4 weeks Postpartum

Heeelllloooo!

Remember the last time I wrote, in JULY, and I was so cute and naïve and said I’d be writing more often… whoops.

Anyway, I had a baby!!!

Before that though my pregnancy took a wild turn. The last 8 weeks of pregnancy were miserable… (I will also acknowledge that this stage of pregnancy is the most miserable before health problems…)

Without getting into it, I had gestational diabetes, was on insulin, had a few physical complications, including a torn abdominal muscle, the baby breeched twice, I stopped sleeping at night….

On top of my health and wellbeing, my work environment had become pretty hostile and because of my physical condition I was only able to work a few days a week which really did not help my situation and I was absolutely drowning in stress.

So.. these two things combined, and ya girl started having mild psychosis symptoms… So, it was no longer safe for me to be pregnant anymore, and my OB and I made the decision to induce at 37 weeks.

Honestly, Thank GOD.

If you know me in real life, you would no that I need a plan. There was absolutely nothing scarier to me than spontaneous labor.. no maam. (actually, being induced was my #2 favorite birth plan… if I were to have had my “dream” birth, it involved a broken elevator and scarring an unassuming stranger).

I’m not going to go to much into my birth story (idk, not now, mostly because it was pretty mediocre, maybe it’ll be a tiktok), BUT I will say it was way better than my first birth experience. The epidural WORKED this time, I was crackin jokes and giggling all the way up til push time…

After birth, Kinnie (oh that’s her name by the way) had a slight scare and was put on a CPAP machine for 10 minutes. She was fine, she just wouldn’t cry… at all… for anything… she was SO unbothered they decided she must’ve been broken. However, her vitals were steady and she was responsive so they called off the emergency pediatrician and I was able to get her back on my chest and latched to my boob within the first 30 minutes. It took her almost 18 hours to cry for the first time… and that’s pretty much how she operated for the first 3 and a half weeks… only crying because she was hungry or trying to poop…

However, within the last week, she has been battling some pretty gnarly reflux and my chill baby cries just a little bit more, but overall, really hard to irritate and absolutely unbothered by her surroundings… (just ask her very irritated older brother who has meltdowns because after 5 minutes of loud chicken barking in his sisters face she, “WON’T OPEN HER EYES”).

Now heres the part you came here for…

Tiffy, are you living up to your name? Are you now “postpartum” and “psycho”??

Always. <3

Kidding.

As of now, I am doing pretty okay.

I have not had any psychosis symptoms since Kinnie was born, and I am pretty confident I am currently not depressed… although, I am still on anti-depressants, as I was my whole pregnancy.

Right now, I am struggling with (what I consider to be normal) normal newborn struggles.

I get overwhelmed easily. I feel like I am not showing up enough for my older child. I feel like I don’t do anything, but also like there aren’t enough hours in the day, and also like I would pay so much money to sleep for more than 2.5 hours…

 I forget how draining nursing a newborn is… this girl is always eating. If she isn’t eating, shes burping, or I am pumping because she didn’t eat enough… and then after 10 minutes of time to myself where I’m not being touched, I start laundry or something, and then I feel guilt I am not using that time to cuddle and bond with my baby…

It’s an everyday struggle of balancing guilt and productivity, but I think I am managing pretty well.

My husband is great, he’s been a huge help trying to get our toddler adjusted to the new normal. We’ve had a few moments of snapping at one another out of sleeplessness (or hormones) and then one of us will remind the other of our motto, which is, “the children are the enemy”. And then we go back to being partners.

He is so eager to take her into the world and show her off, and believe me, I am too!!!

It’s the holiday season, and while we would love nothing more than to be spending time around a table with our friends and family, we will be spending most of this season at home, by ourselves, and not traveling.

Santa may be working hard, but RSV/Flu is working harder…

I was irrevocably scarred as a mother when ridge had RSV as an infant and was in and out of the hospital for a week. I am an anxious person. Postpartum anxiety was a smaller part of my previous postpartum depression, and I am just not interested in risking my mental health right now… So if we decline your holiday get together invite, or choose to just let you see (WITH YOUR EYES NOT YOUR GRUBBY HANDS) the baby from the safe distance of her carrier, its not personal. She’ll still be a baby when we are more comfortable with socializing her, probably.

Kinnie Elouise, 10/17/23

Life Update

Hello!

Long time, no update, friends.

My last real blog, at least posted on the website, was on November 7th, 2022…. So. Almost 9 months ago.

Absolutely no real life update since then, great checking in, bye!!

Just kidding, since my last update, our whole world has changed. If you don’t follow me elsewhere, here is the update short and sweet, and then we’ll get into the nitty gritty.

-          November 2022: I weaned off of my anti-psychotic medicine after 18 months. It was absolutely miserable, but we made it work. The doctor recommended I do it over 3 months and I said “hold my beer” and weaned off of Geodon in less than 6 weeks…. (do not do this, please)

-          December 2022: our 3rd cycle of clomid (fertility treatment) WORKED. Sort of. It worked in the sense that I FINALLY ovulated after 2 years of unexplained secondary infertility. However, it failed in the sense that I did not get pregnant. Also, I broke my ankle (again) (no, not the one I broke in august, the other one… WHILE in the office… HELLLOOO workman’s comp(kidding, a joke, it is not fun times, lots of paperwork) and would later find out I need surgery to repair the ligaments ruptured in the incident.

-          January 2023: Super busy month from what I remember. Our 4th round of clomid is successful, I ovulate, we do not conceive. We make the executive decision to stop fertility treatments temporarily and explore other options some time later in the spring….

Ok… here is where it gets interesting.

-          February 4th, 2023: our house catches fire and burns to the ground. No really. It is gone gone.

-          February 9th, 2023: my sweet 13 year old dog, Luke, can not overcome the stress of the fire, and has to be put down.

-          Sometime at the end of February 2023: I realize I have not had a period yet, and to my absolute SHOCK and SURPRISE, we find out we have naturally conceived after 2 years of grueling infertility.

So, nitty gritty.

I’ll just make this also short and sweet, here are the answers to our most frequently asked questions:

-          No, we didn’t recover anything in the house. We lost 99% of our belongings, including my car

-          We stayed at a friends AirBNB for a week, then a hotel for a little bit, then back the BNB until the end of March.

-          At the end of March, my parents bought a rental property for us, we moved in at the beginning of April. That is where we will stay until the house is rebuilt.

-          Fire started in the garage, spread quickly to some flammables, exploded a propane tank and some gas tanks… fueled by a south wind with the garage door open, the house didn’t really stand a chance.

-          Probably a power strip? Maybe a battery tender? Maybe just the outlet? It was unclear. Definitely electrical though.

-          Yes. We were insured.

-          Yes, we intend on rebuilding on our property, the contractor expects the process to take about a year.

-          If I could go back in time and save one thing, it would be the Christmas ornaments

-          The remnants of the house were demolished at the beginning of May. Its now just a large sandpit with a gravel driveway. Even with no house on the lot, we call it the “broken house” we visit a lot because, well, when your house is on fire and you have to run naked (no, really, I was not clothed) to your neighbors house for shelter and childcare… you get bonded in an unbreakable way, we are family now.

Okay. Lets fast forward to now, July 2023.

Currently, I am 25 weeks along, with a baby GIRL. If I am being completely honest, this season of life has been so incredibly hard.

I’m tired. I’m overwhelmed. I’m STRUGGLING.

In absolutely every aspect of my life, I am treading water.

AT HOME: we have what we need. we’ve replaced most of our *essentials* … you know, like a car, beds, couches, cookware, stuff you use everyday. EXCEPT, anything that requires much of a design choice. Reese and I are too overwhelmed to pull the trigger on those things like Plates/Bowls/Cups – nope. Silverware? Nope. Home Décor????? Absolutely not. So we *live* here, but it doesn’t feel much like ~home~ here…. As far as day to day life, we get through… I don’t cook as much as I used to. Its hard for the boys to live in town (I married a caveman and gave birth to a nudist). I finally caved and hired a housekeeper to help me keep up with maintenance.

AT WORK: after the fire my work gave me 30 days off, it was SUCH a blessing. With reese returning to work after one week, I was the one having to meet with adjusters, settle with insurance, all the chores and bs that came with it. After that month I returned to work and genuinely, the trauma had completely wiped my brain. I struggled to catch up, but did eventually, and then we got slammed with an unexpected busy season, and also pregnancy brain and being generally overwhelmed and well… lets just say my boss and I have not been seeing eye to eye. Without getting into a ton of detail, its been a rough go since I returned.

MENTALLY:

Right after the fire, I was gutted. Deeply depressed. I thought we would never recover. I’d lost my first baby, my dog Luke, who had been by myside since i was 15. I cried daily. A lot of the time 3-4x daily. At one point I asked my husband, “at what point do I stop crying everyday?” and he responded, “well, I did for about 2 weeks, and based off our emotional baselines, that puts you around a month and a half or 2.” …… which really made me laugh at the time, and I sort of agreed with him, but he was wrong.

Shortly after this conversation, I realized I was a few days late… Reese was convinced I was pregnant. I was convinced I was not meant to be pregnant ever again, and that the fire was proof of that (it didn’t make sense, but move on, it was a faith crisis).

After about a week of having “symptoms” here and there, I finally bought a couple tests. I woke up one morning, took a test, placed it upside down on the counter and left to get ridge ready for school. I forgot about the stupid test. I come back to the bathroom 20 minutes later after making ridge breakfast, and as I’m brushing my teeth I remember it. I casually flipped it over, absolutely sure it was going to be another negative and clear as day it was POSITIVE. THAT was the day I stopped crying everyday (which is weird because you’d think pregnancy would make it worse, right??)

This baby saved me. She was gift from Heaven at a time I so badly needed to hear from God. My miracle baby. She pulled me right out of my sinking depression and put things into perfect perspective.

-          Thank GOD we didn’t have a baby when the house caught fire… the nursery was one of the most badly burned rooms in the house, the first room it spread to, and the fire started DURING nap time. (see picture below, but you’ve been warned, its pretty sad)

-          Thank GOD I wasn’t heavily pregnant when the house caught fire…the stress alone could have sent me into preterm labor, potentially harming me or the baby.

Not only those two timings being perfect, but everything else seemed to fall into place…

We loved our little house, but it was never intended to be our forever home. We were going to outgrow it within a few years… but we couldn’t imagine ever leaving that property. We had begun small renovations, but had explored what it would take to add on 1,500 sq ft addition, but it seemed expensive and unobtainable with young children in the house….

Now, by the grace of God, we get to build our DREAM HOME on our PERFECT property with our chosen FAMILY as neighbors. FROM SCRATCH. That’s amazing!!!! A once in a lifetime opportunity! A blessing!

It sometimes feels so far away from being reality, but in 5 years, this will feel like a distant (dark and tragic) memory. At least that’s what I tell myself when things get hard.

Had it not been for baby girl, I truly don’t believe I would have been able to see the blessing in this so soon, if ever at all.

Don’t get me wrong… this still sucks a lot, all the time. Little reminders of things we lost will set me into a downward spiral… wanting a piece of clothing, seeing pictures of ridge with a special blanket or in baby clothes we thought all of kids would wear…. Shoot the other day I cried over a tomato that triggered a memory of our garden. Grief hits in waves. Its never ending, but we are choosing to grow around it.

THE BABY: Ok, so this post is a rollercoaster of emotions so far, right? Ups, downs, deep deep lows, unimaginable highs… That’s exactly how my mental health has been, a rollercoaster. Somedays are so busy, I forget I’m pregnant. Somedays I’m so busy, all I can think about is being pregnant. I’ve been into lists and bulletpoints this post so lets just keep it going, shall we? Here are all my pregnancy/new baby/postpartum related anxieties…

-          For starters, we have no baby items, we lost all that, and we have not even began to replace anything. We don’t really even have a “nursery” for her in our new house, we plan on just keeping her in our room until the house is done…whenever that is.

-          After struggling with infertility for so long, I am so so so afraid I am going to lose her, or do something that will harm her. Way more paranoid than I was with ridge.

-          Also, she is WILD. I have been feeling her kick since TWELVE weeks… she kicks so hard that reese felt her at 16 weeks. At her ultrasound, she looked right at the monitor and smiled the biggest open mouth smile the ultrasound tech said he’d ever seen…. I think my girl is going to have quite the personality, and she has already filled us up with so much joy, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that she also radiates it.

-          While I’ve always wanted to grow our family, I am so scared a new baby will take time away from Ridge… which I mean is inevitable, because babies also need attention I hear, but I am so afraid to miss out on Ridges milestones too… I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle splitting my attention in two.

-          POSTPARTUM. Ugh, I really try hard not to think about this because I am more afraid of it than I am willing to admit. Its no secret postpartum rocked my world. I ended up suicidal and having hallucinations, narrowly evading a stay in a psych ward and being on anti-psychotics for 18 months… I used to say I was prepared for round two because “I had all the available resources”…. But, to be honest, this time around I really don’t. I have my husband, I have my therapist… but my psychiatrist (the best, my biggest champion) had a health issue and was forced to retire shortly after the fire, and I have not sought out a replacement. Partly because I’m busy, partly because I’m in denial that I need one, and partly because I went through 3 the first time I shopped for psychs and had an absolutely horrible experience and don’t want to have to go through that again. I am terrified of postpartum. Terrified this time won’t be different.

Well, so much for keeping that short and sweet. Now were all up to speed. It felt good to get it all down, to finally write again… its been so long, I forgot how much I loved doing it and how easy it felt to write the things that were hard to say aloud. Hopefully this keeps me motivated to keep updating the blog. I’ve had so many PPD/PPP mamas who have followed my journey over the last 3.5 years reach out for guidance, or ask how its going, and I want to be open and honest with this second baby… I have no idea what the future or my mental health holds, but for the first time in a long time I feel hopeful.

Here are some pictures of things i mentioned, the images of the fire and the aftermath may be triggering so, be advised.

Picture 1 - the house shortly after we all got out

Picture 2 - The nursery

Picture 3 - Baby K’s SHOCKING pregnancy test

Picture 4 - Demo Day!

Picture 5 - Baby K at 20 week Ultrasound, looking DIRECTLY into the screen and SMILING

Picture 6 - our growing family on our 4th of july vacation, i was 20 or 21 weeks along?

No More Meds

Hi friends, long time no see. The fall is my busiest season both at work and home so I’ve been a little MIA, but I’m back with some classic TMI and internet oversharing.

Its been no secret that my husband and I have been trying for #2 for a little over a year and a half. We got cleared by doctors to start Clomid, a fertility treatment, to help us along. On its own, this has been difficult. My body doesn’t react well to hormone intervention and therefore the side effects like nausea and vomiting have taken over my life… this lasts about 3 weeks during every clomid cycle… its like morning sickness all over again. Our first round of clomid failed and we are currently on our second cycle… but, the kicker is, we can only take this medicine for 3 months… so if this cycle fails, we only have one more shot…

Which brings me to my newest update. After a lot of thought, research, and prayer, I’ve decided to start tapering off my anti-psychotics. Every doctor has said I would be safe, and I didn’t need to taper, but I feel in my gut that me not getting pregnant has SOMETHING to do with my medications… So I wanted to be off of them by the time we start our 3rd and final cycle of Clomid.

Well actually I wanted to taper off my anti-depressants too, but my psychiatrist told me not to do them at the same time, so we’re starting with the anti-psychotics.

Physically, this transition has been TOUGH… I was warned that withdrawal could come in the form of nausea and vomiting or headaches but I cockily thought, “can’t be worse than how clomid already makes me feel”…. And I was wrong… it got worse… and because I have to taper in 3 phases, I can look forward to 2 more withdrawals in the next 4 weeks.

I’ve been so stable lately, and I knew I didn’t want to be on these meds forever so I’m just going for it… but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared. A million questions run through my mind everyday… will the psychosis come back? Am I stable without medication? Will I be like this forever? My anxiety about it is endless… but at the end of the day, I want to grow my family more than anything in the world, and that is what is taking priority right now.

So that’s the update, I hardly feel like a person, and I am struggling hard both mentally and physically. The prayers, vibes, baby dust, etc. would all be greatly appreciated as I navigate this journey of fertility and psychosis.

Ps - if you’ve successfully tapered off an anti-psychotic or anti-depressant, can you hit my DMs with your experience? I’d love to feel a little less alone.

I Still Struggle

It’s been 2 years since I was diagnosed with postpartum depression, and about a year since I began treatment for postpartum psychosis.

You’d think I’d have it all figured out by now, right? Well if you’ve been around a while, none of this will come as a surprise to you.

Here’s the truth; even on medication, I still fight bouts of cyclical depression, intrusive thoughts and to be fully transparent I had a psychotic experience about 8 weeks ago. (But in all fairness, NyQuil was involved so I’ve passed it off as a fluke.)

I still really struggle with the PTSD/anxiety from the psychosis. I have a really tainted relationship with my brain… I just can’t trust it. I still have trouble going to my office, and I’m only in the office 2 days a week… but that still sometimes gives me extreme anxiety… I’ve learned that sometimes I have to let anxiety win. When I get so anxious I have trouble breathing, or it makes me physically sick, I let my boss know I need to work from home that day. We have an unspoken understanding that this means I’m in a bad spot and I need a day. I’m really lucky that she is as accepting of this as she is. I also still have a hard time with crowded places; in fact, I’m already anxious about an upcoming family gathering. I avoid grocery stores. Restaurants stress me out but I’m getting better at them and have learned to distract myself while dining out.

Logically, I talk myself through these situations in advance. There is going to be ambient noise. There are going to be multiple conversations happening, possibly loud noises, this will be normal. But when it happens, when I’m in the thick of it, I feel like I have so little control. My heart races, my hands start to shake, my breath feels like its stuck in my throat, I go into fight or flight. When I finally get back into my comfort zone it feels like I’ve run a half marathon. It’s exhausting, its defeating, its unhelpful. It’s something I’m working on in therapy.

I still have a lot of work to do. But I do believe that overall, I’m in a way better place. I finally broke out of depression survival mode (DSM) and started doing things for me again. DSM is the place depressed people get stuck. DSM is using all the energy you have to just to scrape by the day-to-day stuff. Getting out of that rut has been really freeing for me. I’ve taken up running and have been reading 3-4 books a week. It feels so good to have hobbies and personal interests again. Something to give me purpose outside of being a wife, a mother, and accountant.

In the grand scheme of things I feel like a completely different person than I was even a few short months ago. I feel so far removed from the darkness that once ruled my every move.

The other day I was driving and caught a glimpse of the tattoo on my wrist. The semicolon represents an authors choice to continue a sentence instead of ending a complete thought; and the cross represents the faith I learned to lean on when things got dark.  When I got the tattoo, I intended for it to be a reminder of my faith and my second chance at life. But in that moment, I was reminded of my strength and my many blessings – all the things I almost lost. I’ve grown so much. I’ve overcome the hardest 2 years of my life. Tears filled my eyes as I thought about the special moments over the last year I would have missed if I had let suicide win.  I almost missed out on getting to watch my baby grow up, my greatest joy.

I don’t know how I made it out alive. But I did. And I’m better for it. I had a lot of help but there were things I had to learn on my own. Things only I could do to help myself.

1. Even the worst version of yourself deserves patience and grace.  

-  Be kind to yourself. Talk to yourself the way you talk to your child. You deserve the same amount of gentleness and care.

- “You are worthy. You are good. You are safe. You are loved.”

2. Be grateful for every little thing

-  Everyday say, out loud, 5 things your grateful for. The out loud part is important.

- “I GET to read my son a book today. I GET to eat lunch today. I GET to watch tiktok with no pants on.”

3. If God woke you up today, you BELONG in this life.

-  The only way to find out why God woke you up today, is to keep living.

-  YOU belong here. When you feel like you’ve lost control. When you feel alone. When everything is going wrong. When you feel like death is the only option – You. Belong. Here.

(IF you or your loved one is struggling with intrusive thoughts, reach out to the suicide hotline 1-800-273-8255. If you ever just need someone to hear you out, to feel less alone in your thoughts, don’t want to feel judged by someone who has never dealt with depression, my DMS are always open.)

Unsolicited Advice from an Unqualified Toddler Mom

I haven’t written in far to long. Writing brings me such peace, I forced myself to crank something out, something just for me. I thought about writing a lot of things today, but most of them felt too heavy, and I wanted something lighthearted. So decided on something that absolutely nobody asked for from me– motherhood advice. I’m overwhelmingly unqualified to give moms advice, I’m super aware of that. But I’m going to do it anyway, here it is, my top tips for moms…

Unsolicited Advice from an Unqualified Toddler Mom

1.       Drink cold coffee, that way when you spill your coffee on your kid – and you will spill your coffee on your kid – at least they won’t suffer 3rd degree burns.

2.       Apologize.  You’ll slip up, you’ll misplace your anger on your child, and when you do, get down on their level, look them in the eye and tell them you’re sorry. Let them know you are flawed, too.

3.       Pencil in being messy. Take advantage of that rainy day, put them in shitty clothes and play in the mud with them.

4.       Literally no one will know if they had a cookie for breakfast. No one.

5.       Read adult books, even if you aren’t a “reader”. After they go to bed, during their 15th time watching Cars, while they nap; whenever you find the time, use it to remind yourself you are an adult. (While I’m here – my top 3 this month have been Verity by Colleen Hoover, Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, and Regretting You by Colleen Hoover… Well actually, anything by Colleen Hoover.)

6.       Find your Mom Squad. Find other moms who can laugh at your horror stories, who are in the trenches of toddlerhood with you, who you can lean on when you need to, who will parent your child while you pour another drink. My neighborhood mom squad has been one of my biggest blessings. (this is about you Jessica and Martha – I freaking love you guys)

7.       Teach them where you keep extra toilet paper. This comes in handy at an embarrassingly young age.

8.       Keep pre-workout on hand for days you REALLY don’t want to clean the kitchen, do the laundry, or play outside. It hits way harder than espresso.

9.       Stop talking about what they are eating or not eating. Fill their plate with options, let them eat what they want to eat and tell them that’s whats on the menu. Don’t plead for one more bite of carrots, or exaggerate how yummy peas are… present cookies the same way you present veggies and watch how quickly pickiness is curbed.

10.   Add the questions “what are you thankful for today?” and “what made you sad/happy today?” into your bedtime routine. This has sparked some of my absolute favorite conversations with my 2 year old.

Plan C and a ½.

Hi friends. Wow, 2 posts in 2 weeks, who is she??? Could a depressed gal do THIS?? (spoiler alert the answer is yes)

I know you’re all dying to know - how did mommy weekend go? Are you still depressed? What’s the tea??

First off, mommy weekend was great. It was nice to have some time to myself and I started finally writing something I’ve wanted to write for a long time. It felt good to do something just for me.

Did it cure all that ails me – well… not really.

When I came home on Sunday my husband saw me sitting somberly on the couch, “it wasn’t everything you hoped it would be, was it?” he said.

“How’d you know?”

“Because being away from you two has never made me feel good.”

He was right, even when I was away, I was facetiming them, jealous of their little adventures and all the fun they were having. I was getting the alone time I needed but felt like I was robbing myself of the memories being formed of a beautiful spring day with my family. Mom guilt strikes again.

 The week that followed was hard. I struggled with my thoughts, I was tired, I was stressed – still depressed.

I know I said Plan D was next, but I’ve concocted a new plan… We’ll call this one Plan C and a ½. Here it is – Plan C and a ½ is distraction. Filling the void with work/play/forced human interaction and making myself uncomfortably busy for the next couple weeks. You can’t be depressed if you simply have no time to feel, right?

Here’s the thing – this feels like a bad idea. This sounds like I am making my life harder, more stressful, tiring. If anything, I’m setting myself up for failure because you know what’s hard when you’re depressed? Everything. Everything is harder when you’re depressed.

But I’m going to try it anyway and maybe I can unslump myself by simply faking it till I make it. You know what they say, *HaPpInEsS iS a ChOiCe*. (this is satire, this advice is garbage don’t ever say that to a depressed person).

If it doesn’t work – I’ve got a psych appointment in a few weeks anyway so there’s always that.

Rotten Zucchini & Depression

I’ve been MIA for a little while - over 2 months to be exact… and if you’ve followed my story, you may know what this means for me, and if your new here – hiii, welcome… sometimes I post regularly and sometimes depression kicks my ass.

I’ve been struggling.

I went on an awesome vacation with my husband in Hawaii, had the BEST time of my life, refreshed my soul and my marriage and came home with the really cliché expectation that this experience would in some way make me new and give me the motivating fuel I’d been searching for.

But, I came home, and depression reared its ugly head, raised its spears and yelled “we attack at dawn!”

I spent a week on MY time, doing whatever I wanted, forgetting all the responsibility of home and then was *shocked* to come home to see the responsibility hadn’t diminished in my absence, if anything it had multiplied.

For about a week or so I just blamed it on “post vacation blues” … but deep down I knew this was more than that. I’ve delt with this cyclical depression in postpartum for 2 years now, I’ve learned a lot about myself and how I cope, and I have learned that my first big red depression flag is dinner. Or really, the lack thereof.

Undepressed Tiffy plans family dinners at least 5 days a week, meticulously grocery shopping, prepping meals so they are easy to cook after Ridge is home from school…Undepressed Tiffy doesn’t let the fresh fruit/veggies/raw chicken spoil or go to waste. Not that Tiffy – she has it figured out…

It starts slow, ordering take out or going out to eat a few times a week… Maybe I’m just a little depressed… and then before I know it, we are eating chicken nuggets or mac n cheese for the third time this week, there is rotten zucchini at the bottom of the fridge accompanied by chicken with a sell by date of at least a week ago…. Red flag, Tiffy… I think this is full fledge depression.

I WANT to feed my kid healthy meals. I ENJOY making meals for my family and I take pride in making just a little bit extra so my Husband can have something lunch the next day.

The reality of depression for me is that just living becomes so exhausting that the things I enjoy stop being joyful and start feeling like burdens. The crave to do them exists, it’s the will to do them that becomes harder and harder to find.

I could blame this episode on a lot of things. My workload stacked up. I’ve been really stressed. The world got scary. My 2 year old needed surgery. The weather was bad. After 8 months of trying to conceive (TTC), I got yet ~another~ negative pregnancy test followed by a period (that gets harder on us every month). I haven’t been sleeping well… I could go on… But I don’t think any one of those things caused me to sink into a depression. The culmination of those things was unhelpful, sure.

I’ve spent so much energy the past couple of years trying to point fingers and source each bout of depression with the hope that one of these days I would be able to somehow stop it before it took me out. Time and time again, I end up losing. Turns out, its mostly out of my control. As I look back at the past few weeks, I’m not sure there’s something I could have done differently that would have magically unspiraled my mental health. I can only control how I react.

So how did I react?? well – so far, I am not proud of my attempts to nip depression in the bud. It started with plan A…

Plan A: Alcohol.

I started drinking, more than usual... like ashamedly A LOT more than usual. To be honest, it did help, temporarily, at least. A few drinks deep and the weight of existence would lift itself off my shoulders. Until the next morning, I’d wake up and be *shocked* again to realize that this did not bring me the peace I was longing for. This worsened over a couple of weeks before I finally succumb to the fact that finding a short-term solution for a long-term problem just intensifies the problem. So, on to the next plan.

Plan B: find serotonin via drastic change in appearance. That’ll undepress me.

I cut about 7 inches off my hair… Plot twist – my hair stylist gave me some “texture” during this cut that is hard to style, and it turns out I don’t really like it…NEXT.

Plan C: Lean in.

Let the depression take its course. Get away for a few days, do something I love but leave time for me to do nothing at all… that’s right friends, it’s time for another - Mommy Weekend.

This weekend I am getting away from the house, checking into a hotel and working on my mental health. I need a break. I need a reset.

I know what your thinking – Tiffy didn’t you JUST go to Hawaii… isn’t a “break” what set this whole thing off??… and you’d be exactly right.

This is somehow different. Hawaii was for vacation, for my marriage, for the experiences and memories.

Mommy weekend is just for me. For my mental health. For re-centering, finding what brings me joy and exploring my coping mechanisms.

And let’s be honest, it could totally not work. That’s also a possibility. But there is no shame in my Plan D.

Plan D: Talk with my psychiatrist.

The beautiful perfect hawaii trip that started my mental downfall

10 Years

Lets talk about the #10yearschallenge.

10 years. That’s a long time. 10 years ago I was 16.

Here’s what I remember about being 16.

I filled my spare time with softball and volleyball. When I wasn’t at school or at practice, I was babysitting. I was obsessed with my dog, Luke. I think I wanted to be an author or a lawyer, but only because I was really good at arguing with my mom, and fluent in Latin. I pursued modeling for exactly 1 week before deciding that was absolutely not for me. I wanted to go to The University of Colorado, I don’t even remember why.

I don’t think I was sure about much when I was 16, but I very vividly remember, dreaming about being a mom.

Its been 10 years….

I didn’t make anything of my sports career – but my best friends from softball and volleyball are still my best friends today.

My dog Luke will be 12 this year.

I didn’t become a lawyer – but I have a masters in Tax Law, which is nerdy in its own right.

I didn’t go to Colorado, but had the best time at OU.

My dream of becoming mom – that one did come true. It is everything I could have ever hoped for. I could have never imagined the journey to get here would have been as hard as it was - but I made it and I think 16 year old me would be so excited about that.

Instead of making this about the past 10 years (because its boring, we get it, I became an adult I don’t need to recap my early 20’s…it was messy… lets move on), I want to look forward. Lets be cheesy, lets ask the question… “where do you see yourself in 10 years?”

I have never thought this through, or wrote this out, but I want to, and I’m excited to. I feel like there has been a huge shift in energy, and we are preparing for something big. I just have this feeling that the next 10 years are going to be my PRIME (this is coming from the girl that adamantly believed she peaked in 8th grade until about 6 months ago).

Here is what I am manifesting in my next 10 years.

At 36, –

• I am approaching my 13th wedding anniversary with the absolute love of my life.

• I am mom to more than 1 kid, but hopefully less than 5. (still a point of contention in my marriage, but I feel pretty confident the answer is more than 2 and less than 5, sorry reese!)

• My family is fully invested in following my kids passions. On the weekends, if we aren’t at tournaments or showing animals at a county fair, we are camping, traveling and exploring.

• I am an independent, successful business owner. (more to come on this dream in the coming months, hopefully)

• I’ve built a business so successful that it’s allowed my husband to make his hobby business a full time gig, we both get make our own schedules.

• I am an author; I have finally pursued my lifelong dream of writing a book.

• I have a hobby. Something I do just for me. (I’m working on figuring out what this one is)

• After years of creating humans and sustaining life, my body belongs to me again. I have a positive, healthy relationship with it.

• My funny farm is thriving. My brahma heifer, Doof, loves to be ridden like a horse (if you don’t know what a brahma is – it’s God’s most favored centaur – except instead of part goat its part hunchback of Notre Dame, part cow, part bunny)

• My dog, Luke, will be turning 22, he is in exceptional health, the Guinness book of world records sends him a cake. (these are my manifestations, get your negativity out of here)

So there it is, my top 10 goals for the next 10 years. Imperfect, a little vague, surely with struggles of their own… but they are mine, and I am ready.

 It felt good to write it out, therapeutic and encouraging, try it out.. (and … for the record- cheaper than therapy so its worth a shot)

Me at 16

Me at 26

TTC

For a few months now my husband and I have been trying to conceive (TTC). While I am overjoyed at the thought of becoming a mom again, I can’t help but be anxious about all the other things TTC brings for me.

Emotionally, this journey so far has been exhausting. We never really “tried” with my last two pregnancies, they were effortless and exciting in their own way. This one is different. Every month I pin down my “fertile” days and follow them closely, monitoring my body carefully for signs of ovulation. Then 2 weeks later I have the excitement of peeing on a stick and trying not to get my hopes up. Each negative test is more devastating than the last. Then my period comes, my heart sinks, my dream of another baby feels further and further away….and then we start the process over again. It’s a discouraging rollercoaster.

TTC – 1, Tiffy – 0.

Then there’s controlling what I can control… and that comes with another hard battle for me: breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding hormones can act as a natural birth control, making it more difficult to get pregnant. For the past few months, I avoided research and wrote this off as a myth, telling myself I could do both. However, TTC has become so devastating that I finally have to face the facts. It’s time for us to end our breastfeeding journey. On top of TTC, I always told myself “When he can ask for it, he’s too old for it” … well, just this week he started saying “booby” when he was ready for milk. That solidified this decision for me, it’s time to quit.

I am so proud of how far we’ve come. For 2 years my body has been able to provide nutrition and comfort for my baby. Breastfeeding created a bond with my son that carried me through my darkest moments. I may not have survived my fight against depression and suicide, I quite literally owe my life to breastfeeding. I can’t help but mourn the end of this journey and all that it has done for me.

TTC – 2, Tiffy – 0.

On to the things I can’t control. The “what ifs”.

This one is big. This one is scary.

Its no secret I have struggled A LOT in postpartum. Am I ready to start it all over again? What if its better? What if its worse? Can I handle hallucinations again? Depression? Suicidal thoughts? Am I being selfish by risking Ridge’s ‘healthy’ and ‘stable’ mother for another child? I am so quick to let my thoughts spiral and create a sinking feeling in my gut.

TTC – 3, Tiffy – 0.  

These are questions in conversations I’ve had many times with my husband, my therapist and my psychiatrist.

All those conversations have led me to one conclusion. The answer to every single one of those questions is “I don’t know”. BUT! And this is a big BUT!

BUT – I have already done the dirty work; I have built my foundation of resources. I know the signs of struggle, I have grown to be more self-aware, I have my support team at the ready.

TTC – 3, Tiffy – 1.

Since the very beginning, I have been so meticulous and intentional about medication. I have been breastfeeding through this journey, therefore, every medication I have been prescribed has had to have been safe for nursing. However, I also made sure my medication routine would be safe for pregnancy as well – I have gotten it cleared with both my psychiatrist and OB-GYN. I won’t have to go through the process of weaning or be weary of potentially hurting my child. I feel safe. I feel prepared.

TTC – 3, Tiffy – 2.

While the score may portray a losing game now, the final score is determined just like quidditch. The snitch is worth 150 points. One of these days, whether it be next month or 18 months from now, I’ll catch my snitch, the test will be positive, and I will get to spend 9 months absolutely thrilled to be throwing up every day (that’s how my last pregnancy went anyway).  

To my future baby – Hi. I prayed for you for so long. I’ve loved you long before you were even conceived. I can’t freaking wait to meet you.  

Life After Psychosis

I want to preface this with 2 things.

1. I think I am doing good, great, even. I am as stable as I could ask for, my medication routine is working for me, I haven’t had a hallucination in nearly 4 months and my depression is, for now, controlled. I am thriving. I am in a place that even 6-8 months ago I thought I would absolutely never see, and I am so proud of myself for getting here.

2. This is just my experience. I don’t speak on behalf of every person who has experienced psychosis, but for me - this is what life after psychosis has looked like.

Ok, now that the housekeeping is out of the way, let me tell you why postpartum psychosis continues to ruin my life, even 4 months removed from my last “episode”.

That’s half a joke, and half only funny because its true.

Before psychosis, I struggled with PTSD from an accident I had in college. The accident caused damage to my lungs, and after that every time I felt even a little bit out of breath – my brain would go into fight or flight and start to go into “panic” mode about not being able to breathe. These anxiety attacks were infrequent, and in the grand scheme of things – not that bad.

Fast forward to now. I’d kill for a panic attack that minor again. But oh no no no, not this new Tiffy. New Tiffy, post-postpartum psychosis Tiffy, PTSD controls so much of her life now.

For a solid year and a half, my brain tricked me about once a week… So, somewhere around 78 times my brain convinced me of something that was not real.

Imagine finding out your spouse lied to you 78 times. SEVENTY-EIGHT lies, from little white lies about your cooking, to really big lies about their loyalty or faithfulness. That would lead most people to divorce, or at least into extensive couple’s therapy. Would you be able to just ~*trust*~ them right away? Absolutely not, they have lost that right and not earned a dime of it back.

This is the relationship I have with my brain now. I just don’t trust it. When I feel the most untrusting of my brain, I start to panic about my perception of reality.

I hate the word “triggered” but I am about to use it a lot, so -  here we go.

There are certain situations I know will trigger me to question my reality, and I struggle with these almost daily.

• Noises I can’t identify (also, loud noises) -  Thumps, whispers, creaking, people on the other side of a wall talking on the phone, people wearing masks and having a conversation. Can’t handle it.

• Large gatherings - People gathered into a space where multiple conversations are being had simultaneously. Can’t handle it.

The most triggering place for me is my office. There is a lot of both of those things happening at the office. I used to be so panicked about the office that I was throwing up, daily, at just the anticipation of having to go. I have worked through a lot of that anxiety that its not “throw-up-panic-attack” bad anymore. But its bad enough that I only go into the office 2x a week, and the thought of doing more than that does still make me want to throw up. When the construction began in the office above mine, the thumps and drilling noises made me spiral so badly I was nearly in tears when my boss told me to just go home. The spiral doesn’t end when I leave the office, either. It puts me in a headspace that follows me home, has me questioning my house as it creaks or the oven as it ticks… for the rest of the day my body stays in *panic* mode until I am so drained I fall asleep by, or before, 8 pm.

The other most triggering thing for me lately has been family gatherings. I’ve got a big, loud, crazy family that I love more than anything in the world, BUT yikes has it been hard to be a part of it lately.

Last month we had my favorite yearly family get together. It’s the guaranteed one time of year we are all going to be in one place, have a good time, play charades, and just hang out. This year, we even had limited the number of people so instead of a normal 75-100 people there was only about 25 of us… it was so physically and emotionally draining for me to be there, I had to excuse myself before my favorite part, the charades, even started. It was just too overwhelming to be in a conversation and be hearing 3 other conversations, then I start to panic about whether or not those are actual conversations or if I am just hearing voices on top of my own conversation… the whole thing is a mess in my head but it all leads to the same place – panic. Panic, for me, is usually followed by a full-body shut down. I get so overstimulated, I quite literally run out of battery power, and can not function without just going to sleep. I left the party early, went straight to sleep, and slept through the peak of the party. That was the second time in a week I had to leave a family function early.

It’s pretty defeating to be the person who just *can’t handle* daily office work or simple family functions. It’s pretty disparaging to be controlled by small, meaningless sounds. I’ve put so much work into returning to “normalcy” and it can all feel wasted after just a single “thump”.

I think I am making progress though, and that’s what keeps me going to the office when I can or pushing out of my comfort zone and forcing myself into large gatherings.  

This is what “normal” looks like after psychosis. Its over-run and dominated by the inability to trust your own brain. Everyday I celebrate small victories like grocery shopping without being triggered or lasting in my office for a full 9 hours without crying or throwing up.

I don’t know if this is how I’ll be forever, but I am hopeful I can keep working through it one small victory at a time.

“Normal”

I swear I used to be “normal”. At least I thought I was. I had battled with depression seriously maybe one other time before I had a baby, but nothing close to what I experienced postpartum. I struggled with my fair share of anxiety – but thought everyone did from time to time. My anxiety, I’d later find out, was PTSD from an accident I had in college. The only real “mental health” struggle I really had was ADHD.

And now, one baby and a lot of hormones later, my “mental health” rep sheet is a tad longer than that. I don’t know if “normal” is a thing that I will ever be again.

The first two psychiatrists I went to heard that my grandmother was a bipolar schizophrenic and immediately dismissed the idea of “postpartum mood disorders” and jumped straight to “bipolar schizophrenic”. They didn’t seem to care how normal I was before I had a baby, they didn’t listen to my symptoms, they just labeled me and told me I needed medication or inpatient services. Call me stubborn, but I refused medication from my first two psych’s because I didn’t feel the need to listen to them if they weren’t listening to me.

And then, in June of this year, I found myself in the office of yet another psychiatrist. He sat with me for over an hour at my first appointment and we talked about EVERYTHING. I half expected him to write me off just as the others had, but this time it was different.

He explained genetic mental illness to me like this – let’s say someone has a family history of alcoholism. That person isn’t automatically an alcoholic, but instead would be considered more likely to become one under the right circumstances. If that person experiences undue stress, that could trigger that “alcoholic” gene to turn on.

Whether this is exactly what he meant, or if its scientific at all, I don’t know, but this is how I interpreted it and it made me feel heard.

“I don’t think you are schizophrenic.” He told me, “I don’t know if you are bipolar, but having a baby was your ‘triggering’ event.”

He wasn’t jumping to conclusions. He was listening, attentively, and he laid out my options so I could decide my next step, instead of having one chose for me. I felt seen. Most of all, I finally didn’t feel like all of this was somehow my fault. For so long I had felt like I wasn’t mentally strong enough to become a mother, like I had inherently done something wrong, that the depression and psychosis could have been somehow prevented.

Through blurry, tearful eyes, I looked up and asked, “am I going to be like this forever?”

He sighed, handed me a tissue, and said, “I don’t know.”

Strangely, I found his honest uncertainty comforting.

He went on to explain that the hormonal surge of postpartum often causes these triggers in people prone to depression or psychosis, and that sometimes the “prone gene” can be “turned off”, or altered, by medication, or sometimes with time and lack of hormones they go away on their own, but sometimes they don’t, and it becomes a lifelong issue.

Its been nearly 6 months since this appointment and to be completely transparent, I ask him every 3 weeks during our check ins - “am I bipolar?” and his answer still remains “I don’t know”.

I ask, in part, because I am neurotic and have a need to be in control… but also because after doing my research, bipolar disorder really does explain a lot for me.

So, all that to say, I don’t know what my new “normal” is. Or if I will ever be “normal” again. Right now, I am stable. I don’t consider myself depressed. I haven’t had any hallucinations in a few months. I am doing really good, and I am proud of myself for getting to this point. If anything, I’ve learned that standing up for yourself as a patient is important, and that “shopping” for the right doctor can be LIFE-CHANGING. Great doctors are out there, doctors that listen to everything you need to say and ask all the right questions and make sure you are comfortable with your treatment plan, so don’t settle for doctors that throw you a prescription and move on to the next patient. I am also extremely grateful for the advances in modern medicine and availability of mental healthcare that I know my grandmother did not have the same access too. In a way, this whole journey has made me feel a lot closer to her. She struggled so openly with her mental illness during a time where mental illness wasn’t acknowledged as a medical issue, she was often misunderstood or labeled “crazy” or “having a nervous breakdown”. I think she’d be so proud to see mental illness talked about the way it is today.

So if this is the way I am going to be forever, then I will spend forever breaking the stigma that mental illness isn’t “normal”. Who wants to be “normal” anyway?

My Angel Baby

When we found out about you, I felt so woefully unprepared, but instinctually ready. Still in shock, your dad and I spent our nights talking about what your name would be, fantasizing what becoming parents would be like. We excitedly planned for our next adventure, loving you more with every minute.

You and I were connected, and I found reassurance in knowing I was solely responsible for keeping you safe.

Until I failed.

It happened fast, within a few hours, but time moved painfully slow.

The shock of loss was more intense than the shock of a positive test. The joy we had instantly turned to shame and grief.

I’d never experienced grief so physically. It hurt so deep in my chest, radiating down through my body, and sinking in my gut. I would have given the world, my last dollar, my anything to bring you back.

Even all these years later, I want you to know you aren’t forgotten. You are with us constantly, I see you in every flower, every beautiful sunset and especially in rainbows. I think about you often. I wonder who you would have been, what your favorite toy would have been, what your little quirks could have been, what kind of sleeper you would have been. I think about your brother, Ridge, did you get to meet him first? Did y’all get along? Would y’all have been best friends? With every milestone he reaches, I’m saddened by the memories and milestones I missed out on with you. Every year on your heavenly birthday, we make you a cake and celebrate the mark you had on our world for the short time you were in it.

For a long time, we kept you a secret. We grieved alone, silently. I felt guilty for not naming you. I felt ashamed of my body, of my inability. I believed that I was at fault, that I had done something wrong and caused you harm. With time, growth, and healing, I no longer feel that way. I refuse to feel shame about what happened, about you.

The world kept turning, but I was never the same. They say a mother’s grief will last a lifetime, and I believe that’s true. You are the one who first made me a mommy, and a part of me died with you. I love you now even more than I loved you then.

Happy Heavenly Birthday, my sweet angel baby.

Hindsight

Its been awhile since I wrote.

In part, its because my last post was so intense, it brought up a lot of raw emotion.

But if I’m being honest with myself, its also in part because I was sunk in a bout of depression again.

I feel better now, but I knew I wasn’t myself. So here I am, after a few months of struggle, blessed with the ability to look back and say “that’s not me”.

So as an exercise in self-awareness, lets recap all the red flags I ignored. The things I knew weren’t “me”.

1. I stopped doing the things I enjoyed – like writing.

2. I fell behind on housework

3. Over-procrastinated my work work.

4. I craved energy, and in turn, was drinking excess amounts of caffeine (like double shots of espresso at 2pm)

5. I changed my nighttime routine – instead of putting the baby down and enjoying a show or game with my husband or watching something to unwind, I was going straight to bed… mostly before 8:30.

Those are just the big red flags for me, I’m sure there’s more if you asked my husband.

Let’s take it another step, how did I get there?

1. At the end of August, I had a few psychotic symptoms resurface after a few months strong on a new medication. I think I can trace this onset psychosis to mainly intense stress. Nevertheless, I felt defeated, I felt ashamed, I felt like a failure.

2. At the beginning of September, my doctors changed my medication to alleviate the psychosis. As a person who struggles with change, and with the concept of medicine, this caused me a lot of anxiety.

3. The med change was hard on my body, physically, the adjusting period took a few weeks and my body was TIRED. I felt like I couldn’t keep up with day-to-day activities.

4. On top of being tired, I started to get busy at work. I wasn’t so stressed about the actual work though. This time I began to stress about my own levels of stress. I’d say to myself, “if you don’t stay on top of this, the psychosis will come back, and then you’ll have to restart new meds AGAIN and then if those don’t work….” I’d start to spiral in negative thought. I was constantly anxious.

5. I became so anxious; I was literally making myself sick. Every afternoon around 2 or 3 when I’d feel like I’d accomplished a lot of my to-do lists, the ball of anxiety in my stomach would sneak up and tell me it wasn’t ever enough. Despite my best efforts, by early evening I’d be throwing up lunch, and neglecting dinner. This went on for about a week.

6. I was blaming myself. My therapist, Whitney, pointed out to me that instead of saying to myself, “these things are happening” I was saying, “these things are happening BECAUSE I am an insane person” or “BECAUSE I am not enough”. I was quick to jump the gun and point the finger at myself.

In our final exercise of self-awareness, I like to reflect on what helped me snap back.

The answer, this time, is short - The stomach bug. While I wish this reflection could be something profound and helpful, the honest answer is that I caught a nasty stomach bug. However, I do think a couple really important things happened during the 5 days I miserably fought this bug.

1. I was forced to stop. Forced to “lean into” the way depression makes me feel. Coupled over in stomach pain, I had no other option but to call in sick, temporarily drop my responsibilities and let my husband take care of the house and our child and just *lay* in bed for a few days.

2. FOMO (fear of missing out). While I was laid up in bed, I could hear my son playing outside the bedroom window or giggling in the living room, and I felt so sad that I wasn’t there playing too. It made me really look forward to filling dump trucks full of dirt or going on walks again – or even just sitting with him at dinner while he says/does funny things. I couldn’t wait to get back to mommin’.

3. I was in pain. Intense pain. A pain so fierce that reflecting on that pain made me grateful to have an otherwise healthy body.

4. I COULDN’T take the blame for this. There was nothing I could have done to prevent myself from getting the bug. This forced me to realize that not everything is my own fault. Things don’t happen to me *because* of anything… sometimes, things just happen. Good or bad, they just happen.

While it super-sucked and I don’t recommend trying to get a stomach bug to cure depression, I do think that this bug forced me to mentally reset. It put into perspective the things I love about life, and I lost interest in the “what-ifs” I’d been exerting so much mental energy on. I instead began to use that energy to plan out “when I feel better…” activities.

As it turns out, I have a lot of things to look forward to, and a lot of things in my daily life that I LOVE doing. I needed the miserability of the bug to help spin all those things back into a positive light.

This is a process my therapist and I used during the height of my depression and sometimes still circle back to as necessary, and it’s become my favorite tool. After an episode of depression, or psychosis, or anxiety or any other big mood change ask yourself 3 questions. What changed? What happened that made you feel that way? And What helped you feel yourself again?

I feel in control when I can reflect in this way. As the old saying goes - “The only doing better is knowing better” . When you begin to unravel and know more about yourself, you grow. There is so much strength and empowerment in self-awareness.

Soaking up the little moments I could during the nasty stomach bug

What the Suicidal Person Wants You to Know…

This took me about 2 weeks to write – because even though I consider myself “recovered”, I am not too far removed from the darkness. It doesn’t take much for me to get *that* bad, but it has gotten a lot easier to bring myself out of it, and that’s progress.

Anyway - I’ve wanted to talk about this but it’s always felt a little dark, and I don’t want it to be. I think this is important. If people on the outside could get a better understanding of what severe depression feels like, they can be a better resource for their friend, sister, brother, parent, child, or stranger. They could help save someone’s life.

However, I realize there is no “light” way to talk about suicidal thoughts, but as a recovered suicidal person, I am going to try my best.

This is the picture the media, society, whoever… has painted of the “suicidal person”.

That person is sad. That person is pessimistic. That person is dramatic. That person lacks a support system. That person needs to pray more.

Very rarely are those things true.

In fact, these assumptions are incredibly unhelpful.

Here is my experience, here is my *darkness*

That person is sad.

I can’t even call it sad. Sad doesn’t touch the surface of what is happening here.

I wasn’t feeling intense sadness, I was feeling nothing at all – which is worse. Sadness implies you have something to be sad about. I had nothing to be sad about. I was in a life stage I had been longing for. I was a mom!!!! I’ve wanted so badly to be a mom! And yet, *nothing*.

I felt worthless. I wasn’t good enough to be a mom. I was failing my son, he deserved better. I felt guilty for not feeling happy. I felt guilty for feeling consumed by nothingness. It became physically painful for me to do anything, and when all my responsibilities piled up in front of me, I sat in awe of how worthless I was. I proved all those negative thoughts right. I fell so behind on my day-to-day tasks that I felt like I was drowning. I couldn’t catch up; I couldn’t start over… and that’s when death started feeling like an option. I wasn’t sad, I was overwhelmed. I wanted a re-start button. The closest thing to a restart button, was death.

That person is pessimistic, dramatic.  

There is no one on earth who wanted to be happy more than I did. I tried so hard to just *be happier*. I wanted to wake up and feel myself again. In my darkest moment I remember asking my husband as he held me sobbing “why does everything have to feel like this?”.

I did not want to feel what I was feeling. No one wanted me to get better more than I did. No one CHOOSES to feel depressed. Depression consumes you in a way that leads you to believe you have no other option but darkness, or more darkness.

I once had someone I love very much tell me, “It can’t be that bad”.

That sentence broke me. I was trying my very hardest to hold myself together, exhausting every fiber of my being just to barely scrape by, and for what? To be told I was, what? Dramatic?

It is that bad. No matter how it looks on the outside, if someone tells you its ~THAT~ bad, believe them. Love them, support them, help them… but do not doubt them. I’ve never broken my arm, but I know that it probably hurts. If you have never felt that pain, you can still muster up some empathy.

That person lacks a support system.

This may be true for some people, but it wasn’t for me. I had the world’s most supportive and understanding husband who was doing everything he could possibly think of to get me the help I so desperately needed, but I still felt alone in my own thoughts. I felt immensely guilty that my husband was having to take on my burden, I felt weak, I felt unworthy. Everything I was feeling on my own, doubled in size when I shared it with my husband, feeling shameful that he had to spend even 1 second of his time worrying about me.

To a normal person, you’d think “well that’s just not true, he loves you and wants what’s best for you, he was just doing his part, you aren’t a burden.”

You are correct, normal person, that is the case. But depression did not let me think that logically. It made me believe that I was undeserving of the love I was receiving, I was a bad wife, a worse mother. These thoughts cycled in my brain, worsening in intensity until I was so alone in my own head, it did not matter how much love and help I was receiving, I’d been convinced that if I was dead, my husband would have less to worry about.

It sounds extreme. That’s because it is.

People think suicide is “selfish”. I’m guilty of that. Before having experienced this darkness, I’d probably agree with that statement. I would have thought, “how could they do that to their families?”.

What I learned in the darkness is that suicidal people have been lied to by their depression. Depression has convinced them, as it convinced me, that their death would be a welcomed sigh of relief for their loved ones. That dying would be a favor.

Onto my last soapbox –

That person needs to pray more.

I got this “advice” a lot. This, to me, was the most harmful advice I received. Let me first clarify, this is the insinuation that the severely depressed person is somehow not “spiritual” enough, that they could “spend more time with God” and be “cured”. 

I know people who told me this did not mean it harmfully, but in my darkest moments, this advice just made me feel more alone.

I had been praying, I had been seeking out God. Guess what? I was still depressed. I still thought I was better off dead.

At night, after my baby and husband had gone to sleep, I’d sit in prayer. Most of the time through heavy tears, I would plead for God to take away the pain, to take away the darkness, or even to just take me away from all of it, I’d tell Him how thankful I was for all the blessings I had, but I struggled to feel the joy of being “blessed”. I spent countless nights crying myself to sleep, only to wake up and do it again.

Depression would rear its ugly head and say, “not even God can save you.”

I was led to believe that God’s cure for depression was somewhere in between the lines of verses about anxiety, overcoming obstacles or finding strength. That simply isn’t true.

When the bible does address depression and suicide, the answer is far from “pray harder”.

In 1 Kings 19, Elijah is overwhelmed, he is tired, he is comparing himself to others and he just doesn’t understand “God’s plan” for him. He gives up. Elijah becomes suicidal and asks God to take his life.

God sends an angel to Elijah who tells him to “take rest, eat cake”. 

When he is rested, Elijah seeks God again. He still feels unworthy and overwhelmed. God understands, so to ease Elijah’s burden, He names 2 men who Elijah can depend on to step in for him, and a 3rd man who is to be his right-hand man.  

Gods actual cure for depression had 3 parts.

1. Take rest

2. Fuel your body (eat cake)

3. Ease the burden

This brings me to the real point of this post.

Lets summarize all the things that are NOT helpful to say to a severely depressed or suicidal person.

UNHELPFUL

-          choose happiness

-          just be happier

-          you are just sad, sadness will pass

-          you need to be more positive

-          you are being dramatic

-          it’s not that bad

-          you are being selfish

-          spend more time with God/in prayer

-          maybe you need a hobby

-          try making new friends

- everybody feels like that sometimes

-          you need to “get out” more

(if I missed one, please DM me, I will add to this list because I think its helpful to know)

If these are all the wrong and unhelpful, then what is right? What is helpful?

Ultimately, what helped me come out of my darkest moments was God’s actual cure for depression. Those three things are what could help save a suicidal person. THESE things are helpful.

REST.

I needed to take rest, I needed to let go of all responsibility and just ~rest~. On a few occasions, that was laying in bed for the whole day. On those days, my mom or my husband would take on my household duties. I laid in bed, painfully fighting intrusive thoughts, but the laundry still got done, the baby got to daycare, the floors were clean (thanks mom). I didn’t have to watch those responsibilities pile up in front of me, I got to take the rest my mind and body needed.

EAT CAKE.

This goes hand in hand with rest. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t doing much of anything for myself. My mom came up and stayed with us and she and my husband planned dinners, she would go to the grocery store, she would bring breakfast up to my office, she asked me what I wanted for lunch and would make sure I got that thing. She was making sure my body was fueled and taking one more thing off my plate.

EASE THE BURDEN

You can see what a huge role my mom had in easing my burden at home, she was truly a God send.

My husband helped a lot too, he is also the one who researched therapists in our area and found one that he thought was the best fit.

Whitney, my therapist, helped me learn coping mechanisms, provided an outlet to talk to and an honest feedback to tell me when I wasn’t thinking logically or needed more intervention.

While I never told my boss outright what was going on with me, she could tell I wasn’t performing at my “normal” and when things got bad, I had to tell her the workload was just to much for me, and she took care of it. Somedays, I just called in sick because that was easier than trying to work.

Little by little I chipped away at what I could, but I couldn’t fully do it on my own. I needed support, I needed guidance, and I also needed medication. Those are the things that pulled me away from the darkness, and it didn’t happen overnight. It took weeks, if not a few months, to be able to look back and say “wow, I don’t even know who that person was, because it was not me”.

Helpful things –

-          Is there anything I could take off your plate?

-          Let me take *child* for a few hours so you can get some rest.

-          Would you like me to come stay with you for a few days, I would love to help around the house.

-          I saw this funny video and it made me think of you.

-          Can I bring you a meal?

-          Can I pick up some groceries for you?

-          Do you need someone to talk to? Cry with?

-          YOU are the best YOU for your family, they are so fortunate to have YOU.

If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health crisis call 800-273-8255 to talk to a dedicated suicide prevention specialist. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger of committing an irreversible act, call 911.

What’s Next?

My whole adult life I been meticulously planning. Planning for what, you ask?

Everything.

I have painstakingly planned and anxiously waited for event after event, always knowing I was 2 steps ahead of myself.

I’ve always known what projects at work I was striving for, how I needed to get them done, what was next. I’ve pinned our finances down to the dollar, always knowing exactly what percentage of our income was being saved. I’ve broke our savings into percentages to account for our miscellaneous financial goals. I’ve planned and replanned our future vacations, our house remodel, and even what our Christmas budget would be 6 months in advance.

I methodically planned out my school schedule throughout college, intertwining it down to the minute with my work and volunteering schedules. At one point during college, I was working 3 jobs including teaching a class and held a coordinator position for an on-campus non-profit. I wasn’t doing it because I was hurting for cash. I spread myself thin because I hated doing nothing.

After I graduated college, I got engaged, was planning a wedding, interning full time, and decided I wanted to get my Masters. Not just an MBA, or Masters of Accountancy which would have sufficed for my career goals, no. I wanted to go full super nerd. I wanted to get my Master’s in Taxation.

In hindsight, I should have ended my internship and pursued this degree before accepting a fulltime position, but what would have been the fun in that?

The last 4 years, as I welcomed substantial life changes like starting a big girl job, moving to a new city by myself, getting married, buying a home, undergoing a major dental reconstruction surgery, getting pregnant and becoming a mother, as well as overcoming the challenges I have faced in postpartum, I have done so while also being a grad student. I only allowed myself 3 months off school after having Ridge before I insisted on getting back to class. A decision that, by all accounts, was a huge mistake. The workload compounded with other stressors to eventually trigger what I now know as stress-induced psychosis symptoms.

Last week, I took my very last final. And yesterday I found out I passed my graduate exam, and I have completed my master’s program.

I am proud of myself.

Rarely do I get to say that and believe it, but this time it’s true. I am so proud. I did this, I worked so hard for this.

For the first time in my adult life, I don’t have a “what’s next” career goal.

I’m done with school. I don’t feel like my position is stagnant, and still have so much learning and challenge in my current role. I am happy with my job.

You’ll be shocked to hear this, as I am shocked to admit it, but I think it’s time to stop spreading myself so thin. Instead of pouring energy into new ventures/projects, what if I poured back into myself?

I’ve spent the last year and a half of motherhood depriving myself of attention, and now that the distraction is gone, what if I attended to myself the way I should have been all along? What if the answer to “whats next?” is ME. I am next.

As a parent, it is 100x easier to do something for your child than it is to do for yourself. As a spouse, its only 50x easier to do something for your significant other than it is to do for yourself. (Sorry Reese, but you know it’s true)

Ridge, and Reese, deserve the absolute best version of me. I want them to have a mom/wife that’s loving, fun, supportive, emotionally stable, and physically able.

Right now, I am those things. But I am not the best I could be at those things.  

Action item number 1 - Get away and force a happy celebration.

I’ve worked my butt off for the past 4 years, I deserve to start this new era with a bang. So this weekend, I’m leaving. I’m driving 45 minutes away, by myself, and just RELAXING. No cleaning, no cooking, no laundry, no work, nothing. I’m going to do what I want to do, for 48 hours.

Whether that involves going to target or eating a burrito in bed and watching teen romcoms, well, that’s none of your business.

I am working on true self-care. Self-care that expands further and deeper than weekly sessions with my therapist or occasional face masks. This self-care is going to be for me, for truly bettering myself, so that I know that I am doing everything in my power to give Ridge, and Reese, the version of me I want them to know. The version of me that I want to know.

Recycling this picture from my college graduation because its fitting

Praying for Rain

Last September, my mental health had reached an all-time low. I was still refusing anti-depressants, still unaware of my psychosis, still suicidal, every day harder than the last. I was at my breaking point.

If I’m being honest, I was also having a major faith crisis. I was unsure that a loving, sympathetic higher power existed in a world so full of pain and hurt. I felt like if there was a God, He seemed to stop listening to little old me. I convinced myself I was at fault for this. Women tackle motherhood every day, I just wasn’t strong enough for it, and therefore God had given up on me, and who could blame him for that? I deserved to be given up on.

One night, as my husband and child slept soundly next to me, I was awake, per usual, battling back intrusive thoughts. Tears streamed down my face, dampening my pillow. I don’t remember my exact invocation, but I know it was along the lines of -

“Why me? Why this? Why now? This life you have given me is everything I have ever prayed for, why does it feel this way? Take this pain away or take me away from this, I don’t know how much longer I can go on”

And then, I joked “and while you’re at it, we could use some rain, a rainy day sounds nice”

I’m not even sure the last part could be considered a prayer, it was almost an afterthought, my ADD brain in full force.

The next day, unsurprisingly, I was not cured, I still felt the same, maybe worse.

I went about my day as normal, taking Ridge to school, going home to work, nothing special.

Reese called me on his lunch break to let me know he was headed back to the office, as a storm in the area had prevented them from finishing their job, “it wasn’t even supposed to rain today…” he said.

After I hung up the phone, I opened the blinds in my office.

It was the perfect rainstorm. The sky was just gray enough to shield the sun, and it steadily poured the way it seems to do in every movie about Seattle. It was the most picturesque rainy day.

In this moment, for the first time in a very long time, I felt comforted, optimistic, even. God’s response rang clear, “I hear you and I need you to trust me.”

Face to face with God’s perfect timing, my faith was renewed. I wasn’t being punished, I wasn’t unworthy, I wasn’t at fault. That wasn’t the case at all. I am loved, I am a work in progress, and He is ensuring I survive this and come out stronger than before.

To this day, when I am having a rough time, I end my prayer with a plea for rain, or sunshine, or sometimes snow in the middle of summer. With a wink and a nod, my meteorological inside joke with God has become my subtle self-reminder to keep the faith, HE is in control.  

“I believe in the Sun, even when it is not shining.
I believe in love, even when I do not feel it.
I believe in God, even when he is silent”

— Poem found in a Cologne, Germany cellar known for being a Jewish hideout during WWII

The Day the Voices Returned

***it should be noted that I wrote a majority of this while having a full anxiety attack over these events. Its a mess, but writing through it helped me to process. Knowing that maybe my story makes someone out there feel less alone, makes publishing this feel slightly less vulnerable.***

Well.

I can not control the psychosis.

I can control my behaviors.

I know my triggers.

-          Sleep deprivation

-          Stress

-          Depressive episodes

I can control how much sleep I get. I can control my workload. I can control my medication management.

And when all of those things work together, I am golden.

But sometimes, toddlers go through sleep regressions, and in the middle of the night, they just want their momma.

We are on day 3 of sleep regression. I bet I’ve averaged 3 hours of sleep a night. When Ridge was a newborn, I survived on much, much less.

But this morning, mid 6 am feed, after tossing and turning with Ridge since 1:30 am, my nightmare returned. My husband had left for work, the house was quiet, Ridge was finally sleeping soundly. Over the buzz of the noise machine rose a whisper. “tiffany” it said.

I opened my eyes. Panic started to set in. My immediate thought is that someone is in the house. For whatever reason, I assumed it was my neighbor, who recently had a baby, needing help.

“tiffany” it whispered again.

The dogs were unphased, Boone still snoring. No body is in the house. My gut started to churn, I pleaded with the voice – “please no.”

The whisper got louder and made itself known a few more times, before fading away and leaving me to sink in my puddle of anxiety. I stayed on edge, eventually distracting myself by waking up my sleeping baby and getting the day started.

I shook it off and decided it didn’t happen, business as usual. I’m fine. It’s fine. Everything is fine.

Right?

Throughout the day I had a lingering headache, you know the kind that you get when you are sleep deprived? The kind that makes a home in the exact center of your skull, haunting your every move and constantly reminding you how tired you really are. That.

And then came nightmare part 2.

I was wrapped up in work, finally seeing the bright ending light of a project coming to a close, when suddenly my headache erupted. The centralized pain shifted into a nagging pressure, and all I could do was stop in my tracks and hold my head in my hands.

In the silence of my suffering the sound of the whisper was deafening.

“tiffany”

I looked around the room. I sat still, thinking surely not again, surely not twice in one day after weeks of inner peace.

“tiffany”

This time followed by a muffled conversation, like two people talking but through a dense wall.

“tiffany”

Louder, and the muffled conversation sounded more like an argument.

My hands were shaking and I felt paralyzed. I could hear the voice, but I was too caught up in my inner monologue to pay attention to what it was saying.

Ok T, fight or flight, lets look for a way out. Ground yourself, what do you feel?

My chair and my heating pad. The carpet fibers poking through my toes. My sweating, jittery palms on the cold hard surface of my desk.

The voice seemed to get louder, this isn’t working.

I grab my phone and text Reese. “I’m not doing well. The voices are back”

The text isn’t immediately read, he won’t be helpful in this very moment.

I need to snap this quickly, the only thing worse than audio hallucinations are visual ones, so I know I need to keep this from progressing.

Without thinking, I jump up, and run downstairs. I almost think I did it with my eyes closed, afraid that opening would invite another hallucination. As fast as I can I strip down, I follow up with Reese, “I am hopping in the shower.”

I turn on the shower and immediately get in, using the cold water to shock my senses back to reality.

The voices stopped.

I turned the hot water up and sat at the bottom of my shower.

What the F**k was that.

I started to cry. And not just a tear or two. I full on scream cried.

What does this mean for me? For my future? I can’t handle 3 days with no sleeping, how on earth could I do another newborn phase? Does this mean I shouldn’t have any more kids? How is this fair to Ridge and Reese, they deserve so much better than this psychotic mess of a woman?

Its scary how fast the coin flips, how quickly all my progress, hard work and positive self-thought can slip into the oblivion. What now?

*******************a new day********************

After yesterday’s mess, I put the baby down early, I cuddled my husband and let him tell me how amazing he thinks I am. I told him that if the baby wakes up that I couldn’t handle it, he agreed and said he’d take care of it. I was asleep by 9:15. Awoken only by my alarm at 6 am.

After a full nights sleep I don’t feel so hopeless, but I still have a lot of questions. Clearly my medication routine is not fool-proof, I still have to do my part. I don’t even want to tell my psychiatrist about this because I don’t want to change my dose.

 Whitney (my freaking awesome therapist) and I talked last night. She reminded me that I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do (although she said I should probably still tell my psych….).

I think a lot of things led to yesterday’s mental breakdown.

-          I have a really big test coming up

-          we’re refinancing the house

-          I’m endlessly worried about Ridge’s lung recovery after RSV and pneumonia

-          I have some physical health issues of my own that have been making me feel pretty depressed

-          and then I didn’t sleep for 3 days.

Stress, depression, sleep… the perfect storm.

I don’t know what’s next. All I know is I am back at square 1. I have to be better at controlling what I can control and trust that God and modern medicine will take care of the rest.

Breastfeeding

Its world breastfeeding week, so I figured it’s the best time to talk about my BF’ing journey.

To be honest, before I gave birth all I knew was that I was going to give breastfeeding a shot. If it worked, cool, if it wasn’t for me, cool.

What I didn’t foresee was how much I would love it, or depend on it, in my sons first year of life. I don’t know who benefitted from it more, me or Ridge.

Before the nurses could even get my son to the scale, he was latched. I didn’t expect it to come so easily but for us, it did.

In the early days, we would sit in front of the window, next to the electric heater. Ridge down to his diaper so his new, yellow toned skin could absorb the sun. I’d strip down too, so I could absorb him. I’d nurse him until he fell asleep, then we would nap cuddled up together.

From early on I made a promise to my guy- that I would never waste this time we had with just the two of us. To me this meant no distractions, or really, no mindless scrolling or stupid phone games, no phones at all.

In hindsight, this promise played a key role in saving my life…

When the darkness of depression fell over every corner of my soul, there was always a small window of light that shined when Ridge and I nursed.

With a slight lip quiver, or hungry whine, my boy could stop time.

He needed me.

Nothing else mattered when he needed me.

Life’s heavy burdens were stacked densely on my shoulders, every step became heavier than the last. I felt empty, worthless, and as though my family was better off without me.

And then, he would need me.

I had to be here, even if just for this moment, I could not fail him. In this moment I am weightless, I am painless, I have purpose, I am needed.

He took me away from it all, forcing me to sit in silence and reflect. There were many sessions that ended with wiping my tears off my little boy’s head. It kept me from sitting in the darkness, alone. It reminded me of all the blessings I was surrounded by. When I say breastfeeding saved my life, I mean it.

Nowadays, the fog of depression is behind me. I am in a much better place, mentally.

I will admit, I am emotionally attached to breastfeeding because of how much it provided for me when I couldn’t provide for myself.

My now toddler wiggles, flips, and sometimes lays on my face while he eats and yet I strangely still find this time meditative. It’s a time for just the 2 of us. Its a time where I ask him about his day, when I can comfort him in his sickness, where I steal tiny belly tickles and play peek-a-boo. I melt when his little hand reaches up to hold my chin, or point out my nose. I love when he stops eating and motorboats into my chest - knowing he’ll get a laugh out of someone. I’ll cherish the memories we create in these moments, as I know this time only lasts a short while.

I’ll be sad when this journey ends, whenever that may be.

“in office”

I’ve been back “in office” for almost 2 months now. I use the term “in office” REALLY loosely – and we’ll get into that.

Lets make a list

Pros –

• Its nice to see some of my coworkers, I guess.

• Its easier to “feel out” emails and read underlying tones from my boss, or anyone for that matter, but mostly my boss. Its way easier to tell if she’s pissed or not in person vs text only.

• The coffee is cheaper than going to Starbucks.

I’ve been sitting in my office, with this list up on one of my screens, all day. Everything I did I would ask myself “is this better here or at home” and if it was better here I wrote it down. 3 things. All day.

Onto the Cons.

• Parking is a total nightmare

• No matter what time I leave the house I feel rushed. I feel like no matter when I get to the office it is the wrong time. This starts my day with anxiety.

• Its nearly impossible to make myself take a mind break here. I only get up to go to the bathroom most days.

• The walk to the bathroom is so long, what the heck I’m gonna pee my pants

• I’m cold.

• There’s too many people, everywhere, all the time.

• So many distractions, I try to keep my door closed, which probably makes me look like a b***h

• I have no idea what time it is, ever

I could keep going but I’ll get serious for a minute

How am I really doing?

To be honest, my new medication routine has been life changing. I feel more like myself, the hallucinations are ~mostly~ gone, and I feel like a fog is lifting. BUT. You don’t go through what I’ve been through over the last year and overnight become a brand new person.

Coming to realize that has been really difficult for me.

 I’m still figuring out dosage, so with every small change comes my body’s reaction to it – and some of those side effects have been brutal. There have been days I was so tired, I couldn’t drive to work and be confident my eyes were open, it was terrifying.

Another wonderful side effect of this experience is a healthy dose of PTSD – I guess you don’t just see your living room erupt in a non-existent blaze or hear voices in your head for months and come out unscathed.

Occasionally, I’ll hear a noise, or see something in my peripheral vision. To a normal person, it can go ignored, to me, I have to ask - “was that real?”.

My next thought is to locate the source. Sometimes I can hear someone in the hallway talking, I pop my head out, see a people talking, all is good.

But sometimes, I hear a muffled talking, I can’t locate the source, I start questioning if its real, I spiral into an anxiousness of what other things I am seeing/hearing, whether or not they are real too.

Rarely, if ever, am I able to just ~move on~ from an unlocated noise or fleeting vision.

At this point I have to go. I have to remove myself from the space, or I will continue to spiral. Spiraling for me ends, typically, in a “I can’t breathe”, “I am going to die”, scream cry, fetal position, heavy breathing – panic attack.

This  series of events becomes rather unfortunate and inconvenient when you work in a building undergoing a remodel, with constant construction noises/workers.

On a related note – masks….

Listen, I’m not an anti-masker. I think they work. Covid aside, look at how masking effected the typical flu and RSV spread during the winter of 2020-21. It was almost nonexistent. SO they definitely aid in prevention of the spread of contagious diseases, I will not argue that. Here’s the thing about masks for me. As I mentioned before, if I can’t locate the source of a noise, I have to question its validity. If more than 1 person around me is masked and there is talking, I begin to panic. Who is talking? Are they talking? Is this real?? I have to go.

This is why I use the term “in office” loosely. In the two-ish months I have been back “in office” I have only successfully worked 2 full consecutive days in office, once. I typically work from home Wednesdays and Fridays at least, but most weeks I have also ended up working from home on Tuesdays. So really, at best, I’m “in the office” twice a week.

Sounds like cake for most people, right?

To be honest with you, for me it feels defeating. I can’t even human enough to be a “normal” human coexisting with other humans for TWO CONSECUTIVE days?? Get it together, Howard.

I don’t *want* to function like this. As hard as I try, as normal as I want to be, it saddens me that ~this~ is my absolute best. ~THIS~ feels half-ass. ~THIS~ feels like a cop out. ~THIS~ feels like I am being a whiny baby.

I wish I had something motivational to write, like “each day I try to be a little bit more human than the day before”…

But in all reality, some days, I barely get by without having a full mental breakdown and then the next day I try a little less so that I don’t overwhelm myself.

I’m struggling to accept this as a “new normal”. I am striving to be the work-centric overachiever I was before I got pregnant. I’m mourning that person, as I know she no longer exists.

New me is the best version of me, the me I get to be for my son. She is a wife and mother above anything else. She still has goals, she can still be an outstanding performer at work, too. She will get used to this balance, eventually. She’s been through a lot. She deserves grace. She will figure this out, one day at a time. One small task at a time, she will grow.  

my home office

Manifest Psychosis

I’ve been really into the show Manifest

For those who don’t watch it, here is my cliff notes recap with some spoilers so that you sorta understand the rest of this –

“Flight 828 departs from Jamaica in April of 2013, during the routine flight, the plane withstands intense turbulence, but ultimately perseveres through it safely. Upon landing in New York the plane and its occupants are told that 5 and a half years have passed, it is now November 2018, and they have all been presumed dead. The show follows the passengers of 828 and the different ways this anomaly has affected their lives. While they all cope differently, they all now have one thing in common – whatever happened on that plane has connected them forever in a way they can not control. The passengers start having vivid hallucinations, what they refer to as “callings”. The Callings sometimes help them to solve crimes, seek out injustices, connect them to each other or their often-painful pasts. Each Calling is a puzzle of what exactly they must do in order for the hallucination to stop; if they don’t solve them, the calling intensifies, sometimes physically manifesting in/around the passenger(s). “

It’s a good show if you are looking for something to binge.

Anyway, here’s where I come in…

I started watching it while my husband and son were gone for a weekend, and as soon as they got home I started it over because I wanted to watch it with my husband. During episode 1, my husband looked over and jokingly said, “do you just like this because of your psychosis?”. We laughed at what my “callings” really meant.

The first time I heard someone counting down from 7, I propped up in my bed, scanning both the door and windows, waiting for someone to enter. I remember talking to my therapist and her asking “does that number mean anything to you?”… Well, sorta?? It was my husbands baseball number 8 years before I met him, am I supposed to play baseball with Reese? Is that a reach?

I once had a hallucination of my dad coming into my bedroom and releasing dozens of balloons, then abruptly turning away, and shutting the door behind him. I smelled the balloons, that powdery latex smell. I could hear the squeak of the balloons rubbing past each other as they ascended to crowd around the ceiling fan. I got up to go to the bathroom, nearly unphased at the celebration thrust upon me, and when I came back into the bedroom, they were gone. I asked if my dad had been in my room at all, he hadn’t. So what does this one mean? Did I miss someone’s birthday party? Was I supposed to plan a party?

What about the time I saw my living room on fire? It was hot, it crackled, the whole room engulfed in a storm of flames… Did that mean that my décor was tacky and I needed to update the frames on the walls?

It’s funny to joke about, but in all reality, when we first discovered my psychosis, we DID (and I guess, still do..) try to make sense of them. Tried to figure out what they “meant”. I think that’s human nature, to find answers. I think the real sickness would be experiencing psychosis and thinking nothing of it.

Oddly enough, it is so easy to have a “small” hallucination, ground myself out of it, then move on with my day and try to forget it happened. I try to stop myself from doing that - it isn’t healthy or helpful to normalize any of it. I try to always tell Whitney (my bada$$ therapist) or Reese about anything I see or hear, and in turn they ask me grounding questions or connection questions. i.e.) How did the dog react? Did anything seem out of place? How did the voice sound? How did the voice make you feel? What has stressed you out lately? Etc.

While writing this, I tried to think of any one “calling” I was able to effectively connect to a life event and I could not think of one. Sure, sometimes they happened more frequently around times I was stressed, but my stressors were never IN the hallucination.  

Maybe I do relate more to Manifest because their psychosis is a superpower, there is something therapeutic about someone using the thing that drained you as their weapon of choice. Even if its unrealistic, in its own way, it made me feel normal.

Also, telling people you have had a “calling” is WAY more normal sounding than saying “I’m hallucinating” so, I am hanging on to that verbiage.  

All that to say, if I have learned anything in this experience the last year and a half its this -

Its hard, and it sucks, but YOU are not the only one its happening to.

I have found SO much grace from moms, both friends and strangers, who tell me about their struggles. How they related to some part of my story. How they felt less alone, or were able to finally breakthrough to their own truths.

On the days when I feel like I am the crazy one, and crazier for publicizing it, I am so humbly reminded that my true calling is to keep telling my story for all those mommas who feel alone.

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” Romans 8:28.