Daily Archives: January 9, 2019

And then she disappeared from the face of the earth for four months.

And then she came back and wrote a blog post completely unrelated to home renovation, the very thing we all signed up to read about. Eyeroll, amiright?

But it’s my blog and I’ll blog what I want to, blog what I want to, blog what I want to (obnoxiously sung to the tune of It’s My Party. I’m sorry. I promise I’m ashamed of myself.)

Today we are going to talk about mental health. Mental unhealth. Broken hearts and broken brains. I will argue that this post is in fact extremely relevant to this blog because this is the very place from which it was born. It was born out of a post-miscarriage broken heart turned (let’s all say the ugly Voldemort-esque word together): depression. I didn’t label it before, only alluded to its presence as my “very dark time,” but that’s what it was. It was a period of crippling depression. And two months ago I found myself on its doorstep once again.

It is important for me to purge this post from my head space because there is a stigma about mental health. We are all aware of it. I think it is dangerous and potentially life threatening in some cases. And so I write and tell my stories in the hope that maybe one single person will actually take the time to read it and relate and get some flipping help for their brain. One broke brained sister helping another and all that.

So let’s do this.

I experienced my second surprise pregnancy and then surprise miscarriage two months ago, the day before Thanksgiving. I was twelve weeks pregnant, and my heart was shattered. I came absolutely undone with pain. And I was terrified. Terrified of slipping back into the dark void that I found myself in 7 months prior, after my first miscarriage, where I felt nothing and everything all at once. In the days following this second loss I looked at my doctor with terrified eyes full to the brim with tears and said, “please help me. I can’t go back to that place. I have two little boys I have to be there for. I cannot disappear on them again. How do I not go back to that place?” She said gently, “I think it’s time we consider medication for a short time. An antidepressant.” Blech. That gross, taboo word.

But this wouldn’t be my first time on brain drugs.

Though depression isn’t my jam I’m no stranger to mental unhealth. It would seem that depression only comes after the passing of womb babies for me. But anxiety? Yaaaaaas Queen (are we still saying that?). Anxiety is my jam. I will get all up in some anxiety and roll around in it.

I imagine it went something like this when I was born: after some time of contemplating the menu of life before me, my little baby self finally made up her mind: “I’ll have the social anxiety with a side of hypochondria and panic attacks of unknown origin, and for dessert I think I’ll go with the unlimited sleepless nights spurred by memories of embarrassing things that I did fourteen years ago. Oh and why not (treat yoself girl!) go ahead and give me some of those anxiety induced stomach ulcers too- I hear they’re divine.”

I may not seem at face value like a person who struggles with social anxiety. And that’s because I’m really really good at faking it. (I will accept my Oscar gladly and keep my speech short.) Part of that can be chalked up to my marriage to an extrovert who loves to be around people and do things. Bless him. I recognized early on that I had to get my life together and make some compromises because never leaving our home, sadly, will not work for him. The other part of this can be tied to the fact that I am extremely self conscious of the facial anatomy that I was dealt in life. It unfortunately, without conscious intervention, settles very definitively into Resting Bitch Face. This is my nightmare and my cross to bear. As a person who *must* feel liked by others (we’ll get into that in a coming blog post. It’s a real treat)… to give off the first impression that I DO NOT LIKE OTHERS?! WHY!? Whyyyyyy meeeeee????? It’s an actual physical handicap and should be recognized as such. We need bumper stickers and a ribbon and a month. “RBF, Searching for the Cure!” In an effort to combat this, when in public I am hyperaware and go to great lengths to painstakingly contort my facial parts into a welcome mat that conveys approachability and joy (because despite what my face says, I actually do love life and people). Eyebrows up, mouth slightly open with the respective corners turned upward into a smile. Now nod and blink often so you don’t look like Nicole Kidman during her dark period with Botox. Check check check.

I go off on the RBF tangent for a reason. Because anxiety and depression don’t look a certain way. They don’t have a face, they don’t dress a certain way. They don’t mope around dressed in black wringing a handkerchief in their hands. And they’re highly evolved and adept at hiding themselves in plain sight.

Anxiety is present in the life of nearly every member of my extended family, male and female. Anxiety doesn’t discriminate; it is a nasty beast of equal opportunity. I have had moderate to severe anxiety since childhood. That being said, it reached new, unfathomable heights that could not be ignored after my second son was born.

Postpartum depression is a concept most of the world is relatively familiar with. Ask almost anyone and they can vaguely describe the symptomatology to you. But postpartum anxiety is its lesser known, hard to nail down cousin. Because having a new baby is a nerve wracking experience for every single person it would arguably be *abnormal* to experience NO fear or anxiety in the early days of dropping the bomb of a new little one into your now sleep deprived life. My understanding was that true postpartum anxiety was anxiety surrounding and related to the baby. Anxiety and fear over keeping the baby alive: is he breathing, is he eating enough, is he sick? For me this was not the case. I had little to no baby-related anxiety. But I was a wreck. I was having multiple panic attacks nightly, to the point where I was afraid to go to bed. The panic attacks spilled over into the daytime, and I was afraid to leave my house. I was subconsciously picking and chewing my cuticles and surrounding skin into a bloody oblivion. This is not normal behavior. I was a shell of a person. If you could draw a picture of fear and anxiety upright, walking around in the world, it was me. My family got on the phone to one another and ultimately held an intervention culminating in these words: seek help, or else. And ultimately I did. But not for my anxiety.

My son was 3 months old when my postpartum anxiety hit its peak, and what brought me in to see my doctor at long last was not anxiety, but stomach cancer. Because did I mention hypochondria? It turned out that my stomach cancer was actually a stomach ulcer. (The first of three that I have since had). I had given myself an anxiety induced stomach ulcer, the pain of which I had never before experienced. My doctor looked at me and my raw, bloody fingers, frazzled hair and face, ankle shaking my foot back and forth with the speed of a hummingbird’s wings, for less than 30 seconds and said “I think there is something deeper going on here. Are you okay?” No. I was not okay. I explained all of the things that I had been feeling and asked, “could this be postpartum anxiety? Is this maybe what that term means? Maybe what this is?” Yes, you dummy. And so I went on an anti-anxiety medication. I was on it for a short time until my hormones regulated and I was able to attempt to and then ultimately wean off of it. And I am forever and ever and ever amen grateful for that medicine. It brought me back. God bless it.

That decision to accept anti-anxiety medication was remarkably and indescribably hard for me. Because you guys, before this I was SMUG about mental health. Mental health, mental schmealth. I have lived with anxiety since childhood and I was functioning, overcoming, doing just FINE. Add to that the fact that I am a chiropractor and a Christian. Woah. Wait. How are those two things even remotely related to this conversation, you ask? Both of those cultures for me helped to shape the stigma that mental health is and should be manageable without the introduction of medication.

We chiropractors are crunchy, if you didn’t know that about us. It is a large part of our philosophy that many to most physical and mental health related issues can and should be managed with diet and exercise. And for me those two things truly do dramatically influence the level of anxiety in my life. I exercise regularly because it is *necessary* for my mental health, and diet is also key for me. You know the line from It’s a Wonderful Life: “every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings”? Well every time an antidepressant gets prescribed in the world an advocate for natural healthcare DIES. Picture them eating dinner with their family and then abruptly killing over mid-sentence. It’s a very taboo subject and the course of much debate in my field.

On the matter I will go on the record saying that I believe that antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs are WILDLY overprescribed, BUT THEY EXIST FOR A REASON AND THANK GOD FOR THEM WHEN THEY ARE PRESCRIBED AND USED CORRECTLY. There are no amount of minutes of exercise that I could have added to my day or gluten that I could have cut from my diet to pry me from the anxiety riddled spiral that I found myself in after Roman’s birth, and again none that could have dug me out of the trenches of the depression that I was in after my first miscarriage. THE END.

On Faith and Mental Health: I am a Christian. My faith is an integral part of my life and being. I do not exist without it. It is woven into all facets of my existence. And so, that being said, there was a large part of me that felt *ashamed* in my faith for allowing my anxiety to spiral out of control and then for depression to ravage me. What did this say about my walk with God? Why wasn’t I able to “give it all to Him”? Why wasn’t I able to find joy in all things? There are verses upon verses about being anxious in nothing and about finding joy in everything. Why had I failed in this? Please read this carefully: my doubt and disappointment during these times wasn’t in God, ever- it was in myself. I felt that I was struggling with anxiety and depression because I didn’t have enough faith. Because I was weak. Because I had failed. Please listen to me if there is even one thing that you take away from this: NO.

IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH ANXIETY OR DEPRESSION IT IS BECAUSE YOU HAVE AN ACTUAL CHEMICAL IMBALANCE IN YOUR BRAIN.

Sometimes that imbalance is manageable with diet and exercise and meditation and prayer and faith and therapy. Sometimes it is not. And in those times that it is not I believe that medication has a place and that it is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s time that the stigma gets put to bed.

And so the girl who started a blog as a means to pull herself out of a deep depression stepped away from her blog to avoid a second deep depression. After this second miscarriage I decided to take a step back from everything. I Konmari’d my life. I touched all of its components and if it didn’t bring me joy I set it down. For a while nothing other than my kids or my husband brought me joy. So that’s all that I kept in my life. Slowly, I started to experiment with picking up other items and felt joy in them again, so I added them back in. Only just now have I felt that spark again to write and to blog, and even more recently to renovate houses.

The 1928 farmhouse? It has been sitting empty for the last 3 months. Last week I picked the reigns back up because I felt the spark of joy in its prospect again. This week renovations have resumed. I am excited to once again sculpt something from the ashes of this home’s past. And in that I find myself once again rising up from my own ashes and finding beauty.

There will always be fires in our lives; all we can do is continue to rise up out of them and find life and beauty among the ashes.