I will never betray you again

You are enough, you are worthy, you are loveable xo

I’m reading a blog post by Glennon Doyle Melton titled ‘I need to tell you something’. I’m exactly 6 paragraphs in and the statement ‘that you’d never betray you again’ stabs me in my chest. It goes right to the heart of my pain and its like I have finally found the strength to breath. That sentence is exactly what I decided to do 3 years ago – find me and never let go.

After the birth of my beautiful, gorgeous son I suffered from, what is best described as, ‘undiagnosed post-natal depression’. Undiagnosed because I refused point blank to get professional help because I needed to work out what was going on, cutting out the crap and figure out where I needed to be. I think in my heart I knew that if I couldn’t resolve it then I would have to get help and initially that would break me further and I didn’t think that I could go any deeper without not existing anymore.

There were 2 major times that I can remember.

  1. Falling apart at my brothers place telling him that I wasn’t a very nice daughter to my parents when I was a teenager. I broke down. Now that really wasn’t the issue, most teenage girls are terrible and I was no exception, but that was my focus at his home on that day.
  2. Over the next few days I would sit by myself, trying to make sense of where I was at, how I got there and how the hell I was going to get myself out. I explored every option and I mean every option, there was a lot of darkness.

At some point I identified that I was waking up unhappy and therefore everything I did from that point on was shrouded in unhappiness. It took a good 2 weeks (that felt like a world of time for me) before I started to wake up with some sense of happiness. The unhappiness was still there but it wasn’t the only thing that was there, happy was there too.

It probably took another 4-6 weeks of soul searching, prioritising myself and focusing on being happy that the darkness started lifting.

It would return from time to time, particularly when I got to ‘step out’ of my day to day life, like going on a holiday, that when I returned the darkness would hit me like a truck coming up behind me – I didn’t see it coming and it would send me into a spiral. Fortunately the spiral typically didn’t last more than 1 or 2 days but the hangover (or memory of it) was there a bit longer, like a scar that hadn’t healed.

Slowly, as I started prioritising me things started to change, it took a long time, over a year, but things definitely changed. When my son was about 15 months old we found a great routine, we found our balance and I found my happiness.

I remember promising myself that I would listen to me and only me, that I would make the decisions I needed to make for where I was at and if people didn’t like it that wasn’t my concern. As I have learnt through my reading this year, what people think says more about them than it does about me. I am a stronger person for what I have been through, I see it every time I’m challenged. I will not lay down, I make decisions for me. I walk in the sunshine. I start my day as I mean for it to go on. I put myself, my wants and my dreams first. I prioritise me and I cherish my ‘Mummy cuddles’. xox

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