My pregnancy body and why I’m learning to love it.

Before I got pregnant, I used to find it hard imagining that I would be able to accept what my body would be like when pregnant, let alone like it.

It wasn’t that I wasn’t in awe of how a body can grow a whole, beautiful little baby from scratch, because that is incredibly amazing! But more so that I was worried how I would feel about my body with regards to my past experiences with body image. I was worried about how I would cope with a body that is growing in size, and that is out of my control, and not being able to deal with all of the thoughts that go along with that.

However, I am so pleasantly surprised! Since becoming pregnant, what my body is doing has truly left me in awe. And that’s so weird! That I am accepting my body and all it’s doing to grow this beautiful little bean! It feels strange to be so at peace with my appearance. I am so happy to watch my bump grow every week. This is such a massive shift in mindset, coming from years of absolutely loathing my physical self with every cell I had, and destroying it at every chance I got, to admiring what my body can do for me.

And growing babies it just one thing that makes bodies incredible. We have arms and legs and eyes and ears and noses and digestive systems and veins and hearts and brains, and oh my goodness each of these parts of us do such an incredible job! They keep us going, and they keep us fighting, in every moment of every day. And most of the time we don’t even acknowledge the amazing work that our bodies do, without us even consciously knowing what to do or how to do it. Every system, pathway, and stimulus in our body functions to keep us alive. What an incredible gift to have.

Taking care of both our bodies and souls is of upmost importance. After all, they give us the world, and most of the time we struggle to even think a positive thought about them. I feel so grateful for all that my body does, and I am so happy that it kept going despite all that it’s been through.

Here’s to our bodies, and the remarkable work they do every second of every day for us.

Thoughts of the moment #2.

These little thoughts have been swirling around my brain recently, and letting them roam free will help, maybe. Some are fleeting, and others stay long into the night. They are what they are.

• I’m finding the subject of weight increasingly boring as the years go by, and as I get better too. Like there are so many more interesting things to think and talk about other than your body’s relationship with gravity. I’m finding it so dull and such a waste of time, kind of like if you think about bricks or chalk for too long. It’s crazy to think how my weight occupied about 80% of my time and thoughts for so many years. It’s such a waste of time and there are so many things that are better uses of your thoughts than obsessively calculating and subtracting and adding and just generally being Very Boring.
• I have a meeting with my research supervisor tomorrow morning and I’m just feeling all blessed and happy that I have access to higher education, and to be doing something that brings me joy. Bring on the sand dunes and me trying to make my research sound way cooler than it actually is!
• Oh my Lanta broccoli is quite possibly one of the best vegetables ever. And carrots. I could eat those two with literally everything.
• Getting outside is something that I’m super passionate about and you have probably read my rambles about this many times before. But being in the sun! Or in the rain! Either way just getting out from our little house shells and experiencing what it is like to simply feel, this always helps so much. Never underestimate the power of green spaces on mental health.
• I have been going for so many mindfulness walks lately and doing progressive muscle relaxation and just feeling good!
• There will always be periods of anxiety. Emotions will always wave, and to not accept this will only bring you devastation and heartbreak. Do what you need to do to respond to the feelings, and embrace the good ones.
• It’s okay to not be who you thought you were supposed to be. Just like how it is okay for you to not be perfectly disciplined and your routine impossibly sculpted. Leave room and no expectations so that you can have space to be human. Accept that your last semester isn’t going to go perfectly and that it will look a little different than you had hoped. And be okay with this shuffling space. Embrace these changes and what they bring, despite not being your ideal, manicured vision. Let go of the things that you can’t healthily accomplish, and go for gold on the rest. Take time for yourself, accept that you might not make it to every lecture, and be okay with this whole being a perfectly flawed human thing. Take care of your brain over everything else. It should always come first – before immecable grades, networking, research, and awards.
• Little experiences of feeling are so underrated. Take a bubble bath and play with the bubbles. Go dog-watching. Accomplish a few small things off your to-do list and feel your productivity shine. Brush your hand through the leaves as you walk by. Feel. Be.
• Take yourself seriously but not so seriously that anything less devastates you. Be silly. Have fun. Be disciplined but make time for being wild too.

Love,

Kaitlyn.

Lately…

Lately life has made me amazed and in awe. Absolute awe. I feel useless at describing how golden people and moments and animals and nature and the waves of life simply are.

We are laughing so much and spending time with friends and family and there are so many good things. Kind things. Lucky things.

I feel so thankful to be alive in a world with the depths of darkness, and the heavens of light too.

To be living. To be human.

So many things flow. And are in harmony.

Lately, we have celebrated me being self-harm free for two years. It’s wild, let me tell you, because for five years that was such an engulfing part of my life, and now… I can be without it. Somehow. I still have the same thoughts, yet the daily desperate urge to act on these behaviors has finally passed. They took well over a year of not self harming to go away.

Today I have these thoughts, but I tag them and move on. They are insignificant to my life today. They just float around in the empty spaces of my brain and they wheeze a bit, but that’s about it. They are just a tiny piece of me.

Lately I’ve been going for walks with the intention of being mindful, and these are so good. To take in the grass and the dew and all of the leaves. The universe really is extraordinary.

And to be writing for a job! This was such an unexpected surprise. I never knew that writing could actually pay, you know, like real life money. Writing was always something I had deemed as only a hobby, and definitely not something that you could support yourself with, unless you suddenly turned into JK Rowling overnight. It’s so crazy how things happen.

And I’m trying to not even care that my blog posts aren’t perfect, and my writing isn’t perfect, and that my photos definitely aren’t either. But all of these things are bringing me joy, and that is what matters.

Tapering off my SNRI has been interesting. I feel as though there was a big glass pane which has been removed, and now I’m all bare and exposed. The withdrawal side effects haven’t been as bad as I had expected, and following my doctor’s plan has definitely helped. Sometimes I swear that my head is floating above my body, and that my eyes are zooming in and out way too fast to be natural. It’s all very robotic. But these things will pass. Apparently it can take a while for your brain to adjust to doing it’s own thing. Something I won’t miss are the exhausting, brutal dreams. Venlafaxine dreams, anyone? A 20 minute nap turns into a horror movie every single time. Wild stuff!

Therapy is going and going and I think it’s going good, but it’s one of those things that you don’t really ever know how exactly it’s going because you’re not exactly the right person to be judging that. Using the skills that therapy has taught me is great though, because surprise! With enough practice they can actually help! I don’t know, I’m just so content at the same time as being all out of sorts because of the medication, or lack of, and it’s weird. But good. This is progress I think?

Lately I’ve just wanted to dwell in how the ocean sparkles, and how perfect the dew is, and how beautiful being by Cameron’s side is. There are so many good things when we are able to see them.

I’m grateful. I’m grateful.

Wired.

Every single second runs and runs and flies and I can’t keep up.

Every word sounds clunky and bumpy and these sentences don’t form how they feel and I just don’t know how to say it.

My brain soars at one hundred and one miles per hour and this is unfiltered. This is me.

I don’t know how to deal with it. It has been over 700 days since I’ve last been flying. Since the ground met my feet. Since these drugs have grounded me.

I have been saved. And now I have to save myself.

I had forgotten how fast and unbearable that everything could be. How I can crash and burn and crash once again before anything even happens.

My heart beats so, so ungodly loud and with every beat I swear I can’t do it again. It beats and my thoughts pound and rattle through my ribcage, and I feel gone from my skin. From myself.

When my thoughts fly and sail through the darkest night and this feels like before. This is when all the bad things happen. And life crumbles away.

Yet this is good and this is progress and this is what I want, right?

I am here. I am sprinting. I am still.

Liquid light and all those crazy feelings.

It’s winter right now and I’m not normally one to say this, but I’m really missing summer. Wearing shorts and eating cold watermelon and downing all the water like there’s no tomorrow – it’s a stark comparison to our gray days now. Usually I find it tricky to pick one season that I like best, because honestly each can be so magical in their own way, we just have to appreciate them differently. But for now, baking in the sun and diving into the ocean is where I wish it was at. When it does get there though, I’ll probably miss being able to sleep under blankets and snuggle with Cameron and watching the rain pour outside. So for now, I’m just trying to be grateful and love the season we’re in.

So many big life things are in a time of change at the moment. I’ve almost made it through university, something I highly doubted was possible for a long time. My year-long research project about using UAVs to monitor coastal dunes is 50% driving me mad and 50% making me feel in awe of all the good that Geospatial technology can do, and how the field is really advancing at the moment. It’s a love-hate relationship! It’s the mid semester break at the moment, then I have my final few months, and then somehow it will all be over. The rush and the climb and the fall of everything is surreal.

Last week I began my new job as a content creator, and it has really showed me how weirdly life can turn out. At the start of this year when I was pouring a lot into blogging (e.g. my life and soul, literally), I made it a goal for the year to get some sort of financial return through writing, and that has certainly ended up happening! In a completely different way than I ever would have guessed though, and much better than I imagined too. Life is funny like that. How it can feel that so many doors are slamming shut one after the other, only for something better for us to be waiting at the end. Anyway, I am so thankful for this job. It has slotted into our life at just the right time, and has really helped to positively impact things for the future too. I can’t say too much about it all yet, but there are so many bright things, and we are so thankful for these.

It was strange leaving my old job and saying goodbye to everyone. I didn’t expect to be as sad, or to find it as difficult as I did. I was so happy to be leaving the job, but my coworkers were a whole different story. Seeing the same people on most days for two years makes you grow close; they become apart of your story and you apart of theirs. These endings are good though, but they are hard too. That’s how change is born.

Last night we were talking with some dear friends about how much has changed. It’s so crazy to think of how different things are compared to life one, two, five, ten years ago. How people grow. And how you can see things changing before your own eyes. It’s terrifying but it just is too. It’s the most natural thing really, but that doesn’t make it any more comfortable.

Liquid light had been abundant lately. All those moments when you know that you are exactly where you are supposed to be – they are everything. By a bonfire, or beneath the stars, or seeing the look on someone specials face. These are the moments that make life worth living, and I’m trying to remember that it’s important to search for these. What we focus on expands, and heck that has to be one of the most powerful things in the universe.

Anyway, life is crazy. We are looking for our first home. We are making big, giant, stomping steps. There is more wellness than unwellness mental health wise, which is a wonderful season.

Everything is sad and happy and wonderful and terrible, and I suppose that’s exactly how life is meant to be. Everything feels surreal.

I said to the sun . . .

I’m going to begin with one of my all time, absolute favourite quotes – “I said to the sun, ‘Tell me about the big bang.’ The sun said, ‘it hurts to become.'” (Andrea Gibson).

And my oh my, that quote just fills me with so much power and so much strength; strength that it not my own but something that I feel as though I can be apart of.

These past two months have been a whirlwind. Everything has just been going and going, and these days have been all about hard work and consistency, and just getting stuff done. It’s exhausting, but a good sort of exhausting. It’s a normal kind of being to busy to breathe kind of exhaustion, rather than my mind is going crashing through the ground. It’s a refreshing change.

Some solid, concrete steps for the future are fitting into place. This morning I was offered a new job, and it has made our future far more secure and stable. It hasn’t sunken in yet really. It will change a lot of things, in a good way.

Lately my head has been doing so good. I feel burnt out, but not because of what’s going on within, but because I am able to do so many things beyond now. I have felt so confident and content. I don’t know what has changed. Maybe it’s all the therapy work. Maybe it’s all the pushing to change. Maybe it’s just a new season. But what I do know is that I feel more me than I can ever remember.

For years I was stuck within illnesses that took over my entire world. Every decision, perspective, and moment was controlled and dulled by their graces. I was never me. I was just trying to survive, and knew only how to exist just beneath the surface.

However today, I feel more authentic to who I am supposed to be than ever. It sounds cheesy but I don’t know how to describe it. I have been trying to stand up for myself and for what I believe is important. I am talking to people I would normally be afraid of, because I can think “what’s the worst that can happen?” and actually go ahead and do it. I’m trying to stay true to my values in all situations. Anxiety, where are you at? It’s weird but enchanting. It’s amazing how much life expands when anxiety lets you push it. I truly don’t know how all these things have changed, but for now, things are wonderful. Thinking to how things used to be – to hell and back – I don’t know how I am still in today. But heck, I am so thankful for it.

Right now I am living in these days where I don’t constantly think about and dwell on bad things that have happened, and it’s such a strange, yet absolutely amazing feeling. To have my mind not imprisoned with a reel that replays the worst on repeat – it’s crazy. I still think about these things, a lot, but they are not my every thought anymore. I’m trying to build new moments and thoughts to outgrow the old. Bad, triggering songs are being replaced with songs to make new, good memories with. My psychologist and I are working on my safety behaviors, and it’s horribly difficult but good too.

The sun has told me that I can cope, that I can survive and keep living, and today I am beginning to believe her.

What are you? A chaos.

“What are you? A chaos.” (Anaïs Nin).

Just wanted to check in with everybody, to send out some love and good vibes, and to say that I’m thinking of you all. 

Right now I’m listening to Kings of Leon, reading old poetry, and watching the rain dance outside.

I hope that today has been kind to you, that your mind is granting you some well-deserved peace, and that tomorrow is a shining promise.

I’ll update properly soon, and I’m so excited to catch up on everybody’s blogs.

For now, I just thought I would share a few old poems that I wrote just over a year ago. They aren’t much, but they make me smile.

I hope these words find you well, and I’m sending out all the hugs I’ve got.

Lots of love,

Kaitlyn.

A small hello.

Hello lovely blogging friends!

It’s really nice to be back, even if it’s only for a little while.

I took around a month off from blogging – a month away from writing lots and lots, and sharing difficult things, and connecting to wonderful souls all across the globe. You see, several things happened which prompted me to step away from this world for a little bit. I missed everyone here a lot, but it was good in ways too.

University began and was hectic from the get-go. I’m trying to juggle classes, my research project, co-leading a club, volunteering, working two part-time jobs, married life, house hunting, recovery, and just general life too! I really admire people that can keep their blog up despite living crazy busy lives – go you! I am learning an awful lot, and am loving what I get to study more and more each day. Alongside this there are always so many meetings to attend to, emails to reply to, and plans to make. But I’m happy. And I’m good. It’s a stressful, yet beautiful whirlwind.

In terms on mental health, things are okay. It’s kind of weird though, because apparently I’m not very good at telling when I’m not doing okay. Despite being the busiest that I have ever been, and from my perspective coping better than ever, I have been referred to a specialist centre for a higher level of treatment. It made me laugh a little bit, because I feel that I’m doing better than ever, which may be true, but I guess it shows that we can always keep going upwards. That we can always keep pushing forwards. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m unwell, or that I’m not making progress, as I am, but my therapist said that she would be doing a great disservice to me to not hand my treatment over to people she think could help even more. Have I mentioned that she is one of my favourite people? I am so grateful to her.

Another reason why I had to step away from the blog for a while was due to fear. I was afraid that a couple of people who are very dear to me would find this space, and that my writing would either upset them, or change our relationship in some way. It’s a tricky one. So, I took a few weeks to try and decide what to do with this blog, and where it is going. I don’t want to get rid of it entirely, because the connections it has allowed me to make are too precious, and writing 60 pieces over summer was a great learning experience. However, I have decided to just leave it as it is, where it is. Whatever happens, will happen. And all that has happened so far is amazing conversations with special people. This tool is such a blessing.

Someday soon I would like to write more in depth about what I’m up to this year, because it makes me so happy, and it would be nice to have a living record of it. But for now, I am just going to stick with writing on here irregularly, and with reading blogs irregularly and such. I don’t want to place more pressure and deadlines on myself than necessary, and turn this space into “work”, when it is supposed to be natural, organic and flowing. So we will see what happens.

I’m looking forward to catching up with everyone, and I hope that your todays all around the world are beautiful and peaceful.

Sending lots of love and hugs,
Kaitlyn.

 

Expanding the narrative of mental illnesses.

Today I’m writing about why your voice is important, and about why it deserves to be heard.

The stereotypes of mental illnesses portray a narrative; a story of what it means to be mentally ill. These stories are often limiting, damaging and aren’t the full story. They often don’t capture the experience of having a mental illness, and being a person beyond that.

The stereotypical story tells of what it should look like to be mentally ill, of what it should feel like to be mentally ill, and of who you should be if you are mentally ill.

A young, thin white woman who has a feeding tube and suddenly is miraculously recovered but is still very thin and doesn’t eat carbs, is the story of an eating disorders.

Self-harm is a lost, slightly confused teenager, who just needs to be requited with their crush and then they will be cured. 

Depression is a short stint with feeling a bit glum, but once you smile more and think positive, everything is sunshine and rainbows.

Need I go on?

These stereotypes aren’t just false, but they are also harmful. They spread the message that to be sick and to get treatment, your experiences have to mirror these stories.

That’s not to say that actual, lived experiences of mental illnesses do not contain some of these elements, as they certainly might. However they are so much more than these simplistic, one-dimensional viewpoints.

Eating disorders are messy. They can involve screaming, sobbing, your hair falling out, gaining weight, losing weight, eating, or not eating, isolation, obsession, disgusting ways of hiding and getting rid of food, pushing away those closest to you. They are definitely not a diet gone too far, or a supreme example of self-control.

Eating disorders can affect any person, of any weight, gender, race, socio-economic status, geographic location, sexual orientation, religion and age.

They involve food, yes, but they are also involve so much more. They are an accumulation of a lifetime of chemicals, experiences and circumstances. 

They are so much broader, and deeper, than a false impression of Anorexia.

And this is just with eating disorders.

There is a plethora of damaging stereotypes surrounding the lesser spoken about mental illnesses – schizophrenia, psychosis and dissociative identity disorder just to name a few. Stereotypes consisting of violence and fear, casting cowardly shadows on an already deeply discriminated community.

These false impressions do no good, and they do not serve a purpose in healing, in well-being, or in a society fighting the stigma against mental illnesses.

So this is what we must do, despite being afraid and despite not fitting in with what mental illnesses are deemed to look and be like. Share our stories, the messy, horrible and happy parts. The spectrum of emotion that goes with being a human with a mental illness, rather than a mental illness itself.

Share the good parts, the bad parts, the confusing parts. Share the parts that don’t fit in with the stereotypes, and those that may do too, to show that we are more than a singular, flat existance.

Share that there are many roads and paths to recovery, and that recovery does not look the same for everyone. For some, recovery is about eliminating symptoms, and for others, it’s about learning how to live alongside them. Some paths are short and others are long. Some are well-supported while others are not. 

All of these voices can, and should contribute to what being a person with a mental illness means. A myraid of perspectives, a full sky of meaning, a vast and brilliant constellation of being human, and of one that experiences hard things.

Try not to be afraid to share your voices my sweet friends.

Expanding.

Lately I have been sharing my writing with organisations and blogs beyond this little space here! 

It has been truly wonderful to have the opportunity to share my words and experiences with a wider audience, and I am so thankful that I get to be part of such incredible and supportive mental health communities.

Firstly, a couple of my pieces are part of Beating Eating Disorders, an organisation which aims to share lived experiences and support by talking about all forms of eating disorders. You can check out one here. 

Secondly, I have had the pleasure of contributing to Off Your Chest blog, an amazing place of discussions and reflections on mental health, run by the wonderful Fred! You can read my piece Go out there and be, here!

It has been such an honour to find and be part of such wonderful mental health communities.

What are your favourite places to share your writing with?