Ayo, Kerry Washington kept it real this week. The Scandal actress opened Mental Health Awareness Month with a refreshingly honest post about what daily mental health maintenance actually looks like. She cut right through the usual celebrity wellness noise.
Washington posted to Instagram, and she was not playing around with the framing. “I am not a ‘low maintenance’ girlie,” she wrote. “There are things I do everyday to cultivate and maintain my mental health. I HAVE to.”
That line hits different. Most wellness content from celebrities feels like an ad. Washington’s version reads more like a conversation with someone who really gets how hard it is to stay mentally healthy.
Her list of tools covers serious ground: prayer, gratitude practice, pilates, running, walking, therapy, sleep, hydration, weight training, and nutrition. That’s a full program. She was also quick to clarify she doesn’t hit every single thing every day. “I don’t necessarily do ALL the things every single day,” she explained, “but everyday I try to make some good choices about what to do to pour into myself – my mind body and spirit.”
And when she doesn’t make those choices? She kept it real about that too. “Uhm, it ain’t pretty,” she wrote, dropping a laugh emoji alongside it.
That’s the part that resonates. Wellness culture has a habit of presenting these routines as something to strive for and eventually reach. Washington flipped the script. For her, these aren’t goals. They’re requirements. Skip any of them. She feels it. That kind of honesty is rare.
Washington also closed the post by turning it over to her followers. She asked what keeps them in their best mental state and invited people to drop their own tools in the comments. That move turned the post into a community conversation rather than a one-way broadcast.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Washington’s timing fits into a broader push to normalize mental health maintenance as an everyday practice. Therapy in particular is something she’s spoken about publicly before – she’s been candid over the years about how much it’s meant to her. Seeing it on the list is right in line with what her followers already know about her.
What stands out is how the full combination reads. Prayer and pilates. Running and therapy. Sleep and weight training. The range makes clear that mental health, for Washington, isn’t one thing or one category. It’s the whole stack working together.
Washington starred in Scandal for seven seasons and has remained active in both film and television since. She’s been building her production company for years, too. Her career demands a lot. It makes sense that someone with that kind of schedule needs a serious support system behind the scenes.
There was no product to sell, no image to manage. She laid out what keeps her going and asked what keeps you going too. That’s the kind of content people actually appreciate.
