Addie turns seven years old tomorrow and as I said last week, this transition from six to seven has been hard from the moment she turned six last year.

After doing everything in my power to give her a spectacular birthday last year and losing to cold weather and circumstances out of my control, she ended up saying horribly ungrateful and rude things to me and I snapped back. I’m not even sure snapped is a strong enough verb for what happened.

I think part of the reason tomorrow is weighing so heavily on me is because on that day last year I felt myself break.

I felt myself fall apart.

I saw and felt everything come crashing down.

Usually my descents into depression are gradual, imperceptible even. However 364 days ago I barreled into one of the worst episodes of my life after what could only be considered the worst parenting moment of my life.

I hate that my depression affects my kid, specifically that it affected Addie so hard on her birthday last year and the resulting anxiety is looming in the wings this year.

Thankfully *this* is what she remembers from last year.

I only wish I could say the same.

Tomorrow will be filled with wonderful surprises for my oldest. The one who has my ears, my smile and my stubbornness. It may not be exactly what she has planned out in her head, but it’s the best I can do.

I hope you understand my love.

Happy birthday eve.

xo

When I try to narrow it down to just one or two things that are really doing it for me…I can’t. I think I’m just at a point where everything seems to be humming along at a manageable pace. Yet at the same time I am actively trying to keep *this* up more than I ever have. I have a reason to fight and I am fighting.

Hard.

Could it be just one thing? Sure. Could it be the perfect harmony of all the things I am doing? I guess so.

But I also feel as though I should add a disclaimer here.

I still have moments of struggle. Hard ones where I feel overwhelmed and beat. At one point I had to ask Cody to come home so I could dig out, I knew if I tried to do it all on my own I would have crashed and everything I have so well balanced right now would have shattered into unrecognizable pieces that couldn’t have been recovered easily.

I guess you could say that it’s not so much about being happy as it is about having a really strong rebound.

I use my SAD lamp every morning as soon as I wake up. Vivi lies next to me in bed for a half an hour as we soak up our daily artificial sunlight. I don’t think it really matters what kind you have, what matters is that you use it and use it everyday.

One of the things I do each day when I sit in front of my SAD lamp is read scriptures. Out loud. Not only does it give Vivi something to listen, it makes me really focus on them. I am capable of making a grocery list, a laundry list and tactical war plans in my head all while attempting to read something. I have really tried to pay attention to what the scriptures say…especially now that I’m hot and heavy into Isaiah. Dude is heavy. God is important to me and I have felt that by starting my day out with Him I’m better prepared for what may come. I would think reading anything uplifting would have the same effect for those who do not actively practice any particular religion.

I pray at least twice a day. Sometimes out loud, sometimes in my head, sometimes on my knees and sometimes curled up in the fetal position, what matters is that I do it.

I take an iron pill, vitamin C and fish pills every morning with my breakfast. A really good Omega 3-6-9 combo will supposedly have every good effect under the sun on you, including mental well being. Hooey or not, I take them and always have. Also? Eat breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. Being hungry doesn’t do anyone any good.

I keep busy. Obviously. This one is pretty self explanatory. But I have also learned how to say no.

I keep the bad stuff out. No bad TV shows, no bad books, no bad movies, no bad influences. It’s really hard to hate anything when you don’t let hate into your life.

I take my medication every night. I finally feel as though I am on the right one for me. I am capable of highs and lows, ups and downs but without any dramatic side effects or mood changes (well, every 28 days there’s some *minor* mood fluctuations.) I feel…dare I say it…normal.

Then of course there is the big kid, the baby, the cats and my husband. I love my home. I love everyone who lives here. I love hanging out with them. My home is a safe refuge for me where I can keep the bad out and for the most part only let good in. I think everyone needs a place where they feel safe.

Home is my safe place.

Hopefully this continues for a very long time.

While I am here…I’ll just be around, you know…smiling and stuff.

“It” being my recovery.

She came in after one of my group therapy sessions and asked what I had been working on.

I told her that during the group session I realized just how much I had to go back to. A good husband, good friends, a decent job, a stable family and few other things that I had a new found appreciation for.

She scolded me and told me I wasn’t doing it right and that I was wrong.

People who land themselves in *that* wing of the hospital aren’t supposed to be so happy and grateful for their own life so fast apparently.

Whoops.

I hated that nurse. I had her for over 24 hours of my 72 hour stay.

She had a nervous tick that I had forgotten about until I saw her at a wedding. She came up to me insistent that I looked familiar, I didn’t recognize her, that is until she ticked.

I was reminded of being scolded for having the audacity to find hope during one of the worst seasons of my life.

********

I am so good right now.

So strong.

So happy.

And because of her I sometimes wonder if I’m doing it wrong. Maybe this isn’t really happiness. Maybe this is mania…depression masquerading as happiness.

But I’ve been through mania, and this? Isn’t mania.

I think this is just plain old happy and content and I still blame this baby for most of it.

Nothing special is going on. Nothing fancy has happened.

Well, except for this cat.

How fancy is he?

I feel the way sweet tastes.

To anyone who may be out there fighting to come back? Keep fighting. Oh my, please keep fighting. Because this feeling of sweetness? To be able to appreciate a simple life the way those who have not suffered are not able to?

It is worth every tear, heartache and pain to know this kind of delicious. Even if it won’t last forever, it makes the time spent here better.

***********************

Being able to wake up every morning for the last several weeks and feel hopeful about what each new day truly has been a special occasion, since it has never really happened before. I’m grateful to be participating in this project with Hallmark to share my experience and the beauty of the extraordinary ordinary.

The kind of tired that breaks you from the inside. The kind of tired you can’t easily fix. The kind of tired you contain within your whole being, even when it threatens to burst at the seams.

I am familiar with that kind of tired.

That kind of messy.

Like a clean, presentable room where all of the junk is shoved so hard and far into the closet you have to quickly slam the door so it doesn’t all come toppling out.

My friend has a teenage daughter who is struggling.

My friend wondered where she had gone wrong as a mom and how bad she had screwed her up.

16 years ago I was her daughter.

A bright, brilliant girl with the entire world in front of her. But something was off. Something was wrong.

I tried to fill the cracks with food, drugs, alcohol and boys in an attempt to drown out the overwhelming feeling of inadequacy and discomfort.

Suddenly in the middle of a store the young damaged girl inside of me was telling my grown up friend all of the things to watch out for. All of the things that she can do as her mom to care for her. To love her. To get her through this. What I hope she heard above everything I rambled on about was “She needs you. You need to be her first line of defense. She needs to trust you. She needs to know you’ll always be there to catch her when she falls. She needs to feel safe at home or she’s going to go find something or someone else that is only an illusion of safety.”

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her.

About her daughter.

I was her age when I fell to the floor sobbing in a friends house simply because I felt as though my entire existence was a waste of time. I was wearing black wool pants and a red striped sweater. I’m not sure I’ve ever cried so hard again in my life.

I couldn’t talk to my mom about it. She never seemed to understand that I was different. That I needed to be handled differently. She seemed to only view me as difficult. It was at that point that I retreated farther and father away from the life a 13 year old should have had.

My path has not been a smooth one.

But it has been made smooth by years of traveling back and forth between okay and not okay.

I have people to walk with me now. People to carry me when I can’t make it back to okay on my own. And all these wonderful people traveling my road with me pack it down and smooth it out even more.

I will pray for my friend. Pray she has the patience and understanding to carry her wild and wonderfully imperfect daughter through the rough road ahead of her when she can’t carry herself.

As for her daughter?

She is one of the special ones.

One with so much fight in her that things have to be difficult in order to for her to grow stronger rather than weak and complacent.

Generations will be blessed because of her struggles and strength.

She is going to grow in ways that cannot be taught in books or learned from others. She is going to feel in a way most people are incapable of feeling. Empathy and understanding are going to be two of her greatest strengths. She is going to make an amazing friend and mother.

We both broke down early in life so we could grow stronger from the very beginning, and I wouldn’t trade my experiences for anything.

I hope someday she can say the same.

I have been walking the fine line between okay and not okay for the last several weeks.

Truth is I want to stop walking and simply crumple into a heap.

Winter is so close. The signs of darkness and cold are becoming harder and harder to ignore, and they are wrapping their fingers slowly around my throat.

I used to get excited for fall. Boots! Sweaters! Soup!

This year I simply do not want to do fall.

I don’t want the sun to go away for six months.

I know I shouldn’t be letting the fear of something that hasn’t happened yet ruin the time I have left. But it’s not as if winter is maybe going to happen, or maybe this year I won’t fall into a deep dark funk. It’s going to happen. And it’s going to happen soon.

This morning I woke up to an email thanking/applauding me for pushing on through my depression. She closed with this line,

 I’ve had moments where I feel like myself lately, but tonight. I don’t want to keep doing this for the rest of my life.

Me neither, Bethany.

I’m so very tired.

But I will keep going. For myself, for you, for the countless others out there who know this intangible pain, for my husband, my friends, my family and for these…

Giving up simply isn’t an option.

I generally receive the most emails when I am lost in my own brain. I read over them, file them away and when I’m able, I go back and respond to them.

“…Reading your blog made me feel like I wasn’t the only one. It made me smile, it made me laugh, it made me tear up.

I minored in English in college, but I was never able to harness my words and wrangle them into the style I wanted. Reading your blog is like reading my own thoughts that I was never able to turn into a worthwhile read…”

Often times I am unable to write much more than “Thank you.” But what I truly wish is that they could *feel* the thank you that is in my heart. The overwhelming gratitude that leaves me staring at my screen in disbelief at all of these tender injured souls who found comfort in something I wrote.

“…’You are not the only one who regrets their children on the bad days.‘
is burned into my brain.
It is the worst feeling I have ever felt.
It is such the horrible, honest truth.
And I thank you so much for telling me/making me feel like I wasn’t alone…”

I’ve wanted to share parts of these emails for a long time. But I was never sure how to do it without it coming across as a big “LOOK HOW WONDERFUL I AM! *glitter glitter* APPLAUSE HERE” But the truth is I get a lot of emails me asking how I do it.

‘It’ being honesty about my mental illness.

“…Then after I read what you wrote, I realized that we do have a close relationship.  She will be fine as long as I continue to shower her with love, despite the overbearing cloudy days.  Basically, I just wanted you to know that you helped me feel at ease that everything will work out.  So, thank you for your honesty and opening my eyes to your situation…”

I have a hard time responding to questions like that, and then I remember my Warm Fuzzy folder. In it there are currently 66 reasons why I do “it.” Why I am honest about my struggles. 66 people who I have helped. 66 people who were able to find words about their own struggles and emotions because I was honest about mine.

“…Casey, I cannot tell you how much it is helping me to read these words from you.  I have never, not ever, found anyone who was willing to share, explain, put it into words that made sense or even came close to expressing how much it hurts.  And when you talk about this I don’t feel like such a freak show…”

Can anyone do it? Maybe. But there are still a lot of social stigmas around mental illness. Should you do it? If you can, yes. Even if no one ever reads it. There are days when writing is easier than breathing for me. And the first time someone thanks you for helping them feel not so alone? You’ll never forget that. Ever. It doesn’t matter if they’re a friend, a stranger or your mom. Your story can and will help people.

“…The world is a better place because people like you exist in it…So thanks for being you, Casey. Even though we don’t know each other, I look up to you a lot. Your ability to fight back…I hope you know how many of us find this inspiring. I’m rooting for you. We all are…”

I’m beginning to realize that what drives me the most, as well as what drives others who admit to emotional defeats is that we want nothing more than to be well. To be better. Even though I know I will never be healed from this disease, I have hope for those good days.

And hope makes anything possible.

Anything.

**************************

This post is sponsored by Hallmark’s “Life is a Special Occasion” campaign.

So. Yeah. Remember how I was all “Things are getting kind of bad.” and you were all “I hope things get better!” and I was all “Thank you! This too shall pass!”

Things didn’t get worse, but they didn’t get better. It’s still just bubbling, right under the surface.

I told my Ami about it and she wrote me this email back, and now I’m going to share it with you.

Because it applies to you (some of it at least.)

And me.

And we’re all just doing the best we can.

*******************
1-  You are stronger than anything broken inside of you.  I know this to be true with every fiber of my being.  You don’t see how strong you are, but I can see your strength shining in you.

2-  You have done absolutely nothing to deserve depression.  You haven’t taken anything for granted, you haven’t offended God, you haven’t been a bad person.  You just have it for no reason I understand, and I plan to ask Heavenly Father about it at my “exit interview.”

3-  If this is, in fact, a depression episode and not just a blip on the screen, then eventually everything will wind up being okay.  You are strong enough to get help.  You are brave enough to push forward, even when it feels like you are merely standing in place.  And you are incredibly and absolutely loved.

4-  You are not alone.  I know when everything is at its worst you feel alone.  But you aren’t.  You have people, right here in Indiana, who will catch you if you fall.  You have loving people who will gladly circle about you and hold you.  If things start to collapse around you, there is an entire Casey team ready to help put the pieces together again.

5-  Your depression will not permanently scar your children.  I know you worry about this.  But you need to remember that every single parent who brings a child into this world is a broken human being with great faults.  Right now you are looking at other mothers and comparing their shiny outsides with your dark inside.  Just remember, we are all broken, just maybe where you can’t see it.
Additionally, you are demonstrating to your beautiful daughters that it is okay to not be perfect.  Women, Mormon women in particular, have a hard time with this concept.  We all want to run the perfect home, be the perfect parent and perfect wife, doing a perfect job.  You are proving to your babies that this is a myth and furthermore that it is okay to be less than perfect.  You are also demonstrating that recognizing our imperfections does not mean we just succumb to our weaknesses, it means we press forward, relying on Christ to pick up our slack.

6-  If this is a worst case scenario, don’t be scared.  We can put together a plan that will keep you safe and your children happy.

7-  I love you.

Remember these things.
Ami (and by association, me.)

(Ami has a blog…it’s really good. You should read it. If you’re local you should totally be friends with her.)

It most resembles anxiety.

It’s bubbling just under the surface.

A sort of knot in my stomach.

A lump in my throat.

A consistent reminder that something in my brain is broken.

Capable of ruining everything at a moments notice.

So far so good.

I’d like to keep it that way.

You’ve been working so well I’ve taken on far more this month than I ever have in all my six years doing this. I have faith that we can do this together brain. That you won’t break on me. At least not until the feast table has been cleared and the food coma has set in.

We’re good brain, you and me.

Let’s keep it that way for as long as possible (at least until the end of August please.)

xoxo, the body that contains you and feeds you all those tasty omega-3′s

And for the first time in a very long time I am not listening and waiting for the other shoe drop.

It feels so good.

If I could give you all a hit of how good I feel right now? You’d beg me to be your dealer.

When I look in the mirror I see happy. When I see pictures of myself, I see happy.

I look good happy, even if no one else sees it. *I* see it.

I don’t see the constant ponytail and 11 week postpartum belly.

I know I weigh 40 pounds more than when I got married and that I only fit in clothes that are generously sized, elastic and machine washable.

But none of this really matters to me right now.

I see this time in my life where everything is so wonderful.

This is real happy. Not worldly happy, material happy or chemically altered happy.

Just, happy. Content. Thankful. Blessed.

I get to spend my days with my arms full of warm snuggly baby, something I waited nearly six years for.

I am going to be able to look back at pictures from this time in my life and know that for however long this lasts the people around me got all the best parts of me, especially my littles.

I know my depression is somewhere up there in my brain. I know it will be back someday.

But for the first time in ten years I don’t fear it.