It has been nearly two years since I asked for help.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Motherhood and life felt like too much of a burden for me.\u00a0After years of thinking that the problem was me, it finally dawned on me that there might be something wrong.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I started therapy and found out that I had suffered from postpartum depression.\u00a0Not once but three times. I also found out that the feelings I struggled with in my early teens were not just regular teen struggles. I found out that it was also depression that I had struggled with.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
These past two years have been the most intense years of my life. I have experienced tremendous growth.\u00a0I have opened new doors and have closed old doors behind me.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
People talk about therapy lightly. They think therapy is nothing more than paying someone to listen and to give you advice. Therapy is no such thing. Therapy is facing yourself.\u00a0Therapy is opening doors and looking into the dark corners of your soul.\u00a0It is work. Hard work that sometimes \u00a0leaves you exhausted. Being as courageous, as walking into a lion\u2019s den unarmed. Vulnerable. It is raw naked honesty and perseverance.\u00a0Going down a steep, rocky and sometimes dark road without knowing when you will reach the end of it. It\u2019s knowing that you can decide to leave that road at any moment, yet not giving in to that thought. Because you want to get well.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\nFor the past two years I have been going down this road. To say it has been a roller coaster ride, is to take a devastating hurricane and to call it a warm summer\u2019s breeze. The hardest part?\u00a0Being a mother at the same time.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
There is no time off. No time to lick my wounds or to take a break.\u00a0When I come out of therapy I need to step quickly into my mommy shoes.\u00a0Some days I come out of therapy feeling empowered. I stand tall and firm and switch roles like a pro. Other days I feel delivered, freed from a burden that has been carried for way too long. Those are the days that my mommy shoes feel like dancing shoes. Then there are days that I am exhausted from the hard work and I feel empty with little left to give.\u00a0On those days my Mommy shoes are put on reluctantly.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Some days the carefully constructed bandages around my heart are ripped from their place and old wounds are exposed.\u00a0My heart breaks and scatters into a thousand pieces. An hour passes as I work through the pain. \u00a0When the clock strikes reality, I hastily gather the pieces and put them back into place as best I can.\u00a0I wear my mommy shoes, and though it is I that longs to be nurtured, it is I that gives the loving smile; it is I that spreads my arms in welcome;\u00a0 I that carries and I that offers warmth and shelter.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
On such days my feet struggle to find solid ground underneath my shoes. When my child reaches for me, my grasp is firm.\u00a0And as I hold her little warm hand softly in mine, the ground underneath my feet gradually feels stable again.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n