The D Word

Today's post is brought to you by the letter D. This is a difficult post to make because it's a topic I don't enjoy being transparent about. It makes me feel uncomfortable to let people I'm not close to know that I am struggling. But lately I've tried to be a little more transparent about it because I can see the efforts being made by others to get rid of the stigma attached to mental illness. That's right, D is for Depression. I chose this particular photo for my header because it's a picture of something I absolutely love to do, take my baby for walks, but something that's monumentally hard for me to do when I'm depressed. Do you remember that commercial that was on several years ago? It was for cymbalta or some other anti-depressant. Anyway, in the ad, a woman tried going about her daily routine and you can tell she's not feeling it and you can see those around her are being affected by it. The ad keeps repeating "depression hurts" - everywhere, everything, everyone - and it's so true. Depression is a painful mental illness. It hurts my body, it hurts my heart, and it hurts my loved ones. I can blame depression for a million things going wrong on my life. I blame depression for my drastic weight gain, I blame depression for the demise of my relationship, and I blame depression for keeping my child cooped up inside all day. 

As a lot of you know, I recently started a new diet and workout routine. I was lucky to start on a good day. If you have ever struggled with depression or anxiety then you know what a good day looks like. You might have gotten more than 3 hours of sleep, you wake up content and motivated, etc. but when Wednesday came 'round that dark cloud started to rear it's ugly head. It made its presence known first by stealing my appetite and then my motivation and suddenly achieving my daily goals felt a lot like running a race in quicksand. Every day since then I've had to force myself out of bed, out of the house, into the shower. I've had to force healthy food in my mouth because suddenly, nothing tastes good. I'm still pushing through my workouts because honestly, that's the easiest hard thing for me to do right now. It has a beginning and an end. But it's asking too much of me to say "make a healthy meal and eat it". 

I wish "fixing" myself were as simple as making a list of things I'm grateful for or talking to a therapist or going for a run or popping a magic little pill. But it's not. So I have to keep on doing the best to my ability. I have to continue trudging through this quicksand until I make it to the other side, if only to be there for a little while. 

I want to tell you something though. Depression doesn't define me. It doesn't determine my abilities as a mother. Nothing is black and white and sometimes, you can care for another person before caring for yourself. Sometimes you have to. 

I hope if you're struggling with depression or anxiety or any mental illness you won't try to walk through the quicksand alone. I hope you'll talk about it without fear of judgement. I hope you'll write about it or sing about it or joke about it or do absolutely anything necessary to get it out there. And if it's something you do, pray.  Let Christ help you carry the burden. It's not yours alone to bear. 

Brenna