Today on Just.Be.Enough I’m sharing a video I came across that left me feeling inspired and hopeful. Come and visit – I hope it will leave you feeling that way too.
Bring on the SITS Girls
March 6, 2012 by ·
We interrupt the previously scheduled suckage to report that today is my SITS day! Any non-bloggers who read this may not know what a SITS day is, so if you want to skip past this I won’t hold it against you. But since I know my mother will ask, I’ll provide this link to the SITS Girls about page that talks about their mission and what they do with featured bloggers.
So with that out of the way, welcome!
Here’s the Coles notes version of this blog:
- I started blogging in January 2011 as a way to deal with the lingering effects of postpartum depression.
- I blogged about my worst day, how I fired my psychiatrist, and how I almost lost my marriage to postpartum rage.
- I did a TEDx talk about it.
- (If you want the whole year in review, you can get it in this short(ish) photo post.)
- I got better eventually and, because life’s not challenging enough, decided it was time to make a change I’d long resisted and moved with my family to a new city 600 miles away from where I grew up (and where my parents still live).
- At first it was awesome.
- But right now it’s kind of hard.
I haven’t written much about all the stuff that’s going on, but I will, and hopefully soon. So stick around, will ya?
And just for fun – some random stuff about me:
- I kind of like birds. (See: header. Icons.)
- My one word for 2012 is “vibrant.”
- I’m proud to be a contributor to Just.Be.Enough and Postpartum Progress and an anytime, anywhere support to PPD to Joy.
- Blogging directly led to my getting published. (Twice, actually!)
- I’m thrilled to be speaking at Bloggy Boot Camp in Dallas. (Here’s my video submission.)
- I have a life list.
So that’s me. It’s so nice to have you here – please help yourself to milk and cookies. (What? I have a 3-year-old.)
If you’d like to leave me a hostess gift, I’d love it if you’d leave a link in the comments to your most honest post. I love it when bloggers put themselves out there (I did a SITS guest post about it) and, frankly, I could use a little inspiration.
Thanks for coming by!
Scared to Feel Good After PPD
March 5, 2012 by ·
Just a quick update to let you know that I’ve got a new post up at Postpartum Progress – Scared to Feel Good After Postpartum Depression. It’s based on a conversation I’ve had with a lot of PPD moms, so if you’ve ever felt that way please come over and have a read.
Comments here closed.
Rainy Days and Mondays
March 4, 2012 by ·
Well not so much rain as snow, or that’s what in the forecast anyway. Quite a lot of it apparently. We’ll see if that actually comes to pass. Given the weirdly mild winter we’ve had I don’t know whether to expect it or not.
We’ve certainly got our share of Mondays though. Things around here are full of a whole lot of suck right now, so all I ask is this:
Please stand by. I’ll be back.
Credit: Stuck in Customs on Flickr
Writing Dangerously
February 29, 2012 by ·
“Write something dangerous,” he challenged us.
It was the “fall back in love with writing” part of the session description that drew me in. I need that. Badly. So I went to the session at Blissdom.
I actually quite liked that one. Jeff Goins is a young guy—younger than I am, I’d wager—and when he first got up in front of a room full of women to talk about the love of writing I was a little nervous for him. Because he looked a little nervous. But then he got going and it was clear this was a topic he had a handle on.
He talked about how we get to the point where we lose our love of writing because we’re not writing for ourselves anymore. I totally get that. I just don’t think that’s my problem.
I’ve always written for myself. Sure, now and then I do something sponsored because, hey, we all need money, but also because writing things like that actually challenges me. I want to maintain my own voice and not turn into a commercial, because that is so not who I am, and that’s not an easy thing to do when writing about somebody else’s product or service. It’s just not.
But here’s the thing. Writing for myself is tough when there are things I can’t write about. Two or three of them, at the moment, which adds up to rather a lot when you consider how much brain space they take up.
One of them is related to work, and while I’d love to muse about taking on a new job in a new city amid all kinds of other things going on, it seems ill-advised. So that’s a no go.
A second is just a personal thing and it’s sort of related to the work thing. Every day I write post after post about this in my head, but they’re not going to appear on these pages. At least not yet.
Write something dangerous? What would that be? Both of those things would fall into that category, I think, but my filter is standing firm on those two.
Something about a personal experience, maybe? That’s almost entirely what this blog has been so far. Yelling at my baby? Been there, wrote that. Being told by my husband he felt I was abusive? Covered it. Seeing a way out in a bottle of pills? It’s already out there.
Dangerous is not my problem.
So what should I write about? How about this:
A couple of weeks ago, I lowered the dose of my anti-depressants. With the advice of my new doctor, I cut it by a quarter. I want to do more. I want to slash the dosage and perhaps literally throw that bottle of pills into a field of snow. But that’s not how it works.
So I cut it down a little bit. Staying safe. Being smart. And you know what? It’s kind of kicking my ass.
This medication is tied to me by a blanket of dependence and resentment. This was the only thing that worked but the piece of me that’s thankful for that is pushed down into a corner, buried by frustration over how little control I have over whether I keep taking it.
I’m going to have to come off it eventually. I mean, yes, I could stay on it forever, and part of me is prepared for that, but there’s a part of me that’s yelling louder. A part that’s adamant that I should find out if I can function without it. And whenever that is, I know I’m going to have to go through the horrible transition that seems to be a part of this particular medication. The transition that builds a brick wall around reality so that all I can see is the scrawled graffiti, boldly proclaiming in angry red letters that “LIFE SUCKS.”
Yes, I guess that’s dangerous. So I wrote about it.
Photo credit: Sabeth718 on Flickr
