Day 5 & 6, 2024: Grief and depression messes with everything

 I have long suspected that at my core I am a depressed person.

I am highly functional, especially when needed, like when I was a mom to young children.

Left to my own devices and my own schedule... and I am either incredibly lazy or depressed.

I am seeing a therapist. 

So that's good.

But I worry because I struggle to do things that I once did easily. 

I struggle to shower daily. To floss my teeth nightly. To wash my face nightly. To read. To keep the kitchen clean. To write. 

I love writing. I love journaling. I love studying a subject and writing down what I learned and how it connects to other things I learned. I write so much that I have a box full of journals over the years. I even kept a journal for each one of my kids. I would write about their day but would pretend it was them writing it. I loved doing that.

I have three blogs (though not consistently kept up) and write too long posts on my personal Facebook page and my business one.

I have Instagram. I don't think I ever posted there. I normally don't take a lot of pictures.

Secretly, I hope that by writing on this blog about my goals, my struggles, and my attempts at radical acceptance I will start doing the things I love to do so much.

And yet, underneath it all, I am sad. Incredibly sad.

My dad died in 2021. My aunt (who was like a second mother to me) died in 2023. The sweetest little girl I worked with for two years died in 2024.

Too much death.

And I haven't really grieved any of it. 

Cried? sure.

Grieved? not sure.

I'm looking for a grief counselor. And that feels like cheating on my regular therapist - who is great! But I just need a little something more. Need a little something else to point or push me in the direction of real healing.

Because to be perfectly honest. I think this inability to properly grieve started long before my dad died. It might have started in 2018 when my grandmother died and a month later my husband had a heart attack. 

Or when I had postpartum depression after each child was born. And I chose to grit my teeth and get through it somehow.

Doesn't matter when it started. 

What matters is learning how to grieve and then truly grieve. Letting go of the pain and hurt. Feeling it even though I don't want to.

I hope your journey is a happy and healthy one.