Pushing through Exhaustion and perceived weakness
Writing about my battle with my perceived weaknesses felt vulnerable. I hate admitting that I don’t always have it all together and that at times I am cold and distant. Because I am so far from that person - I love being warm, fun and kind.
Trigger warning: I talk about weight. I never want health to be about weight, but how I feel in my body - if I feel healthy or not, affects my confidence level. So I mention weight but it’s not about the weight. it’s about how I felt inside this body, and I was not feeling well. I feel the best I have in years. My confidence level is much better, but that didn’t come from any weight loss. It came from doing the work needed to fix my mental health and get my body strong. It came from all the internal work I did on figuring out how to love myself.
Often my writings feel incomplete to me. Like they end so abruptly. And at times they do…Sometimes I will be writing and I have all these things in my head and fear will stop me from putting it on a page. So I stop. This is one of those times. Talking about my spiritual/religious journey is one of those things that comes up in my mind and soul and is something I want to put out there and yet, I know I am not ready to. Its such a private journey that is at times hard to share.
Writing about my battle with my perceived weaknesses felt vulnerable. I hate admitting that I don’t always have it all together and that at times I am cold and distant. Because I am so far from that person - I love being warm, fun and kind. This is a defense mechanism for me. When I feel hurt by others, or not accepted or understood, it’s hard for me to be fake and put on a smile, and when I haven’t had the chance to sort my feelings out yet, I can come across cold and distant especially to those closest to me that I love the most. I think experiences with abuse in my life starting at a young age (abuse was not from my family, parents, or my spouse just so no one reads into that - this is a post for another day) and having people in my life who have said I could trust them, just to later be untrustworthy in my life has left me with a wall. Something I am working desperately to learn to let down. One of the things that hurts me the most is if I feel people around me are not being authentic with me. If I feel they are telling me one thing while actually doing/thinking another. I have had a lot of this the past few months to sort through with people I love dearly, and it’s difficult. Feeling like they are not being honest and upfront with me definitely affects my relationship with them and hurts my heart.
Why She Writes
It all begins with picking up a pen.
Scribblings and journalings in my handwriting. Why She Writes came about because of a desire to be open and honest about my mental health with others. Honest about the struggle that being a full time wife, mom, successful career woman, and survivor is. I write about sexual trauma, healing a back after surgery, and PTSD after skin cancer. I also write about the difficulties of raising a highly sensitive child with sensory issues. Sometimes I scribble thoughts on the everyday and sometimes I dive deep. Sometimes it makes sense and sometimes It’s just putting all my incoherent thoughts on a page. Sometimes it’s light and funny and sometimes it’s heavy and hard to carry, also hard to share. But here I am. We will see where I go.
December 9 2023
This was a week where I was struggling emotionally. I had been invited to a party by a friend, and I really wanted to go, but I could not get out of my head enough to accept. My mind kept spiraling and I would find myself going to Sauna each night spiraling further. Trying to let go of the brain chatter only made it worse. This is when I decided to start taking my journal with me for my Sauna time. My brain always seems to have time to process when I am sitting in Sauna. And that’s how after years off from writing, I have finally picked up a pen again.
It’s a messy start. It’s repetitive. It’s annoying to me. But it’s a start. I love reading journal entries of my ancestors, seeing their words on the pages, in their own writing. Learning from their experiences. So I decided to try something. Spelling will suck, grammer will be bad, my writings might not make any sense. Its so imperfect. Gloriously imperfect. But I’m working on being ok with that.
“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
―John Steinbeck,East of Eden
