Today is my birthday. A day of joy. A day of reflection. A day of gratitude. For that reason, I am giving myself permission to go a little more personal on this, my professional website.

Tl;dr – I am grateful for another year of life.

This is a picture of me from just over a year ago. November 15, 2019 to be precise.

To be honest, I’m a little surprised I could find one. Especially one where I am smiling. Though looking at it, I can see that the smile feels…forced. If you look at my camera roll, there’s a pretty big jump in the time frame of when there are pictures. I was, to be blunt, not in a picture-taking mood.

In fact, when I think about where I was last year, I shudder. I was a couple months into one of the darkest periods of my life. Those who are closest to me know how bad it was. For others, I pretty much disappeared. Or phoned it in.

While I was on the path of healing by the time by birthday rolled around, I remember feeling a lot of despair. That I was never going to get through this. That life was always going to be this way. That I had settled into this “new normal” (ironic, now that 2020 has happened) that I was just going to have to deal with.

One year later, I am so grateful to say that it wasn’t true. I fought hard. And I have come such a long way. And today, on this birthday, I want to thank the long list of people and things that helped me along my path. Because without them, I wouldn’t be here.

I am grateful for doctors and therapists and psychiatrists and medication. I was in desperate need of professional help and I found some incredible people who steered me along, showed me strategies I could use, assured me that I was normal, let me talk and talk and talk, and gave me what I needed. Mental health has too much of a stigma. I certainly felt it. To be honest, I’ve been open with very few people about my struggles. But I feel compelled to put it out publicly today (for the very few people who will read this). Sometimes we need help. And that doesn’t make you weak. Or bad. Or broken. It just means you need help. As hard as it was, as ashamed as I was at the time, getting that help was the most important decision I made during this period.

I am grateful for the deep dive I’ve been doing into the creative process – for what I’ve learned and for what it has sparked within me. Writing, especially my personal writing that I do every morning, has been a saving grace. The process of dumping all my thoughts onto paper, with no pressure of anyone reading them, has given me the space to work through a lot of my emotions, questions, doubts, fears, and anxieties. Writing helped me feel safe. It has given me hope. It has sparked the blossoming of new dreams and passions, and helped me see a path forward.

I am grateful to family and friends – especially my mom – for being there in my darkest hours. And all the other hours as well. For loving me, hugging me, talking with me (even when I called at inconvenient times), and providing me support when it was needed.

I am grateful for my beautiful, precious, delightful, inquisitive, stubborn, loving daughter. She not only gave me a consistent reason to get out of bed in the morning, but showed me the possibilities of joy and love on a daily basis.

My husband. Oh, my husband. The greatest blessing of my life. He is my rock. My heart. He took on such a heavy burden during my time of crisis and recovery, and he did it with so much unconditional love and support. He is the reason I survived. He is (in large part to his eagle eyes on the side effects of a medication I was taking) the reason I now thrive. His love, devotion, support, cheerleading, hugs, patience, understanding, prayers, blessings, and so much more kept me going even in my darkest moments.

And my faith. I recognize it’s not perhaps the best professional move to put my faith here, but I can’t leave it out. (If it offends you, please feel free to skip this paragraph. No hard feelings.) I am eternally grateful to a loving Heavenly Father who saw me through this past year. For loving me, supporting me, blessing me, and guiding me. For listening to my prayers and my tears. For sending me angels. For reminding me that life is precious. That I am His beloved daughter. That my life is full of blessings, and I have an infinite number of things to look forward to.

Today, I grateful to report that I am happy. I am healthy. I am out of therapy. I am off my medication. I have found a new gratitude for life, my family, my friends, my work, and my talents. I have dreams for the future. I have come such an incredibly long way. And all I can say to anyone else who might be in the midst of their own dark days – I see you. I’m so sorry. But fight. Please. Fight. You can get to the other side.

Today, I am grateful for another year of life.