THE WEIGHT HAS BEEN LIFTED, THE FOG HAS CLEARED

I feel like God has heard my cries and He's reaching down and wiping away my tears and setting me back up on my feet. I haven't taken any medicine for about 4 days and I'm doing fine. Whew! I will keep doing fine. 

So what has changed?

The biggest thing that I believe is making the greatest impact is that I'm trying so hard to stay off of social media. Even though I still go there once or twice a day, I'm not wasting hours of my life, obsessed with what everyone else is doing and then feeling inadequate about myself because I'm not doing all the things they are. 

I've realized that I am ME! There is no other me. God has called me to be a mom and to homeschool my kids. I am extremely blessed with 3 beautiful, healthy boys. I may not parent the way other people do, but I know that I am making a kingdom impact in my kids. I need to be healthy in order to be able to be here for them.

I've stopped watching as much television as I was. This too can have such a negative effect on our lives; even shows we watch with good intentions. I was watching at least 3 episodes a day of 19 and counting. This is a family with over 19 children and they all homeschool and seem like such sweet, wonderful people. Not only was this show taking time away from my own children, but once again I found began to compare myself to them. I am NOT Michelle Duggar! lol  I'm just not and I never will be. If I talk in such a sweet tone, I'm just being a fake person. Not that I talk rudely, but I'm just not soft spoken.

I've also began to read more. I'm reading wonderful books on topics like postpartum depression, being successful at being me, and finding God's purpose for my life. These books have been so helpful.

Lastly, I've reached out to more people. If the first set of people I reached out to didn't seem to be helpful, well, maybe they just didn't know how to respond. We invited some friends over yesterday and we had such a wonderful time. We all need to make more time to build the relationships that are important to us.

I hope opening up about depression has been helpful to someone. If so, please let me know in the comments.

Be blessed my friends!