Life is chaos all on its own. When you swirl in parenting, jobs, your health and everything else on the list it’s easy to become “disconnected” and you begin living in survival mode.

I’ve been in a “yuck” place for the past few days. It’s 2020, outside of my own life there are so many events making this feel like a roller coaster ride from hell. I’m trying to be patient with myself and understanding that I may not be as sparkly as normal.

I’m feeling hormonal, period weeks are super hard for me. I get incredibly nasty nauseating headaches and I basically do nothing but what has to be done. I sat on the couch the entire day and felt like a crappy mom while my 4 yr old indulged in YouTube and bowls of ice cream.

I ran out of my morning “drink mix” but between Covid and my period I’m not about to haul my kid to Walmart. I mentioned to Dave that I ran out of my morning “fix” in passing when I saw him for 15 min at dinner.

I wake up this morning, feeling quite a bit better, I mean mercury is going out of retrograde. It’s Sunday but Dave is about to go to work and I’m going to try to set my non-negotiable tasks for the day.

He hands me a grocery bag. It’s full of drink mixes. He had gotten up early and went to Walmart. This is the ultimate definition of love. Those little things that you do for someone else that make them feel cared for.

Not only did he go out of his way to make sure my day went better, as I look at the receipt, I see that he donated $5 to the Children’s Hospital. My heart is full of gratitude and love. A simple gesture that has made my entire day beautiful.

5 seconds, I have 5 free seconds to tell you a resource I use to help calm my compulsive anxiety.

If I have a plan in my little head and my day starts to fall apart, I fall apart too.

Using today as an example, my plan was to finish laundry, clear some videos from my phone and when Dave got home from work, spend some time training the horses then run to town to grab groceries and pick up something for dinner. I expected Dave to be home no later than 5:00 pm only because I knew that he needed to fix an irrigation line in the yard. He had rented a mini excavator and I knew it had to be back in the morning so he would need to be home before dark.

5:00 pm came and went, then so did 6:00 and by 6:45 I started to steam like a tea kettle. Not only was it getting late, but I now had nothing planned for dinner and no time to go to the grocery store. The only thing I had accomplished on my to do list was the laundry. I had spent any time I had watching our 4 yr old playing in his inflatable pool. Too many horror stories about children drowning for me to do anything but sit 5 feet from the pool while he splashed around growling like Godzilla.

I caught myself getting pissed off. This is not a healthy place for me or anyone else who might get caught in those building storm clouds. “Hey!” I internally scolded myself. “Seriously, Dave is stressed out too, so you need to take a freaking chill pill and make do with the situation so you don’t create a mess when he gets home.”

I mentally start working through things. No big deal, I can grab some hamburger and defrost it into something magical. I don’t have to go to the grocery store today, I can figure something out and the horses will certainly live to see another day. “Good Job!”, I mentally pat myself on the back and then say, “okay, know I want you to tell me a couple of good things that have happened today.”

I start to think back through the day, right! Yes, I got up, showered, played puppets with my child, exercised, cleaned out my laundry room and got my sheets off my bed. “Perfect!”, I reply. “See you did the things that you need to make it a great day, the ones that really matter to you.”

And you know what? I am completely right! By a simple rearranging of my thoughts I took a lethal situation where I was about to cause an argument into a positive situation where I became grateful for what I had done today instead of focusing on what I did not get done.

Pick two or three things in your day that are more of an absolute to get done and let the rest slide. Those things can be as small as you need them to be, no kidding, you can even pick brushing your teeth if your day is that crazy nuts. It allows you to still feel some sense of accomplishment if you can still check of some of your tasks, no matter how small. It’s a mental release to get things off of your list. Your pea sized brain does not really care if it is painting your entire house or painting your toenails it just sees it as a “done” item from your list. Try it out, you can even add silly things to your list just to see yourself check them off.

Make It A Great Day!

AJ

I have to catch myself in the moment, the moment when everything is clear and raw and I feel vulnerable but courageous. These moments are hard to find when you are juggling a career and a family that consists of a 4yr old who thinks you are his personal assistant.

I struggle with my mental health every day, sometimes every hour. Its hard to be transparent, it makes you feel judged, something is wrong with me, but if we were all more open to letting people see both the light and dark side of our souls then how much despair could we spare.

My anxiety and compulsiveness are a result of genetics, a childhood where I was never doing it right, bad decisions, and trying to fit into what I was “expected” to be. Sometimes when the darkness starts to set in I can pinpoint the cause. Surrounding myself with too many negative places or people, allowing myself to feel guilt from my past, not getting enough sleep, not being able to plan or control what is going on.

I get into a really messed up place when I have more than one trigger. I see a person from my past, I am already exhausted, then something reminds me of my daughter’s death all in one day and down the rabbit hole I go. Sometimes it is simple and I can jump right back out. Other times it is too heavy, and I can’t seem to manage to climb back up. I get scared, I do not want to be down there, what if this time I cannot get out?

How do I save myself? I know what my healthy outlets are, the ones that bring me back out of the rabbit hole to my thriving garden. My garden full of blooming flowers, each a symbol of me progressing to my best self.

I post on my social media platform, hug my husband and feel the energy connection between us, go to bed early, get back into a routine and all of these are the “drink me” potions that get me back to ground level.

It all starts with self-talk. I literally have a therapy session with me. “What is going on that is making you feel this way?” I then talk through my feelings and replace them with positive manifestations. I focus on the good things I have in my life. I find gratitude in the smallest of places, the smell of a flower, the sound of water running, the fact that I have indoor plumbing. No matter how bad you have it there is something you can be thankful for.

Get rid of the words, “something is wrong with me.” Nothing is wrong with you; the world is just not transparent enough for you to see the vulnerable state that everyone is in. We all struggle. If you watch me on social media most of the time you see the sparkle. You see a mom with an adorable 4 yr old, a beautiful home sitting on 5 acres next to the mountain range, her eyes are beautiful, and her soul is bold. I drive a nice truck; I have cute t-shirts and fun knick knacks I share.

I don’t go live and show you when Dave and I get in an argument or one of my teenagers pulls an attitude or I am sitting at my computer trying to figure out how to pay my bills and most importantly you are not witnessing the internal mental struggle I have with myself.

Something is not wrong with you; we are all in a battle internally and externally with this thing called life.

Covid-19 is more than just a respiratory virus… this virus is attacking our mental health without you being exposed directly to it.

It has been over a YEAR since I have made a blog post. As I looked back over some of my posts I was amazed at myself. How far my personal growth has come since I started my social media platform after my daughter past away in 2017. I feel like the only thing that is the same about me is that I still hate weeding.

Here we are in the middle of a global pandemic and I am NOT about to let this take me back to the beginning of my battle. But how? I literally feel like I am on a rollercoaster without any type of braking system and it’s missing seatbelts.

What am I doing to keep my mental health in check?

1) Accepting that this is not the only time in the history of the world that a pandemic has happened and society as a whole survived it.

2) I typically imagine things to be a lot worse than they are. In those moments that I feel like everything is crumbling around me, I know I am a survivor. Everything is not always “okay” but I always come out of everything “okay.”

3) It could be a lot worse! We have never had the technology, modern living conveniences or ability to fight this at the level we have today. In 1918 the US was hit with the Spanish Flu while fighting a World War, no thanks…

4) Keeping things as routine as I can, if that’s possible. I work in the food manufacturing industry so I am still going to work everyday. I keep my routine from my wake up teeth brushing to my daily schedule as routine as possible to give me something normal to grasp onto.

5) Recognizing that I may have to create new routines that work with my current situation. I needed some extra routines and added things I normally would not do before to give me a sense of stability.

6) Realize that is it okay if the only thing that you come out of this with is humility. You don’t need to pick up a new hobby, read a million books or become a professional homeschool teacher or gourmet chef.

The biggest thing I will be taking away from this historical event is a clearer understanding of why my grandmother rinsed and reused zip-lock bags.

~AJ~