A Letter From The Past

I’ve been quiet on here for a couple months now.

There’s been a few times that I’ve sat down to write some words to you, but the flow just hasn’t been there. I knew that I could coach myself through it, but I just didn’t have it in me.

I also didn’t trust that I was in a good enough head space to write words for anyone other than me to read.

These months since Thaddeus was born have been hard.

Yes, I have had so much help. I’ve been lucky enough to go on several trips. (interesting how we always need to qualify it, right? That’s a topic for another day.) and even still, it has been hard.

I told one of my coaches before he was born that I think there is going to be a lot of healing happening after number six is born. The healing I was picturing, was long days of snuggles on the couch and in bed where I just soak up his little newborn freshness. I was picturing long writing sessions, where I pour my heart out into this book that I’ve been working on. I thought that the house would be quiet as I listened to soft music and felt my feelings.

Somehow, I forgot that I have five other kids that would still be around when he was born.

There has been healing happening since he’s been born, but it certainly hasn’t looked like I thought it would. It has been dark. It’s been lots of days sitting on my couch – but not always savoring it. it’s been days of brain fog and feeling like my head is going to explode.

It’s been days of my husband calling on his way home from work, and an angry wife answering the phone. It’s been days of kids not listening and feeling out of control of my life.

It’s been feeling my feelings, and working to not make them mean anything about me. Hate. Rage. Anger. Depressed. Sadness. Grief. Contempt. Inadequacy. Lack.

It’s been me, wondering why I have to experience this. Falling into victim mentality again, feeling sorry for this life that I have to experience. Have to in both senses of the word – that it’s forced upon me, and also that it’s the one in front of me.

Healing isn’t easy.

It isn’t pretty.

I think I had forgotten that.

I have a new sense of what postpartum depression feels like. I have remembered why I wish it never happened to me in the first place. I have remembered why it’s so easy to be ashamed of this part of me, to want to reject these feelings and say they aren’t who I am.

I remember now what it’s like to be in that darkness, feeling lost and hopeless like you’re never going to get out. Feeling like you’re always going to feel this way. Not seeing a way through.

And I have a new sense of respect for anyone who has experienced postpartum depression and is still here to talk about it. The group that I am a part of, we have a weekly win that we share with each other each week, and mine last week was that I am still alive.

Not in the sense that I actually would take my own life, but in the sense that it’s a miracle feeling this way didn’t kill me.

It’s hard. And it’s okay that it’s hard.

I’m still here.

There was the difference between this time and all of my other times. I let it be okay that I’m struggling. I let other people in on my struggling. No, it’s not easy. No, I didn’t let everyone and their dog know what was going on.

But when it felt right, I shared.

And the parts that I couldn’t hide, I let myself be vulnerable in.

It isn’t an easy place to be in, to open yourself up to criticism and rejection. It’s not easy to show other people that you don’t just not have it all together – you really don’t have it all together.

We’re so quick to want to fix it, to make it all better, to push away the dirt and tie it up in a bow.

We’re so quick to judge ourselves, or judge others, for not showing up as our best or how we think we should.

It isn’t easy to be in the messy middle, and to be okay being in it.

But letting yourself hit rock bottom – no matter if this is the first time or what feels like the millionth time – is the perfect place to start. It doesn’t mean you’re broken or that you’re falling behind or that there’s something wrong with you.

It means you’re ready for a fresh start, a clean slate. It means everything can be burned to the ground and built from the ground up.

It means you’re ready for a firm foundation underneath everything in your life. What better work to be doing than making sure there is a strong hold under it all?

It isn’t the pretty work, nor the easy work.

It isn’t flashy or something that you want to tell everyone about.

But you know what? It’s the most important – for you and for your family.

It’s the work that you feel the most. You feel if you’ve done it in the strength and security that you feel, knowing you have something to fall back on. And you feel if you haven’t done it, in the way that you feel like you’re being tossed about in a windstorm with nothing firm to hold onto.

The reason that I can help my clients through their darkness, is because I know my own so well.

I know the emotions that are in it, and how easy it can be to get sucked up into them.

I know the reasons we feel like we have something to hide, something to be ashamed of. And I also know the importance of working through those things so that they don’t take over our lives.

I could easily tell myself that because I have this darkness in me, I am unequipped to help anyone else through anything. I could easily decide to curl up in a ball and hide from all of you, from all of my life, and to shelter this part of me that feels broken.

But it isn’t the life that I want to live, and since you’re here – I assume it isn’t the life that you want to live either.

The life that you want is available to you. All you need to do is reach out and grab it.