A Life Of Gymspiration

Tonight was week 5 of GriefShare. Yes, I'm still going. There was some question about how helpful it was since a part of me felt like I was more of a helper/leader than I was a "participant". But I am getting some healing out of it, so I continue on. Last Tuesday was Grandpa's birthday. The morning was a little rough and I listened to my "Grandpa" playlist on my way to work. One thing I noticed was that I can now listen to "How Great Thou Art" without breaking into tears. That has to be progress, right? Work itself went okay. Kelly brought me flowers and a sweet card so that helped. After work I had a staff meeting and the way it all worked out was really unfortunate. It was on a Tuesday which is when I have GriefShare, which I thought would be really good for me with it being Grandpa's birthday, but the meeting with mandatory. GriefShare is in Loveland at 7, and my meeting was in Greeley at 6:15. We got out a little after 7, so I book...

Tonight was my second week of GriefShare which I'll be honest, I was less than thrilled about. I did my 5 daily exercises this week and it seemed like so much of it would have been helpful to do back in August when I was first diagnosed with depression and starting to go through things. For the most part the last week was actually really good. Things seem to be falling back into place and going really well. In fact, they are going SO well I almost didn't call my doctor to increase my meds... But the last time I thought things were going great they came crashing down again, thus the need to increase the meds. So I did it anyway. I suppose it's better to stabilize my emotions, rather than deal with the roller coaster that has been my life. Saturday I had to be at the church to make chili with the youth and it really put a lot of things into perspective for me. Last year I didn't make it there in time for chili making. Casey handled everything for me because I was stil...

Have you ever heard of GriefShare? I never had until my counselor told me about it a few months back. The best way to describe it is it's like an AA meeting for people dealing with grief. When I first heard about it, I looked into it but all the sessions were nearing the end.... And while they say you can start at any time, I'm slightly OCD and needed to start at week 1. So I waited it out and started tonight. One of the rules of GriefShare is that what we talk about stays there, so I will not be blogging about what other people say. More my reaction to what is said. Each week we will watch a video and have a discussion. During the week I have 5 different days of exercises to do in my workbook. One thing I've really struggled with in most of my depression and grief work is my relationship. As I deal with the losses of Cassandra and my grandpa, I feel like other people think I shouldn't still be focused on them. In the books I've read and the people I've ...

When I went on Zoloft, my doctor said she wanted to see me back in 3 months to see how things were going. There was a big mix up with my prescription getting refilled which led to a freak out on my part because what happens if I run out and don't have a refill? So I set up the dandy little 3 month appointment. It was with a different doctor because my doctor was pregnant when I first started seeing her and is now gone. Sad. I really liked her. Now here's the thing... With the beginning of the year I was feeling like things were starting fresh. I was back to eating healthy, I was actually going to the gym, I'd signed up to do yet another 21 day challenge AND I'd signed up for a Run 2,015 miles in 2015 and I knew I could do it. Things were looking GREAT. And so I went in to my appointment and told her how well things were going... I was taking my meds, I was going to counseling, I was going to get into a support group, LIFE. WAS. GOOD. So she said she'd write my...

It has finally come to say goodbye to 2014. Or in my case it's more like a "Good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on the way out!" 2014 has been the hardest year of my 30 years of life. Even the year my dad was going through chemo didn't seem this bad. Maybe because that was one thing where as this year has been one thing after another. Still.... it hasn't been all bad. So let's take a little journey through 2014. JANUARY The year started off with me being SURE it was going to be a great one... By the end of the month, I lost a friend in the same week that I saw a friend and his wife deal with the death of their little girl. I had to work the day my friend died and thank goodness for Casey who let me just sit in my office and cry while he led youth group until I was ready to do our balloon release. These kids are so great and let me grieve and just do whatever I needed to do. They joined me for the balloo...

It's my second year of doing Elf4Health! I just love the 4 weeks of this program. So many great challenges, so many uplifting people and this year I have made some pretty awesome new elf friends. Social media is such a great thing! If you remember, last year for the "Share your expertise" challenge, I wrote a blog about teaching, getting healthy, believing in yourself, going to the gym, surviving and thriving, and pretzels and hip hop . Almost the entire time I've been doing this challenge I've thought about what I should write about since I covered so much last year. And then I thought how my life has changed in the last year. I'm in such a different place this year so here we go.... Elf 4 Health's Share Your Expertise: Depression Edition For those of you just joining, 2014 has been awful (to say the least) for me. I started off the year dealing with the death of a friend and it really was just one bad thing after another. In June, my grandpa died and...

I hope you all had a lovely Thanksgiving. My life had gotten so busy that Thanksgiving kind of sneaked up on me. And the week before it I realized this was the first of the firsts. The first big holiday without Grandpa. And I started to panic. The last 5 years or so we have been spending Thanksgiving with my grandparents. Prior to that we always spent it with my dad's side of the family and a lot of the time, my grandparents would come join us. I'm CONSTANTLY looking into the past. I discovered that AOL doesn't delete any e-mail, so rather than working one day, I started going through old e-mails from my Grandpa.   It's weird how just the mundane things that you don't even realize are traditions become the things that you really miss and wish you could do again.  The Friday before Thanksgiving I came down with the stomach flu and called in sick to work for the 2nd time in my life. I actually was still going to try to go to work until I vomited my br...