Practical Help For The Blues

It takes a great amount of vulnerability for me to write about this subject. Mostly, because it is something I deal with on a daily basis and I don't want to. I don't even want to talk about it. At all. It makes me feel weak, self-absorbed, and immature to admit that this is an ongoing problem for me and it is not going away. Especially, it is not going away when I ignore it and run out of my special herbal remedy or whatever method it is that is working.


I was at the hospital with Bruce on Friday morning meeting a few co-workers. One of them was a sweet lady that used to live on our street when we lived at Westwoods. She remembered me and my sweet babies. She mentioned she was the one that walked the big, golden retrievers past our house. I remembered the dogs but not her. What a compliment huh? I told her and she seemed to understand,that during those years, I had brain fog from having babies. Like my niece, Lisl, mentioned here lislsid.blogspot.com in her recent post, Summer Sad.

I ran out of the aforementioned herbal remedy I use about three weeks ago; thinking I could handle life for the summer without it. After all, the sun was shining again and I was basking in it. And I was handling it. Sorta. If you can call tearing up over anything and everything, handling it. There were the moments of over feeling situations and of feeling condemned about a lot of my shortcomings. The kids and husband became super demanding, critical, harsh, loud, obnoxious, etc... when really it was me and my RAW emotions misinterpreting what was REALLY happening. There was also the urge to nag and whine more than usual and my body was too tense at night to sleep because I found my brain was anxious and worried about many trivial matters like:  How could I think that the book I'm reading,  'Far From The Madding Crowd'  was  'Far From The Maddening Crowd' all these years? And, what am I gonna put in the lunches in the morning? OR did I change that last load of laundry or is there a load molding in the washer? And those trivial things felt  like a big deal.

It came to a head when I took care of my sisters kids over the weekend and the baby boy was missing his mama and cri-i-i-ed, so I did too, and then the guilt of realizing that he was maybe hungry because I didn't feed him enough. Everything became even more BIZARRE as the weekend progressed. That's when I finally figured out, THIS IS NOT NORMAL! THIS IS NOT BALANCED!

I DO get to this point eventually... Here's what I do for help...
-Accept this thing again, realize when things feel extreme, they probably aren't.
-Accept the fact that I need help.
-Go to health food store, buy the thing that works for me.
-Continue all the prayers for others, reading the Bible, and finding someone to help. You don't have to talk, just be useful to someone besides yourself.
-Avoid slipping into not answering the phone or being with people just because you are afraid of falling apart in public.
-Listen to the music that speaks your language. JJHeller is one of my favorite artist right now. Today, Pandora somehow knew what I was feeling, thinking, processing, and played song after song of God's grace, comfort, and of His greatness.  It was a God thing.
-Wait for a better tomorrow, where the pain of living isn't so raw and important.
-Replace fear and anxiety with faith by taking a faith walk with Abraham.

So, while I didn't give specifics of what you should do, I told you what works for me to get back to calm and balance and God's peace. For you its gonna be different. The important thing we all have to face, is admitting we don't have it all together and that we need help sometimes. When a person has high blood pressure they are glad to take their medicine, so don't pretend your brain is always good to go. Treat it like another part of your body and deal with it, for other peoples sake. My family thanks me when I am able to smile and not cry.

Purposely, I did not tell you what I use for a helper because that isn't important as finding what works for you. We are all different with different levels of what is needed. Go to your Doctor or local health food store if you prefer that route. Ask God for wisdom, of course, but if you are as bad as I am, your brain will be too foggy to process much at this point. I don't usually trust my own judgement in these patches of fog. I go with what I have learned from the list above, things I have learned when the brain was clear, and let that be my guide. Happy Healing...