I'm probably not what you expect

I want to tell you who I am before I ever ask you for anything.

There's a version of a healer that people picture. Serene. Floaty. Someone who seems to have it all together because they found peace early and has been dispensing it ever since.

That's not me.

I've lived with depression for as long as I can remember. I remember as a kid when I would wake up I would put my feet on the floor and just stare at the ground. I had no idea why. I felt nothing. No desire to move, no desire to "do life". I could feel my mind asking me why I couldn't move, but I couldn't get my body to move. This was something that later in life I began to call "the blanket of sadness". I didn't know or understand why it was there, it just was.

I've had a season where my family came apart in a way I couldn't explain it to anyone. I've sat in a hospital and heard a doctor say the word "cancer" about one of my children. I've been postpartum and unable to feel the thing I was supposed to be feeling.

I'm not telling you this for sympathy. I'm telling you because it's the reason I'm good at this.

When you sit down across from me and you can't find the words for what's wrong — I'm not translating that from a textbook. I've been on your side of it. I know the specific exhaustion of holding it together in public. I know what it's like to do everything right and still feel like something's off. I know the fear that lives in your body when someone you love is sick.

Over the next several weeks I'm going to tell you the rest of it. Not because my story is the point — it isn't. But because you deserve to know who's in the room with you before you decide to let someone into the hardest parts of your life.

You don't have to do anything with these. Just read them. Or don't.

I'm glad you're here.

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