How Self-Care Saved My Life

This will be the hardest thing I’ll ever write… It’s been my heart’s intention to share it in hopes it would save a life or more… And this thought has been in my heart since the realization that self-care saved my life. This has driven my passion for self-care so much so that there’s so much to share about it that can help lives in so many ways that I wish I could say it all at once, however; then it gets stuck in a funnel in my mind…now slowly pouring out. 

My love for self-care is deep. There was a time in my life where according to doctors, therapists, friends, family, and colleagues, I’d suffered too many traumas too close together piled on top of lifelong issues I’d still not yet made peace with. I can safely say I never thought depression would be pulling at my ankles the way it did a few years ago. I didn’t think so because I’d already been depressed before and successfully emerged from it stronger than I felt I could ever be! There was no way depression would get a hold of me again! Not with the mental tools I’d used to combat any signs of that darkness every trying to creep in on me again. I felt invincible.

Suddenly, just a few years ago, I found myself unable to get out of bed. I could barely eat, and I’d only get up to shower and use the restroom (though I’d heard of more disempowered states; therefore, I thought I was ok and would be just fine…soon). I found myself going deeper into a dark depression… I recognized that my life had gotten drastically different. My garden was dying…and so was I. So I tried that “mental tool.” Ya, know…the one that helped me out of depression before… It helped to keep me afloat, to continue with my priorities, yet it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to “replay the feelings of happy moments” and yearn for those feelings again. It didn’t spark the fire in me that was required to live passionately again. Not even a trip across the country (or two) did the trick. Sure it woke me up from the mundane, and sure, that definitely helps. What was going to happen when I’d return from a said trip and face my realities of constant loss and pain.