“Some days, it ain’t all bad
Some days, it all gets worse
Some days, I swear I’m better off
Layin’ in that dirt”
“I Am Not Okay” - Jelly Roll

Jason De Ford is known professionally as Jelly Roll. Jelly Roll spent nearly 20 years making music and touring before ever having a “hit” song, which he finally achieved in 2022, when “Son of a Sinner” took off and won a slew of awards, also earning Jelly Roll the award for best new artist at the CMA awards.

Part of the reason that it took so long for Jelly Roll to make a dent in the country music industry is that he simply doesn’t look like the typical country star. When he made his Grand Ole Opry debut in 2021, Craig Morgan joked that Jelly Roll may be the first person with face tattoos to perform on that hallowed stage.

In October 2023, Jelly Roll was on tour, talking with a group of friends after a show, when one of them spoke up and stated that going to his concerts was “the way church should be…you make it okay for people to not be okay.”

That line stuck, and the friend joined De Ford and two other writers in putting together the song, which Jelly Roll debuted on the season finale of season 25 of The Voice in May of 2024. The song was released as a single officially a month later, and it took off due to its relatable lyrics, reaching No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topping country charts in the U.S. and Canada.

The friend who inspired Jelly Roll to write the song and became a co-writer on the tune holds an annual awareness fundraiser for suicide awareness after losing a close friend.

The song has a great hook and is a tremendous melody, but it also opens itself up for easy harmony, which Jelly Roll did tremendously well with Kelly Clarkson on her show. There’s also a tremendous version of the video done by a capella group Home Free that features the group singing as comments from the original version of Jelly Roll’s video flash on the screen.

Those who know me on a personal level know that mental health and suicide has touched my life from a young age, losing an elementary school friend when we were in our teens to suicide and facing mental health challenges of my own before working for a decade in mental health.

Interestingly enough, one of the final classes I had to return to school to complete in order to get my undergraduate degree happened to be a required Introduction to Psychology course. I happened to be in the one intro class that the department chair at the University of Minnesota taught each year. He opened the class with a great line that I’ll never forget.

“How many of you are fat?”

Pretty stunning introduction in a college class, for sure. He followed up by asking who was in good physical shape, who wore glasses or contacts, who had any sort of cold, and a few other things, then he dropped the memorable line, “so you know that health of your body, your eyes, your lungs, etc. is an ongoing process that requires assistance of medical professionals and caretaking - why don’t we feel the same about our mental health?”

This month is mental health awareness month, and you can read an article I was honored to write about a young woman in Huron, inspired by a recent “outbreak” of suicides affecting the community, who put together a t-shirt and eventually a gathering day at the school to discuss the resources that students have to address mental illness.

However, our mental health goes so far beyond simply suicide prevention. A recent estimate from the National Institute for Mental Health stated that in 2023, more than 59 million adults sought treatment or counseling for mental health reasons. That did not include those under 18. A Gallup poll found that roughly one-quarter of U.S. adults visited a mental health professional within the previous year.

Not always are those visits to address suicidal ideation, but like going to an eye doctor to ensure your glasses are still the right prescription, when one’s mental health has changed due to a variety of factors - age, life events, societal changes, etc. - going to a doctor to get a “check up” is absolutely appropriate, and often vital.

We still hold mental health in a different category than our dentist or cardiologist, though, and why that is has a lot of nuanced reasoning that would require about four more columns just to scrape the surface.

One of the shirts being produced for the Day of Hope in Huron reads across the chest, “Your story is not over yet.” I have the honor of putting together dozens of stories each year of community members, and each one touches in a different way, but they’re all special and important.

It’s okay to not be okay. Your story matters, so push forward to the next chapter of that story.

If you need to speak immediately with someone, call 988 for the Crisis Lifeline, and please feel confident that we have tremendous mental health professionals in Huron and the Huron area who can meet with you and help you on the road to writing that next chapter.