Two years ago I found myself drowning in a suicidal depression. I dealt with anxiety and panic attacks my whole life and had been struggling with increasingly worse depression. Having grown up around addicts, I thought I understood what “hitting bottom” meant, but this depressive dip I found myself in showed me that sometimes “bottom” has a basement. I buried myself deeply under self-sabotaging and numbing patterns. Feeling anything was just too much at the time. But the thing I learned about numbing was: you can’t numb the bad without numbing the good. So I found myself engaging in risky and reckless behaviors just to feel something. I was looking for an accident to take me out. I would ride my bike in heavy, fast traffic hoping a car would side swipe me and end it. I was done with life. Memories had surfaced and the weight of my past had become too much. I was ready to check out.
Everything finally came to a head when I spent a long weekend unmoving in bed. I picked up my phone enough just to keep people from showing up at my door. To this day, I’m not sure what got me up but on the third day but I finally dragged my exhausted and out of shape body out of bed. I kept hearing, “I have to get up. I have to get up.” I knew I needed to do something physically and mentally challenging. I knew I needed to be in nature where I’ve always found solace. So I drove myself an hour inland and parked at the trail head of a 6.5 mile hike in the middle of Southern California September scorching heat.
I walked and climbed and hiked and I slowly began talking myself away from the edge of suicide. I just kept thinking, “if you can get through this [depression, lesson, life, etc.], you can show other people that they can get through it too.” I realized if I could help even just one person get through what I’d been through, it would make staying alive worth it. This idea kept my feet moving as I climbed the 2000 ft elevation. At the top, I felt like I could breathe for the first time in months. I made a promise to myself, some of which I’ll share. Some is still just for me. I promised myself that if I was going to stay on earth, I was going to really live, because staying here for a mediocre life didn’t sound worth it. I promised that through healing myself, I would ripple out healing and love into the world around me. I promised that I would not be a prisoner to the difficult lessons I had learned early in life. I would not be tainted and stripped of love and happiness because of people who didn’t know how to love. I symbolically let go of the person I was on the way up the mountain and made space for a new person to come down. I hiked back with a little hope in my heart that I hadn’t felt in a long time and a promise in my back pocket. From here, I committed and continued my healing journey back into the world.
That said, this blog is for that girl that climbed a mountain to stay alive so she could help other people heal their hurts. And this blog is a thank you to that girl I was on that mountain for choosing life without any guarantees of getting out of the hole. Because at the time I never imagined how beautiful and loving this life could actually be.
But mostly this blog is for you, dear reader, to provide tools for your own healing and self-betterment because I understand what it feels like to not know how to become the best version of yourself. I understand what it feels like to see the end goal but not the steps between.
So thank you for reading my story and being open to healing in any way. And give yourself a little gratitude as well. Showing any interest in this type of blog means you’re already on your path to your own healing.
With Gratitude,
Caroline
Spiritual Intuitive Wellness 