Finding Myself Today!

Yesterday I was really struggling with the idea that I can no longer experience carefree moments or spontaneous adventures. Well, today instead of wallowing in”poor me”, I decided to be proactive! I took my daughter and husband outside and we all played in the sprinklers! It felt so great to run around in the water and laugh hysterically!

Sometimes in the rush of responsibility and parenthood I forget to find the joy in the everyday. My daughter’s laugh and her enormous smile when in tickle her! My husband’s lips on mine as he says good morning. These moments are perfect.

I need to make sure I don’t take them for granted.

Here is the smile that lights my heart on fire!

Healing will take time

Use time to better yourself 

It will be worth it

Redoing the Old

I haven’t been posting a lot lately because my husband and I have been remodeling our garage! It has been a wonderful experience for us because it has really brought us together. In a marriage, you go through ups and downs and we had been in a period in which we seemed to be getting on each others nerves more often than not! LOL! Well since we have been working cohesively, as a team, to get the work done, we have reconnected! It has been wonderful. It is really interesting that when you work together to reach a common goal, the closer you become. This can be true in many other relationships. When we have our eyes on the same target, we shoot straight, together. 🙂 Check out the pictures from our project! It is still a work in progress, but I am really happy about what we have accomplished so far!

It has all worked out!

i am beyond excited right now because I found out that next year I will be teaching Language Arts and Social Studies in my OWN classroom for 7th and 8th grade! I am still teaching  inclusion special education but I won’t be co-teaching anymore and I couldn’t be more thrilled! I fully support Co- teaching and I think it has the potential to be incredible, however, at my school it has not been working. I am so so so so excited that I get my own class and finally have full creative control over what goes on. 

I have been very anxious about my job for next year but it has all turned out well! I need to learn to be have patience and wait for the right time. I kept trying to force things to happen and that only created more anxiety. I just need to let it all go and let God take control. YAY!  

Wonderful weekend Haiku

This weekend was great

Snuggling and laughing with

NO anxiety!

Let go of the burden

We have all been hurt by someone. We have all felt the heart crushing pain of the dissipation of trust. I know it is easy to hold on to that hurt and let it consume. Not to let go of it because it reminds us what happens when we open our hearts and let someone in. 

I am here to tell you that you do not have to carry that pain with you. You do not have to continue to build your walls thicker and thicker until no more feelings can penetrate you. You can let go. Forgive. When you have held onto resentment and anger for so long it is terrifying to let it go, but it is worth it. Anger is a heavy burden to carry. But you can choose to let it go. It will take time to forgive and be ride of those emotions and walls, but once you find yourself on the other side, you will feel brand new!

Theory of Everything is GORGEOUS!

This past week my husband and I watched the film, the Theory of Everything. It has had a lot of Oscar buzz, and last night at the Oscar’s Eddie Redmayne won best Actor for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking. I watched the movie with bated breath and loved every moment. Redmayne’s performance was beautiful and the journey he showed of Hawking’s life was heartbreaking yet resounding. I highly recommend this film! You should watch it! It really opens your eyes to the struggles of being a caregiver and the heart and courage is requires.

Surround yourself with Good

It is difficult to prune relationships. However, it is vital that you surround yourself with people who build you up and push you towards your dreams. It is easy to get stuck with a friend who sucks all your energy and leaves you feeling empty and frustrated. To be our healthiest selves, we must prune away those relationships and allow only positive ones to grow.

This may be difficult, but in the end you will blossom!

Learning about yourself doesn’t have to be scary!

The other day I wrote a post about the power knowledge has on our healing process, and today I discovered I had to take my own advice. As many of you know, I  started this journey of healing at the end of June, and I have made immense strides in gaining back the power anxiety stole from me.

All those months ago, the doctor confirmed what I always suspected. I have an anxiety disorder. It came as no surprise to me because it is prevalent in my genealogy, and mental disorders tend to be hereditary. I have always known I had this type of disorder, because I have gone to counseling to help with anxiety when I graduated from college, but it was never diagnosed by a doctor.

Since the doctor I have now never 100% confirmed which type of anxiety I have (since he was a gynecologist), I have always speculated it was either GAD or panic disorder. I tend to be anxious a lot and have had panic attacks. However, the more I thought about it, and researched the disorders I felt that I did not wholly identify with GAD. I felt that there was something more that I was missing and I couldn’t quite figure out what.

Completely out of issues relating to my own struggles, I began to read about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Like many others, I had always assumed that OCD was a disorder characterized by excessive cleanliness and rituals. However, while I was reading about it today I happened to stumble upon the intrusive thought obsessions. Pow! It hit me like a ton of bricks (if you pardon my overused idiom). That was it. The missing piece of my anxiety. OCD-UK is an incredible site that lists the various forms of OCD that are not stereotypical of the disorder.

As I read through the signs and symptoms of the intrusive thoughts I felt as if I was reading a page out of my own diary. I felt as if someone was searching the deepest parts of my mind and writing them down without asking me for permission. I have to admit, I started to feel my chest tighten and the familiar feeling of anxiety creep over me. I think it was a knee-jerk reaction to confronting my obsessions in plain, black and white text. Never before had anything struck so close to my core as reading through some of these symptoms.

Since I have started this blog, I have never kept my struggles from you all, because I believe that transparency of these disorders is what will help eliminate the stereotypes we live with everyday. So, I will reveal some of the obessive thoughts I have had in the past.

The  biggest obsession has always about being pregnant. The strange thing about this obsession is that I did not have sex until I was 27 (I wanted to wait for marriage) and these thoughts started LONG before I began my sex life. I knew it was insane, but It kept cycling through my brain in repeat. Everyday. All day.

Another obsessive thought I have experienced is randomly punching someone while they were talking to me. It sounds slightly comical, and I have to admit, if I ever saw it happen in real life, it would be hilarious! However, it was awful because while people were talking to me I would just have the thought to hit them or flip the table over or some other weird aggressive action towards them. The strangest part about these thoughts is that I have NEVER been a violent person. I have never been in a fight, and I have a difficult time recovering from a stubbed toe, let alone a blown out hand from punching someone.

Also, I have had what they call “magical thinking”. I thought that if I talked about getting in a car crash, it would increase the likelihood of me getting into one. Or if I talked about an accident happening, it would be more likely to happen. I avoided talking about these topics because I thought that the mere mention of them would seal my fate. I always thought it was because I hated irony, but I see now that they are obsessive in nature. I remember during my first year of teaching we had a member of the police department come in and talk about what to do if a school shooting was to occur, and for the rest of the day I thought we were going to have one. There are many other obsessive thoughts that were listed, but these were my big three.

After reading and researching more, I do feel a little rattled by this learning, but I am happy to learn a little more about myself. In a few months I will be going to a more specialized dr. and I am going to bring up this area and see what I can learn from them. I want to continue to grow in my knowledge so that I can better myself in the future and finally take the reins on anxiety and be 100% in control! It will not win! I am strong and I can defeat it! 🙂