How I became UNSUBSCRIBED

I’ve been on a self-healing journey, after being in a major slump, for about the last 5 years give or take a month. Many people looking in from the outside wouldn’t know or think this, but it’s true. Five years ago I felt like such a failure that I had bad thoughts about myself. Like, really bad thoughts. The kind of thoughts that land you in a mental hospital for 5 days. Yes. That’s right. And for awhile I was ashamed about it. I hid in my house. I became a hermit. I didn’t want to be seen. I did the bare minimum in life. But people didn’t know. Because we live in a rural area, it’s not uncommon to NOT see people. Especially being a stay at home mom for so long, it was usual for me to just be at home and not out and about in the world. I didn’t have to leave the home everyday to go to work, I didn’t visit a gym regularly, I didn’t volunteer to help with school activities or sports schedules. I was just a mom and my days were spent cleaning and cooking. Except that I also loooved to read and write. I fantasized about being a famous author someday and having my own books on my bookshelves.

So I began a blog, this was back maybe 2014ish…I had the brilliant idea to write about our daily life on the farm. I also wrote about food and what was happening with our family. I was having so much fun writing about farming, food, and our family and I was beginning to gain some real traction and lots of readers that I thought I had finally found my purpose in life! It wasn’t just to raise little people, it was to inform, educate, and entertain other people. This went on for a few years and I was having a fabulous time meeting other bloggers and agricultural industry people, foodies, and mommy bloggers. I was having the time of my life.

Until it all ended quite badly. There was a branding/trademark issue that could have been litigious if I hadn’t given it all up. So I was basically torn apart, ripped up into a million little pieces, and my pieces were thrown into the deepest darkest hole of despair. I felt like such a loser. A failure. A drain. A burden. It was over. Deleted. Gone forever, and so was I. I sought depression medications from my family physician and over the course of 8 months, I was prescribed at least 4 different meds at varying dosages. Basically every time I went to see her, which was monthly, she gave me something new or a different dose of it to try. 

I had a brief 6 months of trying to reinvent myself, this would have been mid to late 2016, if I’m remembering correctly. I tried a new name, brand, and platform out but it just wasn’t working for me. It just wasn’t in alignment, and it felt like I was pushing it instead of effortlessly happening. I wasn’t getting anywhere with this new idea and feelings of failure were surrounding and choking the life out of me every day. I continued to fake the happy face and act like I had it all under control, but the reality was that I could only fake it for so long until I was going to crash. And crash I did.

And that’s where the mental hospital comes in. I knew enough that I needed help or I could hurt myself and that was not something I wanted my family to have to live through. I don’t remember a lot about the day I checked into the hospital, but I do remember sitting on the floor in my closet on a dreary grey January morning, thinking I could just relieve my family of me. They would be so happy I was finally gone and all of the drama I had created would be over. Then there was literally a voice in my head that said “The children will be the ones to find you first.” And that is when I called a hotline. I knew I couldn’t do that to them. You cannot unsee a thing like your Mother shot dead in her closet when you come home from school. 

The woman on the other end of the hotline convinced me to drive myself to see her, about 20 minutes away. If I didn’t show up in her office in 20 minutes, she was calling 911 and sending them to my address. Somehow I drove myself there. I don’t remember it. I barely remember our time together at all now, other than I asked her once, “why are you being so nice to me? I’m an awful person” and she said “I can see that you’re not an awful person, you’re just in an awful place right now but I know that this is not the last place for you.” 

She called my husband, who was driving and about an hour away going to up some farm machinery parts, and asked him to pull over because she needed to talk to him. She told him where I was and what was happening and that I would be in the emergency room at the local hospital.

He came and I only remember him coming in with tears streaming down his face and he hugged me so hard I felt like I didn’t deserve him or his tears. He told me that he knew I was struggling with my blog ending but he didn’t realize how severely it had impacted me. He didn’t realize that my self-worth had been shattered and that my brain was literally malfunctioning and making me do, say, and think things I never would have before. The nurse, social worker, and doctor were all in the room as we were told what was happening to me and my brain. I was being taken to a treatment facility next by ambulance. I was a danger to myself. He couldn’t come with me. I needed a detox, evaluation by a psychiatrist, and a little time away from my everyday life. As I was strapped to the gurney and loaded in the ambulance, I picked my head up enough to see him standing in the parking lot a few feet away, standing there looking defeated, confused, and utterly lost.

After 5 days I was released from the hospital. It was apparent that I had been overmedicated by my previous medical provider, which hadn’t helped the self-deprecating situation at all. The chemicals in my brain were already fragile from my low self-worth, and then the overmedicating had compounded it substantially.

I was sent home with 2 new medications at new doses and one med to use only in desperate as-needed situations. I had already gone through the worst of the detoxing in the hospital, so now it was up to me to keep the upward momentum by starting cognitive behavioral therapy. 

Taking care of me was now my new full time job. The house cleaning would wait. The kids could make their own eggs, sandwiches, and mac n cheese, and the dishes would eventually get washed by someone. 

My journey to wholeness started with one book that I got in the hospital. May Cause Miracles by Gabby Bernstein was in the mental ward library and I grabbed it one day after a group session, thinking “Dear God I really need a miracle” and I took it back to my room to read.  A nurse saw me reading it and said I could keep it if I wanted so I asked for a highlighter. I was not allowed to have a highlighter. It could be used as a weapon. So I dog-eared pages that had significant impact on me and ended up bringing it home, where I reread it, this time with a highlighter.

Then I went on amazon and bought a few more Gabby books. I began reading feverishly about her ideas around God, Universe, Spirituality, and Forgiveness. Boy, did I have a lot of forgiving to do. I had to forgive myself for the stupid blog and how badly it ended. I had to forgive myself for the circumstances that led to my hospital stay. I had to forgive myself for hurting my husband and children and putting them through all of that drama and feelings of uncertainty. And most of all I had to forgive myself for just everything and anything that hurt. It was a really difficult time. People that have never been in a mental hospital might think that you get out and everything’s better, but the truth is that the hospital was the easy part…the next 5 years were what was hardest.

So I just kept following the breadcrumbs, to what was next. The Gabby books led to other books, other authors, to teach me something new. Next, I got interested in learning about essential oils and natural remedies, crystals, yoga, spirituality, oracle cards, boundaries, soul contracts, and more. I just kept reading. Learning. Seeking. Growing.

And here we are now today. It’s been a little over 5 years since I was released from the hospital and I can say without a doubt that what I’ve learned over the last 5 years has changed my life, my family’s life, and our future for the better. Would I want to do it all over again? HELL NO! I wish I had never done that first blog and podcast. But now looking back, I see how it led to my growth. I did it. We did it. It took a lot of guts, love, and communication, but my family and I survived and I think we’re better for it. As my coaching mentor Nancy Levin would say, I’m now teaching from the scar, not the wound. 

The kids are all 5 years older and my husband and I are lightyears more mature. We’re able to talk about things and share like I never knew was possible. And together as a family, we give ourselves, and each other a lot of grace when we need it.

So I had a realization the other day as I was dealing with a bit of gloominess over the cold, rainy, grey day I was experiencing. I gave myself permission to do nothing else! I just decided I was not going to accomplish any more than just clearing out my email inboxes. Everything else could wait. That was my task for the day. Over 12,000 emails in 5 different accounts was my job. 

I started by deleting. My fingers were flying, the doggies tucked into my sides, sitting in our sunroom. Delete. Delete. Delete. This went on for probably a half hour. I took a break to get up and use the bathroom and refill my mug of water. I sat back down, opened my email again and instead of just deleting, I started unsubscribing. Because I realized that these emails were going to keep coming if I just deleted them. The senders were going to send again. Probably tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. I was never going to get rid of these emails because they were going to keep coming. So I unsubscribed.

I unsubscribed from hundreds of vendors and companies. It took probably 5 hours of on and off unsubscribing to fully complete the task but I did it. At the end of it all I felt so clear and unburdened by the thought of an overcrowded inbox in my email accounts. 

I was sitting with my doggies, relishing how I had just cleared out my inbox by unsubscribing when the thought hit me: I can unsubscribe from anything I want in life, not just emails.

Let me say that again for the people in the back that might be zoning out: I can unsubscribe from anything. You can unsubscribe from anything. We can unsubscribe from anything!

And so this show was born. I instantly had the thought that I needed to use my voice, the thing that had once been choked and silenced right out of me, to speak to women, and tell them what I know, what I’ve learned, what I’ve done in the past 5 years to heal myself and build a tighter family unit than I ever could have imagined.

So here we are: UNSUBSCRIBED is for you, whoever you are, wherever you are listening. This show is for women, and as a woman I will speak directly to the heart of you. We’re going to journey through unlearning societal norms and childhood conditioning, I’ll teach you how to listen to your intuition and trust your soul callings, and you’ll see how you can design your life around your true purpose. We’ll dive into a lot of self-improvement topics, explore mental health and it’s impact on families, and discover spirituality together. We are going to unsubscribe from all of the things we don’t want so there’s room in our life for what we do want!

Now, I just said that this show is for women, and mostly mom and wives I’d say because that’s what I am so that’s what I can relate to and speak about but I don’t want to leave out the dudes, because my husband was a HUGE part of my healing. So this show is also for men that want to help change humanity for the betterment of all people by starting with understanding better the women in their own lives. 

There’s so much to learn. As a capitalistic society we get so busy in our rat race lives and forget that we’re actually souls in a human body right now. Being a lifelong learner is all of our purposes. Our souls are here to evolve, grow, become more enlightened. Together, we’re going to get it done. I’m going to help you UNSUBSCRIBE from the things you don’t want in your life, and help you LEARN the things you do want in your life. Ok, there is SO much to learn. There’s an old saying, “If you’re not going forward, you’re actually going backward.”