How to stop feeling bad about yourself... ?

 I haven't written in my little corner of the internet where I pretend I'm a writer or where I enjoy trying to make sense of the things that I go through for quite some time now. And I have to say, that tittle that made me chuckle as I was writing it and then decided to add the . . . and the question mark has a lot to do with that. 

For some time, in this little corner of mine (Welcome, by the way. It's my corner but I make it public, so thank you for coming over) I had been writing about my battle with depression and PTSD after I profusely wrote about my cancer journey. It fills my heart with joy when many of you flood my posts on cancer-recovery with likes and comments. But my depression posts don't get much traction. I thought it had to do with the fact that they were never a "recovery" post like my cancer post were. I was getting a little tired of hearing myself talk about my battle with depression and anxiety, and I gathered that you too were tired of the same old same old. So, I said to myself I would come back to my corner when I had finally figured it out, and I could share with you all of the steps I took to recover and tell you how I was now thriving. (I chuckled again... mainly cringing remembering having heard that word uttered in the first minute of the new Persuasion movie.) 

So, I'm sad to inform you I have no such posts in my near future. Sometimes I even wonder if I'll have to deal with depression and anxiety for the rest of my life. And then it hit me that millions of people around the world are and will walk that road I'm in too. Isn't that our first comforting thought? "Someone else is also going through this." Is it comforting though? I never venture to be an expert on anything, but I would answer "yes." And one of the reasons it's comforting is because a logical conclusion we hope is: "Someone figured it out. Someone got better. Someone has valid, useful advice." And even if all that fails, we can at least conclude "Someone understands." And that last one is really comforting. Sometimes I think suffering anxiety and depression would be better defined as being neurodivergent, and my neurotypical husband can simply not understand what goes inside my atypical brain.

 Most sufferers of depression and anxiety would agree that our view of reality is very askew; and in my case, my most awry perception is myself. I was talking with my mentor Diane last week and she said these words to me: "So you hear people around you say good things about you and about what you are doing and who you are, but you choose to believe the complete opposite? You can hear God say that you are loved, important, cared for, and you deliberately CHOOSE to believe it's a lie? And if anyone comes and tells you you are worthless and trash THAT you would believe is true?" And without one hesitation I said: "Yes! I believe I'm worthless." 

It pains me to write this and tell you this. Most of the people who ever stumble on my little corner are people who were there for me during my cancer journey. People that prayed and donated and made fund raisers and made home and hospital visits. You did so much to save my life even with your messages and your comments and your encouragement and support. And here I am telling you that since that battle began my little brain has been telling me over and over: "The world would be better off if you had died" and that sometimes I have chosen to believe that is true. 

Just this Sunday the youth pastor came over and said to me "You are doing a great job with the girls." "Which girls?" I asked. "The girls in the youth band. I can see the difference in them. They are more confident. They are experimenting more. Even the way they stand in the stage. Thank you." I had been giving harmony lessons to the youth band singers all year every Saturday morning. He didn't know that I was feeling bad because last Saturday the sound guy had gotten mad at me for using the church's piano without informing him, and another friend told me I might have gotten the band leader in trouble because I had not informed the sound guy. It made me feel so terribly bad that I was thinking of telling the band leader I was no longer going to do the singing lessons. "You see?" said my brain. "You tried to help, but you only got someone else in trouble for meddling in what no one ask you to meddle in. And those girls probably don't even want to attend your lessons and are not learning anything useful." I have to make a pause here because I just wrote "my brain said" and the Spirit just made me realize I should have written " and the Devil told you."  I don't think the youth leader knows how much his words resonated in my mind to debunk the lie I was believing. Again, choosing to believe only what's worst, only what's bad, even after some parents had already come to tell me how happy they were seeing their daughters improve and how happy their kids said they were in their singing lessons. 

In my pursuit of finding comfort in knowing other people feels this way, I read a few articles when I googled "How to stop feeling bad about yourself." They're quite some good articles in the web on that. Here is the main gist of those articles:

Why they happen:

1. Those feelings stemmed from "not feeling good as a child" and from "believing you must be perfect."

2. Those feelings surface when you compare yourself to others. 

What you can do:

1. Appreciate what you have. In other words, practice gratitude. Those who've been here from the very beginning know how employing this one plentifully saved my life during my Tigo days. 

2. Understand that life is not a fair game. This one is particularly insightful. And it also connects to the comparing yourself to others. "I should be married by now.""I should have a house of my own by now." "I should have a good job by now.""I should have kids by now.""I should have matured and gotten over my depression by now." Why? Because others have! But were you in the same circumstance, with the same opportunities, the same upbringing, the same resources, the same connections???? 

3. Things aren't always what they seem. This one connects to what my Pastor Steve shared this Sunday in church. I confessed to him that I was struggling a little this Sunday, and I chose not to listen to the message even though I was serving in the worship team. I went home and I felt the Spirit whispering in my ear that I needed to hear the message. I finally caved in the afternoon and listened to the message through our YouTube channel Crossroads Bible Church Panama. The message was titled "When God rains on your parade." Talk about serendipity! It was the reason I didn't want to listen to the message in the first place. I felt God was raining on my parade. Basically, God knows why He closes doors and makes us wait. I recommend reading God in the MEANtime by my very own Diane Batchelor on Amazon for more on that subject.  You'll love it!

4. If you must compare, compare to yourself. Acknowledge your own progress and how far you've come. Careful with this one. If you don't practice self-compassion, it will be easy to even beat yourself more if you compare yourself to yourself. You are still alive and that counts if you need a starting point. That is truly a feat with us depression sufferers, so take it as a victory that you are still here and you are still trying and haven't given up on life. 

5. Accept what you can change and what you can´t. This one has been the hardest one after cancer, when I thought I would one day go back to normal. I guess this is what veterans feel. They thought they'd go back from the war to their homes to their normal. Normal never comes back. Normal body, normal sleeping, normal thinking, normal relaxing, normal relating... it's never again what it use to, and we spend years searching that "normal" before accepting that change is the new normal, even if we wouldn't choose it. 

So, if there are articles out there about the same subject, why write this post?

Well, because my main audience is myself. I write to make sense. I write to understand. I write to remember. I'm pretty sure I've said something of a similar sentiment here in my blog, but I learned a new step that I will write before this final most important one that you can probably guess but need to hear it anyway. 

6. You don't get to keep what you've learned in the past without actively practicing it today. Learned how to cartwheel when a teenager? Haven't done it in years? Try it to and see how well your body responds to you attempting to cartwheel in your adulthood. Hopefully you did not hurt yourself. This is the same with our emotional and spiritual gains. Learned how to trust God in the unknown? Great. Think you'll do it again in the next storm? Not necessarily unless you had actively trusted God with the little things or with everyday communion with Him building that trust. Learned how to be kinder to yourself? Won't keep doing it unless you practice that inner kindness when you mess up, when you fail, when you didn't do what was expected of you, when you didn't perform like you thought you would. Messed up lunch? Did you practice giving yourself  props for attempting to make lunch? Depressed and feeling like staying in bed? Did you practice saying "good job" for getting up to take a shower? Did you tell yourself today that you are valued, loved, and important? Can't believe that or say that? Next step will help.

7. Tell yourself what God says about you. 

Do you know what He says about you? Do you know He says your life is worth the life and blood of His one and only Son? Do you know He says that if you got lost He would leave the 99 sheeps just to go find you? That if you have been far and away from Him, when He sees you in the path walking back to Him He runs to throw a party and is waiting to greet you at the door with a kiss and a hug? Do you know that there is nothing you can do to make Him love you more because His love for you right now is so infinite there is no definition for more? 

My sweet Diane has had me repeating this children's song when I start believing lies that contradict what God says about me:

"I am covered over with the robe of righteousness that Jesus gives to me, He gives to me.

I am covered over with the precios blood of Jesus, and He live in me, He lives in me.

What a joy it is to know my Heavenly Father loves me so He gives to me my Jesus

When He looks at me He sees not what I used to be but He sees Jesus! "

Anyways, This post was a complete rambling disorder. I'm sorry if it makes no sense. I'm trying to understand my brain. Why does it behave like that? Depression is a fog. Anxiety is a wild ride. And your brain short circuits. We have to find steps to take to cope. Steps to take in the hard times. Coping mechanisms when our brain is hurting or making no sense. Or maybe have the right words when the Devil is spewing lies, and he knows we are in a vulnerable spot. We can call out His truth like Jesus did in the desert. 

On Leaving My Previous Church

 A friend of mine recently posted a blog post about why she left the church and her Christian faith. She began by saying that when she decided to leave the church she was met with similar platitudes from those trying to convince her to stay: 

• Don't let some bad apples (meaning bad Christians) turn you away from Jesus.
• You are the problem. You have a bitter root. 

Now, I'm not writing this post as an antithesis of what she wrote or to convince anyone to do otherwise. I'm going to write to process how I felt reading her post, how I have felt myself after leaving my church of 20+ years, and the ongoing struggle in my mind to where to go from there. 

My friend said when she was trying to be convinced not to leave, no one wanted to hear her story. They just wanted to fix her. This is often too real in pretty much every aspect of human life. I was listening to a podcast on "mom shaming" that is so pervasive in society. One of the things that caught my attention was that the speaker who was advocating for mom-shaming to stop was the first to admit she had mom-shamed other moms herself. I've written a post on that before here where I was sleepless because I felt so bad of having mom-shamed someone and here were I rant on people´s comments of my girls. I was one of the ones who told my friend "You have a bitter root."

I feel ashamed of that. One, I said it in a Facebook comment. Wow! We are too loose with our tongues on the internet. Two, while I did know part of her story, I didn't take the time to follow up or know how she was feeling when I said that to her. She got upset with me for saying that to which my defense was that "I knew how she was feeling because I was battling my own bitter root from getting cancer." I thought cancer had made me more empathetic, but I have ways to go.    

Christians are too loose with their "fixes." I almost went into a rant today when I read in a mom group a mom saying she had been sexually assaulted when she was little, and she needed a good recommendation for a psychiatrist to help her deal with the trauma so she wouldn't let it affect her family now that she is a mom and wife. Almost 80% of the comments were in the line of "All you need is Jesus. Just seek Jesus! Jesus can help you heal your heart and forgive." I couldn't help myself and I did reply to some of them, the ones I found, as my friend puts it, toxic. 

So, to suck the poison and toxicity that exists in the Christian world, I need to start with myself. My brother says I've become too much of a social warrior. I will go on a rant on "#meToo" (especially being a survivor of sexual abuse and sexual harassment) to whoever belittles it; I will rant on immigration and how it is "illegal" to try to find a better life for yourself because of man-made borders; I will rant on Donald Trump and whoever wants to pass him on as Christian. This year one of my resolutions was to not be a social warrior anymore because I tend to bulldoze over those on the other side of the debate, which is not very Christian of me. I intentionally try my best not to rant. 

Lately, I try to be an advocate for grief protection. You see, especially in the Christian community, grief is not allowed. If you are grieving, it´s a lack of faith or lack of prayer or lack of fasting or lack of time in the Word. Depression is not permissible or justifiable. It is a lie; it is the Devil; it is your own weakness and temptation. I had to go through my own deep grief to realize this was a form of violence. You don't negate other people´s feelings. You don´t ask them to put them in perspective. You don´t tell them how to fix it or how they´re going through it because they´re not good enough. This is psychological VIOLENCE. This is psychological violence I suffered during my cancer journey and that I had and probably still have enacted on others too. If Christianity is not willing to understand its flaws and change, we can't keep telling people "it's a few bad apples." 

This is why I left my church of most of my life. I have fond memories of my church. I made great friends there that I still hold dearly and closely. I met my husband there. I spent my youth in missions and worship bands and plays and so many good things. But I reached my boiling point after years and years of psychological violence and neglect. I would need way too many words to express correctly what was wrong with my church. I mean, at one point, my youth leader who was 15 years my senior and had been my youth pastor since I was 12 asked me to marry him two weeks after I turned 18! It took me many years to realize I had been groomed to accept that proposal. And thank God I didn't! 

It took many years to reach that boiling point. I was so close-minded in everything. I was even taught other churches were wrong, and I could only collaborate and work within my church. I was placed in discipline from serving in church for dating my husband even though when I started dating him I was 21 and I had finished college. Mind you, he was my first kiss! I made myself miserable to the point of being too ashamed to have my alone time with God because I had romantic feelings towards him. Toxicity at its highest, toxicity I was taught and fed.  

The post went on to say that it wasn't only the bad apples in church that were turning her away, but now she also had an issue with God. She didn't like the God of the Bible who slayed the Egyptians´ firstborn or the many times He commanded Israel to wipe out a nation. I wrote something along those lines here where I write why I still believe in God after getting cancer. In a nutshell, you knew who God was from the beginning of your faith. If it was easy for you to believe in Him when things were good in your life but find it easy to turn from Him when things are not going as you expected them, your faith was not in God but in what He could offer you. I want to understand the pain my friend says she endured. I certainly endured and still endure a share of pain and loss that not many people know from such a young age. You can read about it here and here. I'm not comparing pain. Everyone´s pain is their own and it's theirs to make as big or small as they experienced it. I do not believe anymore in "putting things in perspective" when trying to comfort someone. 

Back to my almost rant for the comments of the mom seeking psychiatric help. Jesus is the way. I know it firsthand because I know Who held me in my deepest despair. I know it because I almost left my faith when Kinsley died and had to walk a desert to find Him again. He kept calling. He kept holding me. But I was treated with psychiatric help, and I'm still in need of psychiatric help to deal with my PTSD. Jesus is the way, but He alone is not enough. This is why He established His church on earth. He prayed our unity would bring people to Him. He prayed we'd be one with Him. I found a good church here in Panama. A church who hasn't shown a single shred of psychological violence towards me after almost three years there. A church who has held me and brought me closer to my beloved Jesus. It's sad because so many of the friends I grew up with excited to love Jesus and live for Him ended up reaching their boiling point too, and many never found a safe place to worship and grow and hold each other up in Christ. Some have bounced from church to church seeking that place and coming out so belittled they no longer see the point of it. Some have found a deeper relationship with God in a good church they ended up establishing when reaching their boiling point together. Some renounced their faith and after more than a decade of doing so, their lives are none the better; if anything, they just seem lost. It's sad because I loved my church so dearly. Leaving it was gut-wrenching. And once you leave a church like that you are almost completely shunned by those who stay in it, pretty much losing all your extended family. I found a new one that I love very dearly. I'm glad it's out there. 

Picture of my youth group after a church service.

100% of us have left the church or moved to a different church after pretty much living all our teenage years in and out of church serving fervently. 

  

Jesus is the way, but He also ate food and drank water and slept. We can't be hippies about our faith. I mean this with no disrespect, but your "Jesus is enough" is not enough. 

James 2

15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

I struggle to see Jesus some days. Will I end up giving up after so much pain? I pray not. I see the lives of those who truly follow Jesus and those who follow the world, and I'm in good company with my fellow Jesus-lovers. They are the best thing in my life. That includes my mom and dad, my in-laws, my husband, my closest friends, my mentors and pastors. I pray to stay close to them and follow their example. It's not as easy as many would say it is. If it is for you, I'm happy you don't endure much struggle. But if you found Jesus, I'm happy you have the lover of your soul present in your life during the hardships that come with this life on this broken world. 

This is not an easy subject. It is not something that you have just one answer to offer. The need for change in Christianity and many churches is too real and palpable to brush it as bad apples. The need for listening and opening up your mind to needs and grief and pain and true help is urgent. You don't have to agree with me. I don't even fathom to have the full understanding of anything myself. I do open my mind to be better and do better because change must start with me.   

Healing

I never thought I'd be writing a post on this subject, but it is something that has been on my mind a lot recently, and I would like to share with you my various ponderings on the subject.

I have been living with chronic pain for almost 3 years now. This has reshapen my life and myself in more ways than one. As the new year takes off with renewed resolutions and desires to change things that need change, improve things that can be better, and let go of things that are hurting you, you can understand why healing has been on my radar.

I still miss my bald head. It sounds weird, but I really wish you could have something visible to what happens in the not visible. I miss it. I miss feeling understood and supported when you saw my bald head. You immediately knew: she has cancer. But now I mostly look normal, so you forget I am not. In the past year, 2018, I made an effort to stop reminding everyone I am still a cancer patient. That is why my bald head was so helpful: I didn't have to say anything, the bald did the talking. Now, I either remind you verbally or keep it inside in solitude. My most common feeling about this? Loneliness.

My husband has been teaching a summer school course at his job. On Monday he needed to do some errands to renew his residency, so I went as a substitute teacher so he wouldn't lose the day's pay (we can't afford that, specially with the immigration fees we will be paying this year. Please keep it in your minds to pray for that for us). He was done with his errands at noon and went to the school to bring me some lunch (the girls had gone with me). I ate and then used some gym mattresses to take a nap. He woke me up an hour later to ask me to get ready because we need to vacate the room for the cleaning lady. It took me around 20 minutes to get up and get moving. My husband was upset with me and spoke in a harsh tone to hasten my pace. When we relocated to a different room, I was visibly angry at him. "Are you angry at me?" he asked. "Yes!" I replied. Dumbfounded he asked "Why?" "Because you think I move slowly because I am lazy. Taking over your class for you took a big toll on me. I didn't take a nap because I was sleepy. I took a nap because my battery was on zero. And that little nap did little to nothing to recharge my batteries. I have no energy and my body is screaming inside from so much pain." It is Thursady today and I haven't fully recovered. "I am sorry," he said, " I forget."

My most important resolution for this year is spending more alone time with the Lord. That resolution has already given many fruits. I hadn't journaled since 2009. As I put my prayers and thoughts in writing, the Lord has been able to give me some revelations about myself. I've made an effort to even journal through an anxiety attack, and while those entries are less than encouraging, they also let me reevaluate my heart in calmer times.

I've realized some truths about my healing journey.
1. Healing has more to do with the heart (mind if you prefer) than with the body. And while you will be tempted to think mind-over-body arguments, I am more inclined into beliefs-over-reality ones. It is your beliefs that shape your mind and it is the power of these beliefs that translate into physical manifestations. I believed more in the power cancer had to kill me than I believed in the power the treatment, prayers, diet, anything I could do had in saving me. My beliefs were giving cancer more power. Now there has been extensive scientific research on the power of a strong belief in healing and helping people overcome the disease. People with a strong faith have been reported to do better during and after treatment than those without a strong faith in God. But while I refused to live in the "religious healing" side of the story, my belief in whose power was greater was seriously misplaced.

2. My healing has been stunted by my emotional state. I have concetrated my healing efforts in the physical aspects: change my eating habits, do more exercise, more yoga, more time outside instead of being indoors. I've analyzed my mental health. I've struggled with my mental health. I know the state that the toxins, radiation, hormones (or lack of), chemicals, and loss has had on my intellect, my resilience, my state of mind, my inner peace (or lack of), my sleep, and my relationships. One thing I hadn't considered though were my emotions. I considered my emotions toward cancer (a lot of anger, especially when I think of Kinsley). I am well aware of my depression and anxiety, but I hadn't thought of how I feel about myself. While journaling, the Lord revealed to me that I am suffering of a serious case of self-loathing. How was I unaware of this? I don't know. But I was. I was. I had no idea I was hating myself this much. I hate my body and how little I can do to improve it and how any attempt to improve it increases my pain so much. I hate the amount of pain I live with. I think I am a bad wife, bad mom, bad daughter. I told the worship band leader I shouldn't be allowed to serve in the band because I am a bad testimony. I feel undeserving of anything. I don't deserve my husband, my girls, my mom, my God. I don't deserve to survive cancer. This is a haunting thought when I think Kara and Kinsley were deserving and here I am and they are not. I don't believe I deserve to be healed, which connects with point one.

3. I am scared of who I am without this sickness. Cancer has redifined me. Eventhough I fight it and I don't succumb to it, it is a part of me. I am scared when I am talking to someone who doesn't know I have cancer. "What if they think I was born this ugly?" "What if they think I am odd?" I have even wondered (and this is the honest truth) "Do they see me and wonder if I am a transgender? Does it seem strange to them that I have a boy's chest but a girl's voice?" The evenings are the hardest time for me. It is when the depletion of my energy is so high I can barely get up and help the girls out with something, so it is my husband, who has come back from working and studying all day, who tends to them while I "need" to take a rest. "What must they think when they see Rodolfo tends to them like that?" I feel the need to let them know I am not normal and that is why I act and look like that. I am anxious until I can find an excuse to say: "I am a cancer survivor" while what I am really saying is "This is why I am this way." I recently posted on facebook how touched I was by the latest Grey's Anatomy episode calling out that having cancer is not "fighting" and when you survive you don't "win", just like when you die you don't "lose". I am so grateful someone said it. When you survive, you don't "win." I am scared of facing myself removed from my sickness. I have been feeling so bad for so long to not know what my life would look like if were healed; and, as dumb as it sounds, I am scared of letting go of it all.

4. Fear is more powerful in keeping you sick than the disease itself. During one of my anxiety attacks, the Spirit within me called me out and said: "Come be with Me." I said to Him: "What for? What for? Why even try to be healthier? Why even try to be better? Why even try to grow spiritually? Why even bother when I am going to die." I have spoken to many people that when faced with a similar situation think they should start preparing their families for life without them. I have always adviced against that train of thought, but I get on board whether conciously or subconciously. I remove myself from being with my loved ones or having them depend on me. It is fear that sparks my anxiety. It is fear that keeps me struggling with insomnia. It is fear that makes me feel I can't and shouldn't heal. And it is fear that keeps me from being closer to God for when I am with God I feel shame because:

"18 There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love."

1 John 4:18

I don't subscribe to the belief that "God chose me for this sickness", which is why I hate the phrases like: "God gives His hardest battles to His strongest warriors." Makes me gag just putting it in writing. I do believe God prepared me for this time. I believe my walk has been in His control and He has had a purpose for it all. I believe that healing has to do with the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. I believe the spiritual has the biggest impact and is the most important of all of them. And no, not any spiritual growth- growth in your walk with God! My time with the Lord will bear fruit in healing me inside which will translate to healing outside. He has already begun to change how I feel about myself when I expose myself to His Word and what He says of me and says to me. He is letting me know I can come to Him even if I am in fear. I don't have to remind Him of my pain, so I don't have to feel so lonely anymore. I don't have to give excuses for myself because He became human to experience human pain and He is able to tell me: "I know how you feel." He hears my rants during my anxiety were I speak all the lies Satan has made me believe; and because I am coming to Him, those lies can't live in the light. He is making me open up more to my husband about how I feel and pray together like we did before. He can make all things new, and that means more than just giving me a new heart. His love can permeate to my body and help me heal. And if I must walk the remainder of this life, whether long or short, living with pain, I hope I can learn to rely on Him and continue to believe He is the one with the greatest power, nothing else is as powerful as He.

How to get in shape without falling into self-loathing

What is the problem with losing weight? 

Stick with me to see if you relate to my story and if we have similar struggles. 

I always wanted to be athletic.

I have an ardent envy to anyone who can run. 

I suffered from asthma in my teens and from severe allergies that made breathing really hard when I was sitting down, so running felt out of the question. 

Fortunately, I was blessed with a high metabolism that kept me slender. 

Skip forward to 6 years of hypothyroidism, 2 back-to-back pregnancies, a year battling breast cancer and my body is not what it used to be or what I wish it to be. I thought my cancer's silver lining would be losing weight. I lost weight during chemotherapy that I gained back during radiotherapy and was left at the same weight before my cancer journey, despite losing body parts on the way (talk about frustration!) I even joked with God that if He had allowed me to have cancer, at least He could make me skinny again. Well, as the saying goes: "No pain, no gain" (although there was a lot of pain).

Eating right and working out are good for our health. If this was motivator enough, we would all be doing it. It isn't. We live our lives like our life style is not going to catch up on us. It is even hard for me to do it knowing it greatly diminishes my chances of my cancer coming back. Yes, that is still not motivator enough to stick with it. 

So, what is the problem?

Is it too hard to workout? 

Is it too hard to diet?

Both?

In my case, it is none of the above. Yes, I struggle with working out and dieting. I love cinnabons, pizza, a good semita (Honduran sweet bread that I long for in Panama), and chocolate. Oh chocolate. I have eaten a giant bar in one sitting. I once got a giant Hershey kiss as a gift (best gift ever!) and ate it in one sitting despite my teeth hurting from having to carve it (too big to bite). Working out! Who has time for that? Especially if you are mom and a wife, finding "free" time to workout is daunting and seems impossible. Who has the energy? After running around little ones all day and cooking and cleaning and caring for more little ones and laundry and cleaning and more little ones, at the end of the day no one wants to workout. 

You might be asking: "Where is the point on this then?"

Well, as many of you can testify, working out is hard but the more you do it, the easier it gets and you even start feeling more energized by it than seeing it as a struggle. Same goes with dieting (I say dieting but I mean cutting sugars and complex carbs which is really not dieting but eating right, but for the post's sake we'll say dieting). The first weeks are hard, but as soon as your system is cleansed from the sugar withdrawal, eating right is easier and again you feel better. 

So, if dieting and working out makes us feel better, why are we not all doing it? Why so many of us start dieting and working out and give up and fall back to our old ways? Why can we only keep it for a certain amount of time and not for the long run? 

My personal answer to that question is: the results. The results are just not showing up fast enough. We want to see in the mirror what we imagine we should look like in the mirror. Unfortunately, this image has been given to us by the bombardment of media that has objectified women for decades now and has given us beauty standards we impose on ourselves. If your goal to working out and dieting is looking a certain way, when that is not achieved after a period of time, we get discouraged. 

I never feel so bad about my body as when I decide to start eating better and working out. It's like when I can spend a day of teaching without realizing I haven't eaten all day and had no problem; but the moment I decide I want to fast that day to spend it in prayer, I have never been more hungry in my life or worse, everyone decided to bring and offer me my favorite foods. My eating habits are their old self and I am fine with what I see in the mirror. I start eating only fruits and veggies, and I can't be more appalled by the image in the mirror. I start working out and suddenly my thighs are as thick a redwood tree trunks. No where else is my belly so visibly flaccid as when I am working out. 

I personally quit because working out and eating right for the purpose of achieving a certain body brings me down to a pit of self loathing. I prefer to quit and not actively prevent cancer if it means I won't be hating myself. But what if there was another way?

For me it's all about the results, right? So why not aim for different results?

I always envied flexible people. I dream of being able to achieve a split. 

I studied dance in 2008 when I lived in Mexico City and I was in the best shape I have ever been. I hated stretching. It was too darn painful. I hated it, hated it, hated it. My sister would come home and repeat all the stretching. By the end of the year, my splits where just what they were at the beginning of the year and my sister was a master.

Well, maybe I had a silver lining after all. 

Stretching no longer hurts. Maybe it has something to do with my neuropathy. I am not sure, but it isn't as painful as it once was. When I realized this, I started training again. I started with the training I remembered from my dancing days and then I started doing Youtube yoga videos. 

I sometimes revert to my inflexible self-loathing days (I was the WORST in the class), but have started seeing results which keep me going. 

• For me is all about results I can see now. I am impatient. I am a control freak. I want to see results!

And the results are coming in. 

And as I see more and more results, that keeps me going. 

I do the beginner tutorial and try out the intermediate, even though I can't effectively do either. 

I lift my leg higher; I get my split lower. 

I am conscious of my body's separate joints and muscles. 

The pain is delicious! I crave for it. I crave the feeling of warm, achy muscles. 

I would be able to get lower and bendier if I lost weight. 

Now, I don't eat right to see a result in the mirror, but on the yoga mat. 

I am loving it because I am staying motivated with no self-loathing. 

I am not counting calories for a mark on the scale. If I ate something "unhealthy", I don't feel like kicking myself in the butt.

I have a goal: right-side split and perfect bridge before the end of the year. There are other goals there, but those two are the "big ones." 

What is making you "fall of the wagon"?

Are you falling into a vicious self-loathing cycle every time you want to get in shape?

Are your goals what you see in the mirror?

What if you try a new goal, a better goal?

One that doesn't make you hate yourself or your beautiful God-given body.

One that makes you stronger and happier, not accountable and tied down.

One that you can share and be happy about. 

Here are some pics of where I am today. I will try to post in the future the results!

They can't see me on the floor because I am their favorite trampoline.

Emmalee is happy to help me stretch. She surely has helped me stretch deeper.

That is lower that you might think.

The Christian and antidepressants.

I am sorry I have been absent from my blog.
There is so much I have wanted to write about, but I haven't been able to.
I haven't been able not because of lack of time or desire or topics.
I didn't have a good state of mind.

I've been struggling more than I ever have in my entire life.
I hadn't been able to pinpoint what exactly was going on.
I struggled to acknowledge how bad my mental state was and how bad I needed help.

I told my mom and my husband my depression was getting out of hand.
How did I know it was getting out of hand?
For one, I started imagining my husband's and my daughters' lives without me and thinking they'd be better off. Then, I started imagining how they would take it if they found me dead on the shower and if they'd be able to recover from that.

Those thoughts are not normal. I needed help.
I went to my endocrinologist checkup and told him of my depression. I told him I thought my depression was connected to my physical ailments: the lymphedema in my arm and the neuropathy in my legs, which has now been declared a permanent damage from chemo for the rest of my life, have been keeping me from sleeping well and being able to rest from being in so much pain at night. The lack of sleep makes it harder to be sweet and understanding while homeschooling two very young and willful girls. My hypothyroidism and my 20-years-early menopause were also causing a hormonal and mood imbalance. The anxiety from getting our immigration papers in order and the lack of job when savings were almost out were also piling up.

He prescribed Cymbalta. It is an antidepressant but it also has some other component that helps with chronic pain, so it would also target my neuropathy and help with the pain from the lymphedema. Perfect! Two birds with one shot. Well, the Cymbalta was not well received by my body. It gave me nausea, vomiting, extreme fatigue, faintness, foggy brain, migraine, difficulty concentrating, constipation, bloody stools. In other words, it was like if what back on chemo. That is how bad it was.

I went to my oncologist check up and told him how I was feeling and how badly the Cymbalta had been. He said he would not treat my depression. He said I needed to see a psychiatrist. I told him I was adverse to psychiatry and had only taken the antidepressants at the urging from my mom and my husband.

This is not my first tango with depression. That shouldn't be a shocker to anyone considering what I had to endure this past year. My cavorts with depression began during my parents' divorce. It was around that time that I began to know the Lord and He became my refuge and consoler. I had not been able to find any solace in the Lord this time around.

I told my mom and the oncologist I'd give the psychiatrist a chance, even if I didn't believe in them. I had given my mom a chance to meet with her spiritual mentor and sat down with her for some counseling. I didn't find much help from that meeting. It was not the first time I had sought some spiritual counseling and found no help.

Before I go on with my story, I want to pause to get some things off my chest.
Depression is a disease. It is not for lack of maturity. It is not for lack of motivation or perspective. It is not because one is lazy or decides to shut down. It is not for lack of love to others. The stigma on speaking out of these subjects makes one more alienated. The afternoon I was having strong suicidal thoughts and was all home alone I thought of reaching out to someone. What will they think of me? What will they say of me if they know I am thinking this way? Will they understand this is not the normal me? I have to say, and most likely this was not true but I felt that way, I couldn't think of anyone I could reach out to that would have understood. I finally told my husband to come home because I was very depressed. He got angry at me and said I was the one who "chose" to be alone and locked up in the house. (He has since learned to have a better reaction to when I am feeling this way.)

I went to the psychiatrist very skeptical. I told her my story. I told her where I thought my depression got out of hand. It was on January 6, 2017. The day Kinsley took her last breath. I shut down that day. That is the way I describe it. Like I had an "on" switch and I turned it off. Not happy or sad. Not angry. Just nothing. I use to read stories in Mommy Daily, a Facebook mom group, of kids losing parents or parents losing kids and I would cry for them. When little Obed died, a sick boy in the group everyone tried to help, I didn't cry. I didn't feel anything. I had shut my heart from investing any feelings in him or anyone else for that matter. I don't watch movies and get excited or cry. Nothing makes me cry. I was left in limbo.

This limbo was especially marked in my spiritual walk. I wasn't rejecting God, but I also didn't feel His presence anymore. I still knew I had to seek Him. I tried praying even though I didn't know what to pray for or how to pray. I had prayed so fervently for Kinsley that I no longer knew if it had been right to pray for her healing. If it had, the prayer would have been answered. I prayed for something that was not God's will. That truth shattered my view of what was the right thing to pray for.

"Do you think of Kinsley?" the doctor asked.
"Every day. Every moment. She is always on my mind." I said.
I see my girls and think how her mom is one girl short. how her sister is missing her playmate.

I then started telling the doctor my cancer journey. I thought it was funny how that part of the story was more upbeat and uplifting than how I've felt after my last surgery which ended my treatment. I told her how my husband and I had never prayed for my healing. We prayed that we could accept God's will in our lives and trust that He would look out for the girls and my husband if I were gone.

"So your source of hope was shattered," the doctor said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Well, you felt positive and strong with your disease because you trusted your God would look after your girls. But he didn't look after a little four year old who is just like your girls, so you no longer have any hope in Him."

I had never put those two together. NEVER. Was she right? Had I lost all hope in Him?

And, after all the platitudes I'd heard of Kinsley and how she was in a better place, and bla, bla, bla this doctor finally said something that made me feel the slightest better: "She did what she came to do."

I sat there letting it sink in. I thought of Giana, who I had also prayed so fervently to recover from her injuries and lost her battle to a simple surgery after enduring so much. "She did exactly what she was meant to do here."

"And that is why our journey here ends. We have something to do. And when we do, it is time to move on. Some do that in a longer journey, and some in a shorter. And as much as we wish they were still here, we need to let them move on," finished the doctor.

She said that she was surprised Cymbalta had not worked as it would have been what she would have prescribed too. She gave me another antidepressant and another medicine to help my manage my pain and help me sleep.

I've been feeling considerably better.
I've been thinking of God more and taking steps to search Him more too.
I was very surprised of how much I cried during that session and how good I felt afterward.
I was able to cry with the Lord, like I had always done because He was the one I could reach out to anytime anywhere with anything. I felt so good crying with Him.
I ask Him to be my hope, even when I don't understand why some things happen. Why did they have to die? Why did Kara have to die? Why do I have to walk such a hard road. Why am I filled with envy for expecting mothers and strong mothers? I should be happy for them. I want to. I am starting to.

I read this article about how we were asking the wrong thing in prayer for our kids. We always ask that they have health, and happiness, that they grow up to have a good spouse, a good career, education, job, house, etc. Well, these are not the scenarios where we see the Lord. We see Him in hardship, heartbrokeness, weakness, struggle, pain, suffering. It is there when we can see Him and grab hold of Him. We must ask that our children will seek Him in these time that WILL come.

This is true. I remember sharing the gospel with a stranger while we were on a waiting room. He said you can't know He is real. And I said: "Yes you can! Because He was with me." He was with me those nights when I cried myself to sleep when my dad left my house. He was there in the nights that I prayed on my knees with my nose to the ground and I felt His embrace. I grabbed ahold of the promises in His Word like: if your mother or father leave you, I will never leave you. I lived confidently in the words that I could call Him ABBA (father) because I had been adopted as a child of God. These were the things that sustained me and held me through anything that could come my way.

So, I am studying the Word seeking how to pray and what to pray for. I'll be writing a post on that soon. I am taking antidepressants to help balance my brain and give me a little help after so much loss and pain, specially when I also think of Sammy.

I liked the way my doctor put it: "You don't think ill of someone who has a kidney problem and takes kidney medicine. If someone has high blood pressure, he takes medicine for that. Your brain was not unaffected by everything you went through: chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, miscarriage, loss. It is brain medicine."

How can a pill make you feel better? I don't know. It does. I feel better. I've been having better interactions with everyone around me. I've been having quiet time and alone time to meditate instead of fantasize and specially fantasize of unnatural thoughts.

We all need help. We all need a break. We are not alone. And He understands.
Today I give thanks antidepressants exist and thank God for making them accessible to me.

Matelin, Kinsley's mom, always says "Hold your kids tight." This picture makes me think it was taken from a different family, but it is My family. That was me. That is me.