heatherniemas

There is Light

Published on September 17, 2021September 20, 2021 by heatherniemas10 Comments

There is Light

In light of suicide prevention awareness month, I felt moved to share my experiences. I want to give hope to even one person. Hope is something I had been missing for a long time on my journey. Yet, hope has been crucial to me still being here. If you are contemplating suicide, remember to just stay. This quote by Erin Van Vuren helped me stay. It was a good reminder that I just needed to fucking stay.

There’s going to be days when you just don’t want to be here anymore. You just STAY. You fucking stay. Somewhere out there, somebody needs your voice. I promise. I swear to God, your laughter is someone’s saving grace. Hold on tight, baby. The sun is coming for you.

Remember to stay for the laughter. Stay for the bits of joy. Stay for the sunrise you have yet to see. Stay for the hope. Just stay.

I have had lots of times when I didn’t want to be here anymore. I wanted to die. This is from high school on to the present day. During part of this time, I didn’t realize I was struggling from depression. A deep dark depression. On the outside everything looked fine. I was “fine”, but inside I was dying. I kept this secret of wanting to die to myself for a very long time. I was utterly hopeless. I felt insignificant, unwanted, and a piece of trash. Then as I was older, I had a treatment team. I’m in recovery from an eating disorder and my treatment team was a life line. I was able to share my thoughts of wanting to die with my treatment team. Saying it and sharing it helped it lose some power. I was not alone. For the longest time, I felt so alone with this secret of wanting to die. It was as if no one cared about me and I was worthless. Then, I began to hold onto others’ hope. My therapist, dietician, and psychiatrist all held hope for me. This kept me alive.

It was a daily struggle that I didn’t want to be here. That was my code word for dying. It was painful. It was a constant battle of staying alive. This struggle was exhausting. The depression was never ending. It was a blanket. Looking back I realized, I didn’t want to die. I just wanted the pain to end. I would often tell others I was tired. I didn’t share that I know longer wanted to be here. When I finally shared my secret with others, it helped. It helped when others checked on me. It helped me to realize I had worth and was needed.

As I am healing, I have found that now I am trying to be present in life moments. Before I was just existing. All I did was survive. Now I want to feel the laughter, joy, and smiles. I think about gratitude and the good and kind things in life. The gratitude shows me bits of joy and helps give me hope.

This quote by Brene Brown speaks to me. For so long I wouldn’t talk to anyone, then it was just my treatment team. Part of my healing was when I began to open up to people in my personal life.

Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable.

It means to show up and be seen.

To ask for what you need.

To talk about how you’re feeling.

To have the hard conversations.

Part of what I needed was borrowing other’s hope for me. I needed this more than they knew. This got me through hard times. I hope this can give others hope and safety. I give you my hope. Remember, you are not expected to be perfect. Give yourself grace. Practice self compassion. Practice self-love.

Also, thinking about and writing down my values has helped give me courage and reasons to stay. I often look at these and remember them. Being vulnerable and honest with others has opened the door for them to care about me and notice me. Realizing people cared about me and would care if I was gone was important in my healing. That was something really hard to notice, but really beneficial. A final reminder. There is hope in every situation, even when your brain says there isn’t. Reach out. Don’t suffer alone. There is hope.

The Eyes of Recovery

Published on April 6, 2021April 6, 2021 by heatherniemas1 Comment

When I was little, I got my first pair of glasses. Before that I didn’t even know that I couldn’t see. I never saw a plane in the sky. My mom would say to me, look up in the sky to see the plane. I would say okay, but I never saw the plane. Everything in my life was fuzzy. I thought this was how the world was supposed to be. Everything blended together, and it was a blur. I couldn’t see far at all. This is how eating disorders are. They are insidious. You don’t even know what you are missing. In my eating disorder, there was no light. I couldn’t see far at all. I definitely could not see into the future. I could not hold hopes or dreams.

Come the day I got glasses, I remember noticing all the individual blades of grass. Initially, to see all the shades and outlines of objects was quite overwhelming. It is like recovery, when I first began to feel and see things in color. It was overwhelming and scary, and then it became beautiful. For example, when I began to hold my own hope and look for it. This was a precious gift. When I searched out joy and truly laughed. I was present for life in moments rather than just existing. Instead of waiting on the sidelines, I put my arms out to run on the beach. I felt the wind in my face and sand in my toes. This is recovery. I started showing up in the fun and the hard. I am learning to be messy and unapologetic about my life.

Climbing the Mountain

Published on March 31, 2021April 6, 2021 by heatherniemasLeave a comment

I ran into the word resiliency while I was on social media. It was a reminder of something I wanted to embody. I thought maybe this could be my word for the year. It sounded hearty and tough. It showed a lot of grit.

Last year and throughout this year, I have held onto the word hope. It has become sort of a mantra for me. Originally, I held onto others’ hope for me. Then, I began to start little by little holding and owning my own hope. I was hoping resiliency could take a special place in my heart this year, and hold the same power as the word hope.

When I think of resiliency, I think of falling down and getting back up even though it is really hard. It is putting one foot in front of the other, and doing the next right thing. It is learning when to ask for help. It is not a sign of failure, but a sign of strength and wanting to get better.

So when I proceeded to look up the definition online several things came up. One was the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. The next part of the definition was the ability of an object to spring back into shape. This definition defeated me. What if I have no shape to bounce back to? What if I am lost, crumbling, broken, falling apart? What if I don’t have a mold to come back to?

I was very discouraged after reading these definitions. I shared this with my therapist and she sent me this description of resiliency.

Resilience is “like climbing a mountain without a trail map. It takes time, strength, and help from people around you, and you’ll likely experience setbacks along the way. But eventually you reach the top and look back at how far you’ve come.”

I realized after reading this, I am scared of the ups. I’m scared of reaching the proverbial top of the mountain. What if it wasn’t what I had hoped for? What if it all comes crashing down again? What if I am too broken? I haven’t experienced the ups very often. I am a professional at holding the downs. The downs are really tough and heavy. The ups feel good, however, there are risks in holding hope. You are very vulnerable. It is scary to put yourself out there. It is uncomfortable when my body is not used to it. So how do I step into the hard, the scary, the uncomfortable? I think I do it by taking the next step. Just do it. One moment at a time. One choice at a time.

So I am climbing my own mountain. The trails are windy and sometimes come back on each other. I think instead of waiting until I get to the top to look back, I will rest along the way. I will need help, connection, and occasionally someone to remind me to look back to see how far I’ve actually come. I’m starting to have some ups along with my downs. I try to step into the hard with my strength and those around me helping to hold me up. I am going to take that step.