6 Month Recap

Six months ago I was depressed, sad, and gloomy.  Let's face it, I was an Eeyore.  This depression had been going on for almost a year, and finally in November I decided to ask my Dr for some anti depressants.

What followed was the worst experience of my life.  This were the same prescription I had used after my second child, but for what ever reason my body reacted so badly differently this time.  I was seeing Neon, hallucinating, shaking…I felt like the purple minions in Despicable Me 2.

Twelve hours later the medicine was out of my system and I was so terrified I was not going to try another anti depressant.  Honestly, I don't know how people take drugs!  Determined not to try another anti depressant I needed to come up with a solution.  I decided my problem was that I was not excited to wake up in the morning.  Each day seemed the same gloomy place to me.  The same gloomy routine.

My solution:  Do one thing every day that is a 'first' for me.  I set my guidelines.  Created a starting list of 'firsts' and began.  The list had small things, because lets face it.  I'm a mom with three small boys at home and I have a budget.  A tight budget.  But I also needed big things too.  Things I could really look forward too!

I was going to start on my birthday, but I couldn't do it.  It took me until Thanksgiving Day to start.
The first month went by.  My firsts were so lame, and I remember asking myself if this was worth it.   Even my 1 Month Recap shows that I still wasn't convinced this would work.

Six months later my life is completely different.  My marriage is so different.  My husband tries new things now.  Our family life is so different!  My boys want to try new things!  I'm sure my dog would tell you he wanted to try a new thing too if he could talk (yes, even my dog is a boy.  I'm surrounded my testosterone). Everything about my life is a complete 180.

My firsts aren't big.  In fact to look at some of them you would think they were weird.  But the important thing was that in the past six months I have started LOOKING for firsts.

I think as women we are very good at piling on the guilt and the "I can'ts" and the "I don't have time".  We get rooted into being a mom, being a wife, etc.   Then one day we wake up and ask ourselves, "Is this all there is to life?"

Life is out there.  We've just got to make up our mind we're going to join it.