Do you know your true beginning? When I talk about my journey to self discovery, growth, and healing I always start with October of 2019 when Seth and I attended our first event. But this week as I have been thinking about my journey, it really started earlier in the year around February 2019. In the beginning of 2019 I started my final semester of college, I had a 7 month old and a 17 month old, and we had been living in our new house for about year and I felt like I hadn’t made any friends yet in our area. The stress of feeling alone, as my husband was always gone either at school or working for his brother and I was alone being a full time mom, full time student, and full time house cleaner, was slowly crushing my spirit. Thoughts of suicide entered my mind.
I was sitting at my desk getting school work done, both kids were napping, and Seth was at school. Thoughts and beliefs that “no one would miss me”, “it would be so easy”, “what’s the point of trying” and many more flooded my mind. As I was spiraling out of control I began to fear for my life. I had never had thoughts this debilitating before. I am a naturally happy, upbeat person. I have always loved life but at that point in my life I no longer loved my life. To be completely vulnerable and open, I lost my life before these thoughts entered my head.
Obviously this story has a happy ending but not without a lot of hard choices. The first was calling my husband, admitting that I was hurting. My husband came home and we went to the ER where I was checked out and given a referral to see a therapist and a psychiatrist. I went to both and the plan of action was to put me on anti-depressants and meet with a therapist once a week. This was a big step for me and a very hard choice to make. Growing up, my perception was that mental illness was just an excuse and you pulled up your big girl pants and got to work. You didn’t take medication for having a bad day. So I kept this part of my journey a secret. I felt shame, embarrassment, and judgement for choosing to take medication to help with the depression. But I knew that I didn’t want to stay on medication for forever, so I worked with the therapist and I created a plan to wean off them while building tools and skills to help me in building my mindset.
My story is one of ease when it comes to battling depression. I was able to wean off of the medication within 6 months of starting them. I have not been on them since and haven’t needed too. I believe that my experience though has taught me to be more compassionate with my husband as he does have a need to be on them. But this is my true beginning, the time when I truly was at my lowest and knew that something had to change. I began the change and was ready for the invite to new things to continue in growing and progressing. When we are at our lowest we often think the change needs to be external but change more often than not needs to be internal. I stayed in the same house, I had the same kids, continued with the same degree, and stayed with the same man. But I changed internally allowing me to see a new perspective which changed my reality. Allowing me to start the journey to my dream marriage and life.