I have been nominated for the #7daypositivitychallenge by the lovely @trucklife-family who is one of my most favorite people on all of steemit. If you haven’t checked out her posts, you are so missing out. She is an incredibly heart-filled, loving mama who is all about encouraging us to love and appreciate ourselves and our amazing, beautiful bodies. Yes, I’m going to keep that paragraph for all seven days!

I mentioned yesterday in my Day 1 post of being grateful for gratitude that sometimes it’s good for these to be simple. Sometimes we are really glad for very simple things. At some points that is because that’s all I can muster. I just can’t see farther than that. At other times the simple things are the most beautiful. That is the case for today’s gratitude.

Today my heart is glad for …

My life

If you’ve never been in a sweat lodge before, it’s basically just a big festival of gratitude, at least that was my experience with my teachers. "I am so grateful for my life" was pretty much the first prayer from each person. Here we sit in this extraordinarily beautiful planet surrounded by truly amazing people, plants, and animals. Our bodies are absolutely a wonder to behold. Every day synapses firing, cells growing and multiplying, blood flowing, oxygen and nutrients feeding us, getting rid of the things we don’t need because it magically knows the difference somehow. The growth and birth of a baby?! Holy cow! It’s a miracle babies are born. Every. Single. Time. So many things can go wrong. To have this beautiful body that has magically birthed and fed four beautiful humans and breathe air on this magnificent planet is a gift beyond measure.

Even more so because I haven’t always felt that way. The last week has been a humdinger for depression talk. I don’t know much of anything about either of the two people who took their lives, but I do know about depression, and every time this happens, I feel the stab in my heart and the pain of a fallen fellow comrade. It hurts even when I don’t know them because I know what it feels like to want to die, and it is so horribly sad when anyone can’t find their way to the other side of that. It’s gut wrenching. And I can just feel all the shitstorm that goes along with all of it. The guilt, the shame, the self loathing, the intolerable devastating sadness. It’s tragic.

I never tried to end my life. I just spent a lot of time praying for it to end, hoping that something would swiftly and painlessly put an end to the suffering. Hoping that one day I just wouldn’t wake up. I believed everyone would be better off without me here because I was such a bummer to be around. I was both miserable and angry. I couldn’t see the beauty of my life anymore. I didn’t really want to do much of anything. I didn’t want to see the beauty of the world, and I sure as shit didn’t want to talk to anyone. Now, I know I’m supposed to keep this post positive, and we’re getting back there so be patient because having been in this place is what helps me to see how truly beautiful it all is. Without our pain and challenges, we would never truly see the magnificent perfection and, indeed, how those moments allowed us to stand where we are right here in this now moment.

Now, in an effort to keep this going in a positive direction, I’d like to talk about the things that helped me out of my depression and brought me back to being grateful for my life. I want to be really, really clear here that these are what helped me, and they may not be what helps others. It is important to remember that each person and situation is totally unique. That said, I think it’s really great for all of us to have a bigger tool box of things we can try when the darkness sets in.

• As I talked about yesterday, I believe my daily gratitude list kept me from falling into the abyss.
• I think my daily meditation practice helped in the same way. It didn’t bring me out, but I think it probably kept me alive.
• Communicating with others about where I was at. For me this made all the difference in the world. Once I was able to see and acknowledge where I was and talk about that with others, it shifted things dramatically for me. I’m not sure why, but it really helped.
• Commitment. As I mentioned in my post the other day on commitment, this was another key turning point for me. I made a commitment to my son and myself to stay here on this earth and stop wishing for death.
• Community/tribe/friendships. This is something that made a huge difference for my son. I didn’t have really any kind of community or tribe when I was in my worst depression and really not very many friends. My sense is that it would have helped a lot. I believe my steemit community played a very helpful role in pulling me out of my last depression, though it wasn’t a particularly dark one. I didn’t even necessarily need to talk about it with this community. It just helps to be surrounded by so many loving and supportive people.
• Writing. This is another critical piece for me. Writing about where I’m at and what I’m feeling helps in a similar way to communicating. It gets some of the poison out of me it seems.

Sometimes I really need my pod!

So, these are some of the things that help me. What is it that helps you or any loved ones you know who struggle with depression? I hope you’ll share your strategies so we can all try new things. Of course we all know what works for one person may or may not work for another, but to find my way back to being grateful for my life, I am always willing to try a new strategy.

Today I nominate @mumma-monza

Much love, y’all!

As always, all pics are mine or pixabay unless otherwise noted.