I have been in a bit of a funk these past few days and I am sure it is because I still have a residual cough and am not feeling 100% myself just yet. I feel a lot better than I did, but I am ready to completely kick this thing out of my system. Since I’ve been feeling rough I wanted to take some time for gratitude, as life is still beautiful even if I am seeing it through the lens of a tired, sick person.
I am very grateful for tissues, especially the ones with lotion infused in them. These have been a lifesaver while I’ve been sick, as they keep my nose from getting too red and raw. Compared to the toilet paper I was using originally, these tissues are a Godsend LOL. It’s the little things sometimes!
I am grateful for doctors and medical staff, as they were able to asses my illness and do testing to rule out flu, strep and covid. I am blessed to live somewhere where I can go see a doctor same day at an immediate care.
I am thankful for my boyfriend who is always my biggest support system through everything in life. He ran out to get my more tissues and snacks, he was making sure I was drinking water and bringing me ice packs for my head when I needed them. He hates seeing me sick and is always doing what he can to make me feel better. I am forever blessed to have him by my side in this lifetime.
I am grateful to have a job that offers insurance and PTO. Although I didn’t have any to use for this particular situation, it will renew and I am grateful to have these benefits.
I am thankful to have a reliable vehicle to drive that I’m quite fond of! She (yes, my car is a girl LOL) has such good features and great speakers, and she gets me from place to place safely. I am happy to have her for this road trip I am about to venture on!
There are so many more things I am grateful for, but I have to cut this short so I can get ready to leave for work. Although it’s a couple “bad” days (which aren’t really bad, I just feel off) it doesn’t equate to a bad life. I am giving myself grace and I know that I am going to feel a lot better soon.
There is this quote I have read before goes something like “if you do not make time to rest, your body will do it for you,” and boy did my body do that. I haven’t been at work the past two days because I have been battling a nasty virus. I was so happy to wake up without a headache today, because yesterday I had probably the worst headache of my life. I spent most of yesterday maneuvering an ice pack around my head in different positions because the pain was literally everywhere, including my neck. When I wasn’t trying to numb away the pain, I was napping to escape it. I definitely got a lot of sleep yesterday, which my body desperately needed. Today I still have an annoying cough and quite a bit of phlegm, but I am feeling a lot better now that I no longer have a migraine. I am taking the Mucinex and Flonase as immediate care recommended to me, and I am continuing to rest and hydrate.
I am honestly proud of myself for not feeling guilty about being home and taking care of myself, because that is almost always how I am. I usually get so stressed out when I am sick and I start worrying about falling behind on work and chores, but this time I truly listened to my body and let myself rest. I feel like this allowed me to heal quicker, and I am planning to go back to work tomorrow. As I had written before, I had a pretty busy weekend full of lots of events and people, and in the future I likely won’t jam pack my weekends like that again. I am a sensitive person and I often need some time to recoup from being around people and in public, and I will keep that in mind moving forward.
In the meantime, I am going to take the rest of today to rest and focus on gratitude. I feel so blessed to have my boyfriend to take care of me and things around the house while I am sick. I am also quite thankful that tissues and Aquaphor exists LOL. I am grateful to have access to over-the-counter medicines to help me, and most of all the fact that we have clean water to drink. As much as I don’t feel 100% like myself, I still want to take time to recognize all of the wonderful gifts around me, and I never want to take the present moment for granted.
I am grateful for another year of growing and learning about myself. I am so blessed to have a loving, supportive life partner who lifts me up, and who makes me feel seen and understood. I am grateful for the genuine friends who cheer for me while I cheer for them. I am thankful for my family, whether near or far they always make me feel loved. There are so many people in my life who truly mean so much to me, and I am forever grateful for everyone.
When it comes to me and my current goals, I am focusing on growing and striving for happiness in my everyday life. As I’ve said before, practicing gratitude has been very helpful in keeping a more positive perspective and attitude. I am working hard to practice the art of letting go and realizing when I am worrying about things beyond my control. I am also focusing on trusting myself and my intuition, and not feeling guilty for setting boundaries or speaking my mind.
Everyone else in the world has no problem speaking their opinions, so why do I silence mine? Especially when I feel that those with good intentions and empathy should be speaking out more. In his podcasts, Jay Shetty often mentions a quote by Martin Luther King Jr: “Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those wholove war.” I am taking this time for me to get organized in my own thoughts for my own inner peace, because I deserve to be at my best, just as my loved ones around me deserve me at my best.
As I sit at my kitchen table with my chamomile tea, and I listen to Taylor Swift’s new album “Midnights” for the first time, I am feeling both nostalgic, yet very present in this moment. I can think back listening to her album “Speak Now” and how I felt when listening to certain songs. The crush when listening to “Enchanted,” the new crush fantasizing about acting out her song “Speak now,” but now looking at my life in this present moment and it being better than I could have dreamt.
I live with the love of my life in the beautiful townhome that we bought together, we both have jobs that allow us to pay our bills, save, and still enjoy our lives. I have been able to get the help I needed for my mental health, and I am enjoying the healing journey every day. Although I still have rough days (I did just recently), I am much more confident, and I see myself so differently than I did before. It honestly breaks my heart to look back and think about how much I hated myself and my brain. I would constantly fight back against the anxiety and take out my frustrations on the one I loved the most. I had so much anxiety around money and my control issues were overtaking me, and instead of letting that be my life, I recognized that I didn’t have to feel like that for the rest of my life.
I feel so blessed that I have the ability to afford going to therapy, and I am also glad I was able to try different medications that helped to calm down my brain enough to allow me to do the work. Now don’t get me wrong, I am still doing the work every single day. We are human beings with emotions and outside events that can impact our personal worlds, and it is completely normal to have bad days; what I find important is that we try to remember how we strong we truly are in those moments. We have gotten to this very moment, which means all of those times where we thought our world was ending, or we were never going to get through that rough time, we were wrong- we can truly make it through everything.
I still have times where I struggle with stressing over to-do lists, and I still get overwhelmed when I have more than one event/large task in a day. I still have to work on communicating my thoughts and accepting the fact that not everything I say will always be received well by everybody. I still have to constantly check-in with myself and see if I am in alignment with what I want to be, and if I am honest, I still do things that I know I don’t want to be doing! I still eat unhealthy food, and I don’t have a consistent writing or workout schedule, but I am still getting up every day and working toward a healthier future for myself, and I know that I will develop these habits with time. I am just proud that I have been able to learn how to give myself grace along the way, and I am slowly getting better at not beating myself up. I catch myself in negative self-talk, and I remind myself that I am human.
I am blessed to have a life partner who has been so patient and supportive along the way. I have a love I have always dreamed of, and I am so happy that our future children will grow up in a home where they can see true love and respect. Considering the home environment I grew up in, I feel even more lucky to have the relationship I have today. We have mutual respect for one another, we support one another’s goals and always try to see where the other person is coming from. I love how well we communicate, and how our love has only grown stronger over the last eleven years. We make sure that we are growing together and still focused on our future together, because we both want this forever.
I am grateful to have good friends in my life who are supportive and always cheering me on. I am very lucky to have a few close friends who I know will always listen to me and not judge me. I also am grateful for the fact that they all understand that I won’t always want to hang out, but that it is nothing personal, I just love my alone time and often feel like I need it. I feel like I have many good people in my life and I do my best to make sure they know I love them. Life is short, and it is important to tell the people you love that you love them.
Overall, I am thankful for the life that I have today at 27. I feel like I am finally living my life for myself, and not for those around me. I feel like I have broken away from my people-pleasing habit, although I know I still have to work on speaking my mind even if it may cause a disagreement, but I am accepting of the fact that my healing is life-long, and that I get to choose how I view my life. I can choose to see all of the negative and go back to self-destructive patterns, or I can continue to focus on my goals and give myself grace along the way to them. I am proud of the woman I am today, and I am happy to be here writing this tonight as I enjoy this new Taylor Swift album. I appreciate all who read this far, and I hope you too are giving yourself grace in your journey of life.
I’d like to take this time to just write about a few things that I am grateful for in my life. I think that it’s important that we take time out to focus on what is going well in our lives. If we are constantly waiting for the next thing or thinking we won’t be happy until certain goals are reached, then we are delaying our own happiness. I prefer to be happy, and practicing gratitude helps me with this. If you can, take some time to write down at least three things you’re grateful for right now!
I’ll start:
• I am so very grateful for the relationship that I have with my boyfriend. I am blessed to be with a man who is respectful, intelligent, hard-working, and who makes me feel safe and loved. I have seen many unhealthy relationships in my life, and I feel so lucky to have such a happy, healthy relationship with him. We always make sure to appreciate one another and we have learned how to communicate well with one another over the past 11 years, and for that I am grateful.
• I am thankful for books/podcasts. I recently got into podcasts this year, and also started reading more books about self-care and healing. I honestly have learned so much from these brilliant authors/podcasters and in a way I almost feel like they have helped me more than therapy has. I think just because I don’t get to see my therapy as often as I’d like, but during times when I feel like I need her, I can throw on Jay Shetty or Dr. Nicole LePara (aka The Holistic Psychologist) and feel like they’re talking right to me! Unfortunately, not many people have access to therapy, but most people have access to books and podcasts, and for that I am grateful.
• I am thankful for the act of writing/journaling. I always enjoyed writing as a kid, and after a recent zoom interview with some members of the writing community I am in, I think I realized why. The founder of the community said there are studies showing how writing/journaling can be as beneficial as therapy! I can honestly say when I take time to write, I always feel better afterwards. As a child, it was my way to release and escape from the chaos inside my house and myself, and now I am planning on writing a book. I love writing in my blog, as well as writing poetry, and I would love to write a self-love book one day. I am grateful for right to write and for the skills I have and will continue to develop.
It’s a new week and I didn’t snooze my alarm this morning, even though I really wanted to. I was super and ready to sleep for another 25 minutes and just skip any journaling or stretching, but then I remembered that last night I was so excited to be starting my week off right, and I didn’t want to take that away from myself.
I am going to do a little yoga after this post, and I wanted to take time on here to express some gratitude this morning. Feel free to comment what you are grateful for today, or even post your own blog about it and share it with everyone!
I am grateful for my boyfriend and our relationship. I am blessed to have a healthy relationship where we can easily communicate our differences and we always make each other feel loved and respected.
I am blessed to have a home that we love and has everything we could ever need. We have clean water, heat/AC, working appliances, and we are blessed enough to be able to afford our home and utilities.
I am lucky to have a job that I don’t hate, and that allows me to pay my bills, have insurance and still be able to live a life I want. I’m off on weekends and I enjoy my schedule during the week!
I am grateful for my friends. I feel blessed to have so many different, yet close, friendships. My friends are all very different, yet all very supportive and loving in their own ways, and I am lucky to have so many good people by my side.
I am thankful for my physical and mental health. I’m blessed that I can walk, talk, eat and use the bathroom without any need for assistance, and I’m lucky that my recent physical and labs went well! I am also so grateful for access to therapy as well as books and podcasts that are helping me improve my mental health.
There are so many other things I am grateful for, but those are just to name a few. For now, I am going stretch and get ready for the rest of my day! I hope everyone has a great Monday and great week ahead!
My last post was a week ago, a day after my mother’s stroke. I am blessed to say that my mother is home now and living a normal life. She is still having some minor mobility issues with her left hand/fingers, but overall she is recovering well! I feel so grateful every day that I still have my mother here, and honestly, things have already changed a lot for her since the stroke. My mother has smoked cigarettes for decades now, and she has not had one since her stroke. She will keep an unlit cigarette by her at home and will sometimes do the motion like she is smoking it, but she still hasn’t actually smoked one. She also has only had one beer- this is the woman who has been drinking beer and hard liquor every night since I was seven years old! She hasn’t had any feelings of withdrawal, and she is doing an amazing job.
Over this week I have had a bunch of emotions come up; I found myself crying randomly at home or driving to/from work. Every time that I found myself crying, I realized that there weren’t sad tears… they were tears of joy. I was feeling so overwhelmingly grateful to the universe that my mother is okay and still gets to live a normal life. I also felt a huge sense of accomplishment for myself, because I am no longer on anxiety medication and I handled this situation better than I ever expected to. My boyfriend said to me: “I am so proud of you. I feel like if this would have happened two years ago, you would have folded up like a lawn chair” (LOL), and he is right!
In the past, I would be thinking so far into the future about “what if she has another stroke and she isn’t so lucky that time?” or “what if she stops taking her medications and starts drinking/smoking again?” To be fair, these thoughts have obviously crossed my mind, but I am able to redirect them and remind myself that we can only take life day by day. The other day when I found myself asking those hypotheticals, I said to myself: “Today my mom is alive. She has not had a cigarette, and she hasn’t had any hard alcohol; today is a good day.” I am finding it easier and easier to rewire my bad thoughts into thoughts of gratitude or positivity, and realizing that made me break down in tears (more than once).
For a long time, I truly thought I would never be able to get off of my medication. I thought I would have to rely on them forever and I would never be able to truly handle my emotions or traumas on my own. And don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with being on medications for life, especially if they are working to keep you alive and well. I just always have had this goal of being able to come off of my medications and truly see if I can handle things “on my own.” For this event to occur while I have been off my medication for seven months, and for me to be able to handle it well without shutting down, feeling guilty, or continuously looping terrible future scenarios over and over again in my head, I am impressed with myself.
I always find myself choking up when I tell my boyfriend that I never thought I could handle anything like this without medication or without having panic attacks. I am insanely proud of myself for continuing therapy, reading self-help books, and listening to some eye-opening self-reflection podcasts. I honestly feel like the hard truths and hard questions are what has helped me be able to make progress in my brain. I feel like I’ve just reached this goal that I once thought was unachievable, and I just want everyone else to be able to do the same thing. I want people to cry tears of joy because they can see and feel their own progress. I want people to see life in a new, more positive light. I want everyone to do the hard work for yourself, because you are always worth it! We all truly deserve to be the best versions of ourselves, and we deserve to be proud of ourselves. I hope everyone has a great week ahead. ♡
a writer in the dark 