To Moms Who Want To End the Overwhelm Today
“I just can’t do this anymore!” Have you ever felt this way? As a mom of seven, I can admit this statement accompanied many tears in the shower, in the corner of my closet, and in any place I had a moment alone. Depression and anxiety are real, at a very real level and will take a toll on the strongest of fighters. This is my story and why this blog is like no other.
The Lessons of Motherhood
Many of my hopes in life had been crushed at a fairly young age. This created two emotions within me. One was the need to excel at everything I did so that I could be more than good enough and the second emotion was the defiant fighter that would prove them all wrong. My life was all planned out and the drive to succeed was intense.
Life, as you are fully aware of, has a way of reminding you that controlling every aspect of your life is an illusion. I learned this very quickly as a teen mom. As anyone will tell you, life changes as it should because the lessons of motherhood are many.
Unrealistic Goals
I had set two goals in my life that were unrealistic. One was to give my child (ren) more than I ever had and for them to never want for anything. Two was to give my kiddos all of the love I never had and always wanted. Now you may be asking why these goals are unrealistic.
These goals were unrealistic because they were based on needs to be better and be more. These goals landed me in a world of next level hurt. A hurt in the soul which lies deeper than the mind.
A hurt that introduced me to the world of depression and anxiety. And no matter how hard I tried to fight it and overcome it, I failed miserably. So to moms who want to end the overwhelm today, keep reading.
The Lost Connection
How can you ever give to another what you don’t have? I am fully aware that many of you may be disagreeing with this question. How can you give and expect another person to truly value a gift, if you yourself cannot fully appreciate its value?
So simple a thought, right?
I wanted to give my children a love that I had never felt. Why? Because I thought by providing this to my kiddos I would get what I wanted. Unconditional love. Definitely something everyone needs and rarely appreciates.
As the years passed, I experienced the most rude awakening of my life. Do my kiddos love me unconditionally? Yes. Is the connection of mother/child as impenetrable as I thought it would be because of unconditional love? No. Why? Because there was a lost connection.
The lost connection was not the connection to my kiddos. The lost connection was to myself. I had lost the connection to myself focusing on unrealistic goals. Motherhood was not a competition nor about materialistic items. Motherhood was about giving my children the best of me.
How could I give my kiddos the best of me when I had lost the connection to who I currently was? The truth was that the opportunity to discover who I was wasn’t even a priority.
To moms who want to end the overwhelm today, do you know who you are?
Exercise:
Take 10 minutes to try this small exercise. Start by making a list of who you believe you are right now. No restrictions or judgments. Then follow the next steps.
- Cross out all of the labels in your life that you listed. Example: mom, sister, job title, certificates achieved, religious beliefs, etc.
- Take a second and remove everything that you were taught to believe such as failure, broke, bad tempered, defiant, etc.
- Rewrite your list removing everything you have scratched off.
- Close your eyes and recall a happy moment in your life and think of the person you are in that moment.
- Scratch off everything that disagrees with that moment and/or add more of who you are to the list.
Now take a look at the edited list. Who are you? What characteristics live in the soul of who you are? To the moms that want to overcome overwhelm today you must restore the lost connection to your identity.
The Exchange Phase
The beautiful house that I had built on a weak foundation came crashing down. The awareness that my responsibility as a mom was massive and always there. What I hadn’t realized was that I was fighting to achieve goals based on negative thoughts. I needed more than anything to exchange this phase of my life for a better one.
When life settled down from constantly having “to do things” for six little ones, I experienced the most intense hurt of my life. The only thing my kiddos had taken note of were all of my failures and shortcomings and very little of the love I had for them. I had failed as a mom. I did not want this reality. I desperately needed to exchange this phase of my life.
I had fought feelings of not being enough, not deserving, and being lost in this world that did not understand me. It would be different when I had little ones to love me. This proved false. And now all of those emotions came flooding back in with a vengeance.
No matter how hard I tried to fight it and keep busy, it seemed the reality was I failed at the most important purpose in my life. The overwhelm of failing at my purpose devoured me and the exchange I made was trying to end my life. I could not see any other way to end the overwhelm.
That moment began the part of my life that I describe as “The Prescribed Journey”. A journey that provided me with the opportunity for my defiant fighter feminine soul to emerge and open the door for my divine warrior spirit to connect with me. The inherent beauty of my birthright finally had a chance to shine brilliantly.
The Prescribed Journey
It was not until I began The Prescribed Journey of my life that I had the opportunity to evolve into the person I am today. The medications and the therapies did not work for me. The question of “what’s wrong with me” is what crushed and also saved me. It led to me being able to be the best mom to my kiddos finally.
The Prescribed Journey showed me that we live in a world that will tell you that depression and anxiety are issues of the mind only. There is an endless amount of information on how to treat and manage depression and anxiety. However, very little on how to end or overcome it. I did not want to manage and treat such a terrible emotion with medication and therapy forever.
The theory that, “It’s a process, give it time, it has to build up, change your thoughts”, always felt forced upon me. I knew it wasn’t working from day 1 as I did on day 100. I began to spiral deeper into depression and more meds were prescribed.
Brilliantly one day, the defiant one within me dared me to do an experiment. What if I stopped taking the medications? And if I stopped my therapies on learning why my thoughts are what they are. Would the doctor or the therapist agree on stopping what the other prescribed? What would they say? Was this about me or them?
I tried it on each one. The response was the same. “Well how do you feel?” My response, “I feel so much better”. Their response, “Great, let’s just keep our appointments then and see how it goes.” I was shocked.
Was it really this easy? Say I feel good or better and that was it? Were they confirming that depression and anxiety are a feeling and nothing more? This led to a new question.
How do we feel? Where do feelings come from? The mind? That didn’t make sense. Why can we recover from some hurts easily and others not so much? How can some people experience a similar loss and recover without it crippling them? What I discovered next changed me in a way that still makes me cry.
Doctors and therapists are here to help through the symptoms of depression and anxiety. I appreciate them greatly. For me nonetheless, a lifetime of meds and talking was not enough. I wanted a solution to the problem. I would get it. The Prescribed Journey came to a quick end.
A Life Full of Color
What came next was a discovery that led me to a life full of color. The brilliance of a human is that we possess the power to heal ourselves. Challenging is the discovery of how to activate this healing. I am genuinely ecstatic that I have had the opportunity to empower my brilliance.
The Exchange Phase provided priceless lessons within myself. If I was living a life I did not want to live or if I was achieving a result I did not want, all I had to do was to exchange it. What I would exchange it for was what mattered. Whether I exchanged the undesirable for better or for worse relied upon the opportunities I could see.
The Prescribed Journey offered the opportunity to see the connections within me. It’s no secret that humans are complex in existence. Depression and anxiety are also complex. Could this be why there are only treatments or ways to manage the symptoms? The solution is complex.
Who wants complex? We have all been conditioned to believe that the easy way is all we have time for. Therefore, the medications and therapies are what we need. What if the solution to the problem is complex but understandable and achievable? What if your life could be full of color and energy and beauty? Would it be worth putting in the work and embracing the complexity?
After all, your life is not an easy one. Some could say it is complex. It wasn’t until I could appreciate that about my life, myself, could I truly live a life full of color and evolve into who I am today. The diamond of it is that if I could achieve this, you can too!
More To Me Than Meets The Eye
The primary cause of anxiety and depression are due to a lost connection to yourself. A connection not only of the mind but one that exists at a deeper level within each of us.
Medications and therapy help the symptoms but are not a solution to the problem. To moms that want to end the overwhelm today, it requires more than meds and talking to be energetically alive and fiercely free of depression and anxiety. Are you ready to do what it takes?
What’s Next?
If my story connects with you at any level, here are two things you can do to check out if you’re ready to be energetically alive and fiercely free:
- Close your eyes and take a deep breath in and go back to a time when you authentically felt happy. What were the colors in the room? What did it smell like? Who was there? Detail what you are feeling. Take a deep breath in and exhale. Open your eyes. How do you feel?
- The joy, happiness, and peace you felt in that moment exist at the core of who you are. Are you free to be that person today? Why or why not?
I appreciate that it is a very intimate question, and if you feel up to it, I would love to know the answer or if this small exercise and/or blog helped you in any way at all.
Please feel free to let me know in the comments below. My coffee is ready. I have some time to chat for a bit. ☀️☕➡️️😋
