I’ve been working on this post for a few months now. Blessing Manifesting first began as a way to share the things I do and think that help me deal with depression, anxiety, and that feeling of just being overwhelmed by life.
Five years ago I didn’t have many ways to cope. The list was pretty short. Drown myself in video games, drown myself in food, and drown myself in my own tears. I didn’t know how to help myself, I didn’t know how to make things better for myself or that I even had that ability.
The last three months I’ve been pretty quiet. I wasn’t really depressed or overly anxious. I just felt drained and a bit lost at sea. Quietly contemplating what I wanted to do with my life and what I wanted to do with my business. I wasn’t sad, there was just this overwhelming need to figure out if I’m on the right path with what I do and if I have the energy to do the work.
I was feeling like I have nothing to give.
I’m just a girl with issues who blogs in an attempt to share my thoughts and coping mechanisms. What makes me feel better about myself and my life. Sometimes I feel like, in the big scheme of things, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I just want to be a girl that spends her days reading, gaming, playing with her cats and doing a whole lotta nothin’. No lofty aspirations here, no making a difference, no expectations for myself. People live like that and sometimes I am envious.
Wanting to make a difference is hard sometimes.
I feel like I’m not doing enough or being enough or achieving enough. I want to do so much and sometimes it’s easier to give up and do nothing rather than to do something but not do enough. You know? What can I really do? Little ol’ me? It was disheartening.
It was draining. I felt like my special brand of Dominee-Mojo was gone. So I started doing the things on that epic list of things that make everything better.
It was self-care on an epic scale.
I started doing yoga again and it felt really good. Especially my back. I could feel the stress just fading out of me and I spent many mornings in the sun, hitting the mat. It made me feel better about my body, it made me feel productive, but in the end it didn’t help, not really. It made me feel better but not in the ways that I wanted. So I moved on to other things on my list trying so hard to find what was missing.
I started praying more, meditating more, letting words in different languages reverberate through my body as I soaked in the music of Krishna Das. Made my own prayer beads, thinking that the whole process of choosing beads and putting them together would bring me close to that well of Spirit that we all have inside of us. Waited for those jagged edges within myself to soften and it made me feel good and it mad me completely zen out but it didn’t fix what was off.
I kept on traveling through those feel-good things.
Realized that I was feeling unhappy with my retail job so I tried to think positive and be happy and make new friends and that helped too, but not enough. I read a lot of really great books that made me laugh and cry. Took long pampering baths. I painted and doodled. I took walks. Sat in the sunshine. I had quality time with my best friend. Planned a trip to a different state and even though I didn’t go it made me feel good to plan it, to imagine all of the fun things I’d do.
I decided to be brave and get more tattoos. They always make me feel better… brave and happy and that rush of endorphins is wonderful. A lotus blossom to signify rising above and a ganesh-style ‘Om’ on each of my upper arms. That almost did the trick, I felt my mojo coming back but then I got busy with life and it faded again.
So I gave up trying, that’s what I’ve been up to.
I know, that really isn’t supposed to make for an inspirational story. In fact, not only did I give up trying I went back to those old ways of coping, losing myself in video games and eating. Of course, it didn’t make me feel better but it helped me not to think. In the process of giving up I reverted to the age old method of feeling better: time and breathing and kitty cuddles.
Time helped.
Sometimes you can do a hundred things and they are not what you need. Or maybe the combination of all of it with a dose of time on top is what you need. There’s no shame in just letting things happen, letting go and letting God, as they say, especially if you’ve done what you can do to help yourself first. I did what I could to acknowledge the wounds within myself, to clean them, to bandage them, and then to let them heal on their own.
Sometimes you just need time. And love. Because I loved myself enough to try.
So that’s what I’ve been up to! I have some amazing things planned for August, starting tomorrow (hinthint brand new free ebook), and I really hope you’ll visit again soon!
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