Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental health. Show all posts

Wednesday 18 July 2018

Strength

I used to think that strength was something largely physical; the ability to push harder, throw further, or lift heavier. Strength was the voice that told me to carry on at the end of a run for one mile more. Just one mile. That would inevitably turn into two. Into four. Into eight. Strength whilst enduring difficult situations was the ability to build an invisible wall, brick by brick, to prevent the problems from leaking out and into anyone else's lives. When hope and faith were limited, and dreams and ambitions felt unreachable, I believed strength was what taught me to move on quickly. After all, I wasn't worthy of these dreams anyway, was I?

There wasn't a definitive day that my perspective switched but, if there had been, it wouldn't have been all that long aygo. Things don't happen overnight. My change in perspective was not like the flick of a switch; it was a series of events carved carefully into my story. A collection of people, lifelong friends, who each helped me to learn more about myself through meaningful relationships. Forever indebted by the strength they helped me find, but forever knowing that strength is built in two directions, but individual ways.

I learnt that strength is letting people close enough to help you when you're struggling, and supporting those around you when they need it too. It is allowing yourself to feel emotions that are difficult to feel, and accepting the truth that these are part of everyone's life in one way or another. Strength is found in trusting the path you are on, in not abandoning dreams at the first mound of adversity and through re-shaping your path with new factors in your life. 

Shockingly enough, strength was never the voice that dragged me through the extra miles. Or the voice that told me I would be worthless if I didn't spend an extra hour in the gym. It was the voice that told me to stop midway through a run as I reach the top of a hill - stop and appreciate the view. It's a measure of how well we handle the challenges that life throws at us. It's smiling through the chaos, knowing that it's taking you on the journey that you are meant to be on. 

Strength never was unspeakable pain, isolation and loneliness. It is found with time and answered prayers; the opportunity to rebuild something that never really had been destroyed

Keep smiling,
Kathryn x

Monday 29 September 2014

It's just a work in progress

Since this is mostly a private blog and only two people know me outside of the Internet, I feel that I can be completely honest about things and I guess I wanted to write a blog that displayed the message 'It's okay to not be okay'

In the not so distant past I have been through quite a few personal issues but the details of these aren't the important part. At first, it took me a long time to accept that anything was wrong and reaching out for help was probably one of the hardest things that I have ever done. And from there nothing got any easier. I've had many things to tackle; thoughts and feelings that I didn't feel strong enough to fight. But I came out of the other end. Dragged out kicking and screaming at first, but out is out. 

More recently I have been wondering how I know when I'm actually 'better'. Is it the moment that you decide you want to live differently? The moment you reach out for help? Or is it when you've had help? Just because you've had some 'help' does that automatically constitute as being fixed? Because that doesn't seem to make sense to me. How can you be better because someone else decides you've had enough help? So I stopped and thought about it a little bit harder. Maybe you're better when you decide that you want to be. Or maybe not. 

I was asked recently, by one person who has been helping right from the moment things came out, if things were going okay. I knew exactly what was meant by 'things' and how supportive she's still being completely baffles me. I'm pretty sure I don't deserve it. But that day the reply I managed to find was 'I think so' because I didn't know. I didn't know what constituted for 'okay'. I didn't know how to define it but it seems that I didn't need to. The reply I got was 'That's good! Everything's just a work in progress'

And that's the answer to my question. It took someone on the outside to answer it for me. It's just a work in progress. Nothing's ever changed instantaneously, at least, nothing that's worth changing. And that's okay. There will always be good days and bad days but, most importantly, on those bad days there WILL always be someone who wants to help if you reach out. I'm always will to help! Bad days are completely normal and OKAY! No one is perfect all of the time, everyone has flaws and their own personal battles to face. They make us all unique and some things stay with us forever but that doesn't mean we have to let them define us.

Keep smiling,
Kathryn x