Guest Author | Montana's Peer Network

A Miracle in Recovery

This story is very close to my heart. Anna is my sister. I have seen her struggle since her teenage years. At the heart of her struggles, and only discovered in recent years, is her diagnosis of several mental health challenges. She was also adopted from South Africa as a toddler and has struggled with feelings of abandonment and attachment her whole life. Anna has fought family and friends in search of what would make her feel better, feel more. It has challenged our family as she has lost battles in the past.

A Personal Gratitude Challenge

As I typically do when writing on a topic, I looked for definitions and synonyms to make sure that my readers and I are on the same page. Gratitude is “the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation for and to return kindness”. I like those words: thankful, appreciation, kindness. I think it is easy to say thank you, but more powerful to show appreciation and kindness. It is similar to how saying sorry is just a word, but an apology says why and how you will make it better. It carries more weight.

It’s All Relative: A Family Story of Depression

As a child, I viewed my mother’s depression in very simplistic terms. She was moody, unreasonable, inconsistent and easily irritated. As I look back and “psychoanalyze”, I look at her depression as more of an empty hole. My mother did an amazing job at giving us great life experiences and adventures and a happy life. We went on vacations almost yearly. As a single mom, she couldn’t afford big trips by plane, so it was car trips. We went to Wisconsin to visit family, California to go to Disneyland, Calgary and Edmonton and the Black Hills for an annual reunion with the Wisconsin family. Home was filled with laughter during game nights and movie nights. In addition to giving us these experiences, I wonder if these things filled the hole, so that she wasn’t left feeling empty.

Patchwork Recovery

Recovery is 1000 small decisions that, at the moment, feel insignificant yet, when added up over time, have. I recorded my recovery journey on countless pieces of paper to create a compilation of ah-ha moments from depths of darkness into life in recovery. My recovery has been a patchwork of written thoughts, shapeless until I weaved them into my life, attempting to live them as profound as they are when they dance in my mind. This is where creativity began to inform my life, realizing that it is my choice to transform past conditioning into the spark that ignites passion. Dare I show the world who I am behind the facade of correct behavior and be the superstar I create in my mind?

Proud Momma

I am so grateful to be a mother. The ten years it took to become pregnant did not prepare me for the journey of motherhood. Just because having a baby is biological does not mean it is natural. Having my daughter activated a wound in me that had been dormant for many years; I would not fully understand this rugged process until much later. The medical community calls this phenomenon postpartum depression. I was attempting to maintain a belief that having a baby would fix me; it did, but not in the way I expected.

Parenting in Stages

For this month’s topic, “Parenting in Recovery”, I once again had to turn to my internet friend, Google. There are many kinds of recovery. Recovery from substance abuse or other addictions. Recovery from acute mental health events. Recovery from physical injuries. What does recovery mean for me? Google defines recovery as “a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength” and “the action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.” That last word, lost, is what I connected with. For many parents of children with special health care needs or behavioral health challenges, the expectation of what we envisioned for our lives and for our children is gone or changed, in a sense – lost.

Be the Change

I can remember many times walking past a person experiencing homelessness. The thoughts that came to mind brought feelings of shame. Something inside me wanted to give to them, but I was taught they were dangerous, morally defective, and fully capable of making money if they wanted to. As time passed, I stopped looking at “them” but could never shake the feeling that something was amiss with my actions or lack thereof. The poverty around me made me wonder what kind of person I am to pass community members experiencing homelessness. Yet, I was going home, deciding which show to watch, Seinfeld or Friends.

How to Give Back: A Personal Choice

This month’s theme is Service Work/Volunteering. I thought about writing my article for several weeks, worrying about how to write about something that I don’t have much experience in. Then I started feeling guilty and bad about myself. I know that is not the goal, for me or for anyone reading this. So, I started thinking more about ways that I might have “given back” that wasn’t in a volunteer status.

Illustration of a girl holding a heart with rainbows and clouds around her.

In the Pursuit of Truth

Radical acceptance is like waking up in the middle of a dream and clearly looking at life for the first time. The reality of what I had created while I was asleep in my addiction was startling. The truth that I was unwilling to look at had built momentum, and the consequences of those choices were overwhelming. Recovery demands honesty; every courageous action forward balances authenticity and vulnerability. It meant I could no longer play the victim of life; I needed to be responsible for the life I could create with a willingness to work hard to heal and forgive.

Radical Acceptance Opens the Door to Self-acceptance

Radical acceptance comes in moments of clarity, where denial transforms into connection. The test of my commitment to radical acceptance shows up when I try to fix, control, ruminate about the past, predict the future, or avoid pain.

What Would Great Look Like?

Here at MPN, all of the Peer Supporters, both in the Family Division and Recovery Division, are tasked with writing an article, or a blog, about the month’s topic. This month’s topic is Radical Acceptance. I had never heard this term before. Many of you may be in the same situation. It is to you that I share what I learned.

The Inner Child and My Mental Health Disorder

What people see on the outside is just a hint of what is happening within. Moving through life and feeling the world while my trauma weaves stories about my emotions creates a mental storm legitimized by science as a mental health disorder. Some people call this empathic or highly sensitive, being tuned into what my immediate circle feels and carrying the unspoken weight of our disease. Mental health goes back as far as I could research in my family; it is the generational pattern that has been transferred from mother to child; it manifests as the burning of the internal turmoil in the middle of my life and replaces the peace my heart came here to feel.

A Journey to Wellness

I recently learned about the 8 Dimensions of Wellness. Before I dive into these, I first want to define what “wellness” means. Wellness is the “act of practicing healthy habits on a daily basis to attain better physical and mental health outcomes.1” For many people, wellness is associated with physical health, but not necessarily with mental health. I know that was true for me for much of my life. By taking stock of different areas of my life and consciously making a plan for how to improve these various aspects, I can increase my quality of life. I am just starting this journey myself and have a ways to go, but I believe with guidance from these dimensions, I can make some improvements in myself.

Parental Mental Health

Parents and children may be dealing with Behavioral Health Issues, Mental Health, and Special Healthcare Needs and we have a lot of plates spinning in the air at once. How do we cope with our children’s mental health? Some of our children have ADD, ADHD, Autism, Anxiety, PTSD, Panic Disorders or Bipolar disorder. There are so many diagnoses that I won’t name them all. People can’t physically see mental health issues, so they are often not talked about.

Forgiveness is Freedom

If I could give another word for recovery, it would be forgiveness because if resentment is the blind spot of addiction, then forgiveness is a corrected vision. Forgiveness is an inner connection versus an emphasis on the crisis. In other words, resentment is fear, and forgiveness is love.

Forgiving Ourselves

Go to your local bookstore or search on Amazon and you will find books to teach you just about anything. There are even books about parenting. The difference between a book about cooking and a book about parenting is that cooking is, for the most part, predictable and routine. If you have the skills and follow the recipe, you will most likely get good results.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is something that can be described in so many ways by everyone. I describe forgiveness as the power to move on, heal, recover and to have inner peace and grace in life. It takes courage, mental strength, bravery, humility, and compassion. For some of us it also takes emotional and spiritual awareness to forgive.

Acceptance

When I was 4 years old, I got my first pair of hearing aids. For the next 7 years, I hated them. Everything was just so loud. I would take them out often and several times, with my mother, have to dig them out of garbage cans because I accidentally threw them away. We moved to Helena, MT when I was 10 years old. My new audiologist realized that my hearing aids had never been set correctly for me. Finally, I could hear comfortably.

Putting Principles into Practice

In the beginning of my recovery journey my life was about bringing myself to a balanced state of mind so that I could begin to build a life of purpose. Early recovery was about discovering who I was through a healing process that brought me inwards towards many wounds that I felt would be my demise. Through this emotional roller coaster ride, I learned that after the scariest moments of remembering past hurt came equally enlightening moments of truth that helped me face my past and build a life beyond recovery.

From Diagnosis of a Disability to Emotions and Advocacy

I am a mom with a child who has a disability. Our daughter was born three months premature. She had failure to thrive, was on oxygen, and needed heart surgery. I remember receiving the diagnosis that she has Cerebral Palsy. I wondered what this would mean for her in her life.

Author: Guest Author