Gonna start this with some adorable photos that I took yesterday of the baby cottontail growing up in our yard. Sadly (not sure how) his family must not have survived because he’s the only one I’ve seen. Mom and Dad show up here and there, but I haven’t seen siblings. Unless they (the rabbits) tend to have other nests in other yards. I don’t know how that works so dunno. But this lil guy in is grass that is only about 2 inches tall and he’s the size of my hand.

Right now there is a lot going on in everyone’s world.

It seems as if one minute the mind wants to relax and focus, and the next it’s a free for all. I’ve seen multiple folks who haven’t been having it very easy lately. So I thought I would offer this as a suggestion if you’re one of those.

You don’t need to be fixed. You don’t need to have all the answers. If you’re really struggling, as simple as it sounds? Just keep going. There have been a lot of times in my life where I have struggled to get myself out of bed. There have been far too many instances where I just didn’t want to. Where the sadness and misery overwhelmed me and the pain was too much. Where I have been so tired of being knocked down, overlooked, sh*t on, and all I wanted was to be able to stand up. When I just wanted to be able to . . . well, a thousand things.

And what I learned? Was that I didn’t need to be fixed. I didn’t need to figure things out right that minute, or have them all figured out. All that I needed to do? Was to keep going.

Baby steps. If you fall down, a baby step could be nothing more than to sit up. It could be to just get yourself out of bed. It could be to just then make the bed. It could then just be get dressed every day.

The worst part about that type of feeling is that we’re alone. That nobody knows how we feel. I certainly have been there and understand that. When I’ve been in the darkest parts of my life? I wasn’t thinking, “oh hey everyone can relate!” I wasn’t happily bouncing around the bed gleeful and exuberant. I was cussing myself in my head. I was inside my head telling people “you don’t get it. You don’t understand. You don’t know me.”

And the truth is?

We all get it. We all understand it. Not one of us (well, I don’t know – maybe there is ONE out there) hasn’t been knocked down, treated like sh*t for our gender, for our heritage, for our NAME even. Maybe for the family. Maybe for our race. Maybe for our clothes. Maybe for our hair. Maybe for our eyes.

I’m not kidding. The types of insults that people can throw at us? The type of misery that resides inside of people and vomits all over us?

When we are struggling to get out of bed, when we feel that there is no reason to wake up in the morning, one sentence? One tiny remark? Can make us decide it’s better not to. People think it’s selfish to commit suicide, but the sad reality is that when you’re in that place as I well understand, it’s about others. We’re not thinking about ourselves. We have been SO blinded by all the outside noise that we think the world doesn’t want us around and that we are finally giving it what it wants.

It’s why I get so frustrated with people using their words to attack another. Why I do worry a lot over what I say to people and will apologize after if I think it may have come across wrong. I will try to self-correct to be sure they understood where I was coming from if I even THINK that it may have come across as harsher than I intended. Fortunately I have a best friend who is so much like me so she tries to ensure that if she is giving me a certain piece of advice, I am aware of where it’s coming from. Say if a word is too harsh and suddenly we’re like, oh that sounded bad.

Some may see it as a weakness, but I see it as a strength. I’m not talking about a group of people making you change your words. I’m talking about OUR self-correction. Our realization in that instant that the word may have been the wrong choice. That takes a self-awareness I wish many more possessed. I actually hear it a lot on the podcast Kicking and Screaming with Jenna Elfman and Bodhi Elfman. They don’t mind saying many things, but there will be those moments where they go too far down a path, and they make sure the other understood that they see it was wrong. I’m going on a tangent so I’ll reel back.

My point is simply that often people are suffering in ways we don’t see. I have often covered up how I felt. I’m not entirely sure if it’s a self-protection or me trying to keep others from pitying me, worrying over me, trying to “help,” me, or maybe a combo of all of it. But I have known a form of darkness inside of me that wasn’t just sadness, but hatred and anger. I have known the most extreme of feelings in a negative range that it might surprise people. I understand how truly hard it can be just to keep going.

But that is the best thing we can ever do for ourselves. Sometimes just riding that wave without emoting it outward on others (DO get it out via exercise, writing, something) and blaming them, screaming at them, yelling at them. Sometimes just riding that wave of crying and dissolving into the sadness works.

Just keep going.

I wish I could give a huge epiphany that really is like BOOM she has HEALED me. I can’t. Nobody can. We didn’t get to that place overnight. It snuck up on us in those little moments. It’s little moments though that will get us back through it. Baby steps.

Just keep going.

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