their doctor-doctor. That's a great first stop is to go to your physician. In fact, I remember talking to our former commissioner of agriculture. That was Dave Frederickson. He had been farming in the '80s. At one point, he was out, I don't know, combining or something. He was just doubled over by pain.
He got himself into a car, drove to the doctor's office. He did not know what was wrong. They ran some tests and said, "It looks like you've got a pretty bad ulcer." The doctor said, "Dave, I've known you for a long time. What's going on?" The commissioner said, "I just broke down and I told him everything and all the things I was worried about and everything that was going wrong, and he said, 'You know what? We can help with those things and there are strategies.'"
He's another one who was willing to say, "I have walked through hell and back." All of our hells look different, right? This came after my own personal challenge with this whole farm situation, which I still love and I'm still very involved with that. Thank God, I don't have to do it by myself anymore. I was at a meeting with some farm advocates and some mediators. One of them said something that just has stuck with me and that is, "Every person you meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about."
That has given me such a feeling of humility and compassion and I realized when I am judgy and I shouldn't be and I try to be generous and give other people the benefit of the doubt without getting taken myself. I think that is really true is we just don't know what's going on below the surface with other people. Still waters can run very deep. Some operations just look like beautiful, everything is great, and you have no idea how those people are struggling as human beings. Some of them are like ramshackle, shabby little firms like mine where people are happy as clams, but it's just we don't know.
Joe: Oh, absolutely. I think we talked about that in the last episode where we talked about you never know what's going on in that person's life. You need to be conscious of that at all times that there's reasons behind a lot of the things that happen on the farm that you know nothing about. One of my other questions was, you talked about being alone. We talked about how feeling alone is actually a risk factor for feeling more depressed or more anxious.
Meg: Yes, absolutely.
Joe: You mentioned that podcasts helped you figure out and helped you have something that helped you not feel so alone. You also mentioned just little moments where people were checking in on you and letting you know that there's other people that are struggling as well. My big thing that we've touted a couple of times now is the use of social media in groups to help you feel not as alone.
Social media is my focus of this because I always go back and forth with social media. I think it's a great tool to help you feel not alone, but I also feel like it's a tool that we've become skeptical of, and rightly so because what you see is, a lot of times, the highlights of what's going on are out there. You don't see some of the bad moments. People don't tend to- [crosstalk]
Meg: I think that, typically, people use a persona there. It's just not their genuine selves. I think social media sometimes to learn things like I'm on an organic dairy Facebook group because I learned stuff from people, but also there are some cranks and some very unpleasant people. I think you really have to take social media with a grain of salt. I think you need to regulate it. I think if it's too many nasty people, you need to get out.
I'm a big fan of just making some contact with other human beings even if that's going to the grocery store and walking around. Sometimes that can snap me out of a bad mood that I just change where I am, who I am seeing, talk to some strangers. Sometimes it's easier to talk to strangers than it is to talk to people. In fact, that's one of the things I say. One of the things we have as a 24-hour helpline that people can either call, text, or email. That's one of the things. It's like, "Well, why would I tell a stranger?"
Well, sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger who you'll never meet and never see again than it is to talk to somebody. We all need to figure that out, so there are options out there. I think that social media is interesting. I think Emily had a whole lot more experience participating in and even leading social media conversations than I have. I guess me, I'm more on the consumer end of social media. That's my perspective, but I'd be interested to hear what you have to say about that, Emily.
Emily: Just the contact piece is huge. I know, for me, personally, it became a little bit safer outlet. We know both good and bad, people are usually a little more bold on social media because they're behind the screen. For me, that turned out to be a good thing. It was a little bit easier to just type it out and click post. It was in the universe's hands after that.
Meg: Right.
Emily: I think that can be useful. Some people aren't into that and that's fine. There are other outlets, I think, that they can use and that they can see. I also think that I know like I already talked about, Meg, with you sharing your story. I think we all need to share our stories. We all need to share them in different ways because we all can draw-- Ugh, sounds cheesy, but we can draw courage from other people's experiences.
I know, for me, that was one of the things that really helped. The reason I shared on social media was because I had some other friends from other areas of my life who didn't even live in Minnesota that would share about their struggles with mental health and even their diagnosed mental illnesses. Just reading that again for me was that I'm-not-alone-in-feeling-this-way thing. Two, I continue to share it because it's like my diary that the whole world can read.
[laughter]
Emily: For me, that's okay. That's not for everybody and that's also okay. Also, making sure you're having those private connections and conversations with people or making sure you are having that conversation with your physician or going to see a counselor or a therapist. We all need to approach this in different ways and sometimes in multiple ways. There's no right or wrong way to go about it. We all have different things that work for us. I think that, yes, social media can be a very powerful tool in helping us in our mental health. It can be a very powerful tool in deteriorating our mental health. I also think we need to develop that sense of awareness of, "Okay, when is it time to stop?"
Meg: Do you think there are social media addicts?
Emily: Yes.
Joe: Oh yes, absolutely.
Emily: Oh yes.
Meg: Then that's a problem. That can be a problem.
Joe: I think Emily describing it as a tool is the right way to describe it though. Because with every tool we talked about on this podcast, there's a correct way that it can be used and it works. There's an incorrect way to use it that isn't all that helpful. I think that's the right way to describe social media.
Meg: I think we're talking here about this loneliness and isolation piece. I think that really is critical. There are fewer and fewer of us out here. I think back, I've got this friend Therese, who lives in Watonwan County. She said, "When Daniel and I moved to this farm in 1977, I could look out my window and I could see," I don't know what it was, "12, 15 other farms from my kitchen window. Now, there are two." I know the land is still farmed. There are still crops or wind turbines or something, but the people are gone.
I just think about the fact that there's something to be said for people who are in the same boat with you and understand what it is because they're not walking in your shoes, but they're walking in a pair very like yours, right? As things shift and change in the countryside and there's more space between us and there are fewer of those connections, don't you remember the stories of people saying, "Oh, we used to go visiting. We used to go visiting and we'd all visit and play cards and be on the porch."
I'm like, "I don't see that happening anywhere anymore." Now, everybody's working. A lot of farmers also have jobs off the farm. Everybody is just running in this wheel. To some extent, they're running alone and they're feeling like there's somebody breathing down their neck. Maybe it's somebody who's coveting their land or maybe it's their banker or maybe try to keep up with the Joneses and there's this sense of competition. I think looking for the allies that we can find is really important and taking time for that.
Joe: I love that explanation. I think those card games are still out there. They had several dairies that I knew if I was showing up on Thursday morning. Cards are Wednesday night, so you want it to be real quiet, talk calmly, quietly, so that the hangover wasn't really disturbed.
Emily: [laughs]
Meg: There's another problem.
Joe: I think that they're out there if you look for them, but I think that circle has changed, whereas the five or six people around that table playing cards could have been all dairy farmers before. Now, it could be three dairy farmers, a bee farmer, a crop farmer. Maybe there's someone with sheep and goats thrown in there. I think that goes back to when we had Natasha Mortenson on talking about how we're all part of agriculture. There's no reason to be feeling like we need to compete between all the different groups because we're all in, like Meg was saying, similar shoes. There's people. Just because they don't raise cows doesn't mean they don't understand some of the situation that you're in.
Emily: I don't know if it's an analogy or a metaphor. I don't know the difference, but I had a friend say to me once. [chuckles] He goes, "Emily, we may not all be in the same boat, but we're all in the same ocean." That is the mantra I have used for a lot of this farm stress work because we all play the comparison game and we may go, "Well, they're a big farm. They have a lot of money. They're fine. They're this, they're that, they're in this enterprise. Crop farmers make all the money," blah, blah, blah, whatever, but we're all navigating these rough waters. Yes, our boats may look different. They're separate, but there is still kind of that we're-all-in-this-together-type mentality, I think. That community mentality, which has always been really vital to agriculture and the rural living idea.
Meg: I think that's true to a certain extent, but there's also bad behavior out there. There are also some real jerks and some nasty mean-spiritedness. I think we just have to choose our friends wisely. The fact that there are fewer of us means we have to make more of an effort to connect with each other. We've talked a lot today about focusing on ourselves and what we need, but a lot of us look out at other people that we care about and we're worried about them and we don't know what to do, and that whole theme of like, "What is it?"
In Minnesota, it's like, "Oh yes, you can't bother them," like, "Oh, that's personal. I can't be talking to them about that." I say, "Sharpen your elbows. Just pretend you're from the East Coast or something because you'll never get in if you don't ask or don't offer." Sometimes if you're talking to somebody and you're pointing out something that's changed or you're saying, "I'm just wondering if everything's okay. What's going on?" sometimes you can have that conversation.
Sometimes you just need to spend more time with people. I think about when my husband's puttering around with people on tractors in the yard, a lot of conversations happen when you do something together, especially for guys. I think it's difficult to sit down and look into each other's eyes and say, "Oh, Joe, how are you feeling?" and Brad says, "Oh, tell me more."
[crosstalk]
Meg: If they're palpating cows together, they're going to have some kind of natural conversation, right? Sometimes you need to set up a situation in which you're working on something. Hell, make up a problem. Sometimes if my husband is low, I'll call one of his friends and be like, "Can you take him to an auction?" or "Can you do something? Because he's been really feeling down and I think things are getting to him and I can't help him, but I bet you could. Just get him out of here," or make up a problem that he could help you with, right?
Sometimes you just need to lure somebody out of their shell to do that. Then the other thing you would say is if you are going to do that and if you want to be there for somebody, you need to be vigilant about keeping those confidences because the last thing, you know how small-- we're far apart, but these are small, small communities. I know when you live in a city, you can be anonymous. Out here, everybody knows everybody and what's going on.
If somebody confides in you and you're willing to accept that, you have to be the vessel for that and not tell their spouse because you think it would be helpful to them and not tell their pastor because you think it would be helpful to them because it wouldn't. You are there to help be a sounding board. If they're willing to talk to somebody else, you can make it easier for them to get there. Keeping those secrets, I think, is really critical.
Emily: The only caveat I would make to that is if they tell you they're going to hurt themselves or somebody else, then you have to tell someone.
Meg: Agreed. Absolutely. You have to talk to them about it.
Emily: Yes. If you can, have them be involved in that conversation with somebody else. Meg, I feel like we could talk about this for hours and hours, but we--
Meg: We could. Sadly, we cannot.
Emily: A little closer, yes. I have one more question I want to ask. Bradley, you've been very, very quiet. I want to give you the chance and put you on the spot.
Bradley: It's always tough. This is not my expertise. It's always tough for--
Meg: You're a human being. Get over the expertise.
Bradley: Exactly.
[laughter]
Bradley: I think the big thing is, what are the three take-home important messages for people when they're experiencing some sort of issue or challenge in their lives? What should we do? What are the top three things that Meg would say to do?
Meg: I would say one of the big things is that you are not alone, peace. If you feel alone, then you need to get not alone. That's really difficult because we've got all of these feelings of shame and worry. The last thing you want to do when you're feeling like a loser is to go out in the world and say, "I'm a loser. I'm here in the world." You want people not to notice you and that things just get worse. I think that we can be there for each other. I think that's part of this whole issue of community that we've been talking about.
Whatever the metaphor is, if we're in the ocean or we're rowing the boat or we're bailing together, whatever it is that we are in this together and we'll sink or swim together. I think that that's important to know. I think the whole piece of understanding that you don't know what's going on with somebody else. By the same token, they don't have a magical window into you. They can't see when something is wrong necessarily. Just as every person you meet is fighting a battle that you know nothing about, you're probably fighting some battles that they don't know anything about. That's important to keep in mind too.
Bradley: Those are good points. It's always tough to know. Especially if we don't know what else is happening in other people's life, sometimes it's hard. As Minnesotans, that's a natural thing for us, is to hold everything inside.
Meg: Everybody needs something different. You try something. If that is not what you needed, then you move on to something else. Like I said, you could start with your doctor. You could start with talking to a pastor. You could start by writing some notes to yourself in a little log. You could start by getting more sleep or less sleep. You can try different things, but everybody needs some kind of help because we're human beings.
Emily: I think that that is the spot to end it right there. Again, Meg, thank you so much for being on, for contributing to our special edition episodes for May Mental Health Awareness Month. We always appreciate your insight and your experience as well.
Meg: I am mighty flattered that you asked me because, as I said, I am a fan of The Moos Room. I am a listener, dedicated listener.
Emily: She's in The Moos Crew. [chuckles] With that, like I said, I think we're going to wrap there. Again, Meg has done an incredible job of really immobilizing, not only the Department of Ag but a lot of agricultural organizations throughout the state. I do want to say, we've mentioned it before, but if you are looking for resources, the team there at the Department of Ag has done a great job compiling everybody's resources onto one amazing website, minnesotafarmstress.com, mnfarmstress.com.
You'll find a lot of things you need there. I know that we do have listeners from other states. If you are looking for resources for yourself, you can certainly look at what we have available. I would also recommend you contact or look into your Department of Agriculture and your local extension office as well. The only other plug I'll do on that is extensions rule stress resources are at z.umn.edu/rulestress. If you have questions, comments, stating rebuttals, as always, you can email them to themoosroom@umn.edu.
Joe: That's T-H-E-M-O-O-S-R-O-O-M@umn.edu.
Emily: With that, that is a wrap. Thank you again, Meg.
Meg: Thank you.
Bradley: Bye.
Emily: Bye.
Meg: Bye.
[music]
Meg: I was there when he was just a little candidate, you guys. I was on the selection committee. You have me to thank for Brad.
[crosstalk]
Emily: Well, I don't know about thank, but--
Joe: Oh boy.
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