by Kayla Myers, Family Peer Supporter
September 26, 2023
I am going to try something new with this month’s theme: recovery. Honesty is admirable, the more I dive into the depths of my mental health recovery journey, I know honesty will be the key that I didn’t have in my pocket the first time around. I had some old triggers resurface for me and new obstacles present themselves the last couple weeks. Here are my takeaways……
I made a commitment to pour into myself after pouring from an empty cup for far to long and I held myself to my commitment. On certain days, I feel confident that I have a grasp on who I am and where I am going. Other days, I feel like I am never going to be able to get past the mental blocks and barriers. This is where the word recovery comes in and what it means to me now.
Recovery isn’t like going to school and receiving a degree or finishing a training and receiving a certificate of completion. This is now a lifestyle that must be actively worked at daily. It is a commitment we make with ourselves to be committed to trying and trying again. While it is easy to say, it is another thing to set forth and do. I had a hiccup within my thought processes. I got so spun up in the things I couldn’t control and took things very personal. Old triggers came up and I let them control me for a day or two. Then I picked up my phone and reached out to a few people that I knew I could be open with, and they challenged me in the areas I needed. I sat with all the information I had in front of me, sat with the feelings and emotions they were bringing up in me, and decided what I needed to bring with me, and what I needed to leave behind. Trust is a hard thing to have in life after you have been shown many times that trusting others and processes, can become overwhelming detrimental. I realized that I needed to be kinder to myself and offer the same grace I give out so freely. I need to trust that I know what is best for me and I will always do the best I can with the tools I have. But that there will be times where I can be committed to my mental health recovery and still fail miserably. And when I fail, because I will again, recovery will be the key that I will now have, to trust in the commitment I made to me and allow myself to be a human being trying to navigate this world like everyone else.
Recovery won’t be a certificate I get to mount on my wall. People won’t have a celebration for this new lifestyle change. It will be tested daily, and I will have days where I will second guess myself and those around me. My takeaway is this, I would rather work at being better than I was yesterday everyday for the rest of my life. The commitment I made to myself and trying at it every day, it better than any certificate of completion someone could give that doesn’t walk in my shoes. I know how far I have come. I know what I will never go back to. And for me, that is enough.