I took a little break from writing to digest life a little bit. If you’ve been keeping up with my journey, you know that I am in therapy and talk about mental health a lot on my blog. I am a huge advocate for all things self care and therapy is one of them. I am on a healing journey and I am okay with talking about it with you. This journey is not all rainbows and butterflies. It is real shit. I’ve been doing the deep dark work here. There’s been plenty of sessions where I am sitting in front of my therapist in tears. Sometimes, happy tears but other times, not. My first session involved me crying for the majority of the session so… yeah. But it’s sooo worth it. It’s expensive as hell but it is worth it. So here is what I’ve learned from having five months of therapy:

1. Self Care

Self care is necessary because it allows me to pour into other avenues of my life. It allows me to be a better mother to my eight month year old and it allows me to be a better person to myself. I show up for myself now. How can I expect anyone to love me when I don’t fully love and enjoy myself? Because of therapy, I’ve made self care a top priority. Therapy is an act of self care in itself but I discovered that yoga, being out in nature, gardening and planting make me feel good so I do more of that. I carve time out of my busy days to get outside. I also learned to focus more on taking care of my overall health and that postpartum is truly a journey. There’s so many factors that can affect mental health and the physical body is one. I make sure to cook more, to take care of my skin and take my vitamins.

2. Self Esteem

I know what you’re saying, self esteem-really Nacia? Yes really. I didn’t know that I had trouble with this area that steems all the way back to my ear;y child hood years . This made me look at my life through a different lense. It was my…”Holy Shit” moment. The moment where the trauma makes sense . The moment where you realize, damn I need to work on this. Yes. this. A poor self esteem had me in very uncomfortable and depressing situations.

3. Boundaries

Boundaries need to be set. My peace needs to be respected. I am still struggling with this but I’ve improved greatly since my first session in April. I learned to leave a conversation that triggers me and to not be around people that trigger me.

4. Anxiety

Speaking of triggers, I also learned how to “cope” with my anxiety. Sometimes we can’t control what people say to us, it’s about how we handle it. I learned to take a step back, to pause, to look at things in a different light, to drink some tea and get outside when I am feeling triggered.

5. I OUTGREW A LOT OF PLACES, PEOPLE & THINGS

Nothing feels the same when you take the step to heal. Literally, nothing. Conversations with people don’t feel right. It’s like I have on a whole different skin. It’s as if a layer shed when I started my sessions. It’s the best feeling ever! Though I still have love for those people, places and things, they were a part of the trauma and now that I am on this healing journey, I can no longer bring them with me. That’s how it feels. There’s a huge shift.

Something that stuck with me from the beginning of my sessions is my therapist words, “You are where you are supposed to be. Everything that has happened, everything that is happening, is supposed to happen, God makes no mistakes”. She was right. She made me realize that all will be okay in the end. That this journey was pre-ordained. That I shouldn’t question God the way that I have been doing. That I need to trust in God, the universe and myself.

Happy healing folks.