This too shall pass

If you’ve been following awhile, you already know that I have a long history with depression.

She comes and goes, sometimes aligning herself with stressful life events and sometimes just showing up randomly. The house guest nobody asked for, barging in the door and propping her dirty boots on my just-cleaned coffee table.

In the past few months, she’s been around. Making herself comfortable in my space, inviting her bestie anxiety along for the ride and unpacking a few new trinkets from her bag of tricks, including a year-long stomach issue where we’ve now ruled out physical causes.

It has been, as you might guess, difficult.

And so I enter a new phase of my self-love journey. One where I treat myself as I would treat a friend in the same circumstance.

I take time and space and rest. I bring myself plants because the greenery in my space gives me peace. I use what energy I have to make homemade lentil soups and fresh-pressed pear-mint juice with a splash of tonic water and air fryer potatoes from my garden. I start a ginger bug. I cozy up on the garden and home sides of TikTok. I daydream about Utopia. And I remind myself that this too shall pass.

Even if it means I’m writing slower right now.

Even if I have less to offer.