When my daughter was four and my son was 18 months, something in my brain broke.
About two years earlier my husband had left his job and was following his dream of earning his law degree. It was a decision we’d made together and I was 100 per cent behind it, but for him it meant long hours at the library, and for me it often meant juggling two young kids as a single mom.
Six months earlier my maternity leave had ended and I had returned to my high-stress job as Communications Advisor and Press Secretary to a Cabinet Minister in the Ontario Government. I was on call via Blackberry 24/7 and running from home to daycare to work and back again, cooking dinners, packing lunches, doing laundry and trying so hard to keep all the balls in the air.
My son hadn’t slept through a single night in his life, which meant neither had I.
And that was it.
I reached a point of stress and sleep deprivations beyond which my brain would not go.
And something broke.
I cried all the time. Often on the floor, leaned up against the wall while one child cried in his crib and the other stood watching me with a look of fear on her face that I will never forget.
I was so achingly sad, when I really had nothing to be sad about. I finally understood what people meant when they described a dark cloud that hung over you that you couldn’t get out from under. I finally understood depression.
But I didn’t ask for help.
I didn’t ask for help because I looked around and it seemed like everyone else was doing it. At the daycare drop-off, on the train into work, at my office, everywhere I looked busy moms were working full time and taking care of their kids and keeping the house clean and hosting amazing birthday parties and getting to the gym and having romantic date nights with their husbands.
They were doing it. So could I.
So I didn’t ask for help. I didn’t tell anyone who loved me how I was feeling. I told myself to get over it, that I could do it all.
And the dark cloud grew bigger.
And finally a day came along when the dark cloud was so big that I scared me. I wasn’t just sad any more. I was scared. Scared that the dark cloud would swallow me up.
So I gave up. I threw up my hands. I couldn’t do it all. I needed help.
I told my husband how I was feeling and I told my mom and right away they were there to help.
I agreed to go to my doctor. She smiled and nodded when I talked about my black cloud and then she pulled out her prescription pad and started to write me a prescription for Zoloft.
“I’d like to try a more natural route first if that’s okay,” I told her.
“Sure,” she said, putting away her pad. “Come back if you find you need something stronger.”
I’d done my research and I knew that I wanted to try a combination of St. John’s Wort and regular exercise. I went to the health food store and joined the local gym.
And it worked.
The St. John’s Wort took the edge off the crippling sadness enough for me to get to the gym, and the daily exercise helped me start to feel like myself again. The clouds began to part and I could feel the sun. I never went back for the Zoloft.
Being able to be open and honest with my husband and my mom about how I was feeling and where I was at helped enormously as well. I wrote in my journal and I started to learn about the connection between what we eat and how we feel. And I became me again.
That was nine years ago.
I wish I could say that the depression is totally a distant memory now, but that’s not entirely the case. I wasn’t being metaphorical when I said that something broke in brain back then. It really did. And now, when my life and work and other commitments start to get overwhelming, I can feel that black cloud creeping up behind me.
But now I know what to do.
I talk to people, I write in my journal, I go for a walk, I get myself onto my yoga mat, I meditate, and most of all, I protect myself – I feed myself well, I rest, I say “no” to things, and I don’t compare myself to anyone else.
Everything in life is an opportunity to learn and I have taken away two big things from my experience.
The first is that loving and caring for myself must be a conscious and deliberate act. Resting and recharging is something that I have to plan for and make a priority in my life. This is part of what drove me to begin studying to become a Registered Holistic Nutritionist so that I could really learn about how to feed and nourish my body and mind properly.
And the second is a powerful feeling of anger and outrage every time I’m sitting on the train or I’m with my kids at the hockey rink and I look around and see women who look just as exhausted and overwhelmed as I felt back then. Women who are telling themselves that they must do it all. Women who are trying like hell to keep all the balls in the air, but are so tired that they can barely get out of bed in the morning. Women who believe that everyone else has it all together and so why can’t they?
It makes me crazy.
Not only have I felt what they are feeling – and still struggle – but through my education in nutrition I now clearly understand the mind-body connection. I see what that Superwoman mind frame does to your thyroid and adrenal glands as well as your nervous, digestive and cardiovascular systems.
I see how what we eat and how we live directly affects the chemistry of our brains.
And that’s why my goal with my future nutrition practice and my business is to work with women who are feeling the way I felt, who are pushing themselves to answer one more email or plan one more perfect birthday party. I want to be the friend who says, “stop!” Who says that it’s enough, you’re enough.
I want to build a community of women who have said, “stop!” A community of women who want to make loving and caring for themselves, resting and recharging, a conscious and deliberate act so that they can come alive and relish every second of their own amazing lives.
I want to be there to show them how.
