A Place to Wait, A Place to Grow, A Place to BE

This post is inspired in parts by an article a friend posted on FB, an FB post another friend wrote, and many positive words from lovely people, beautiful souls in my life (you know who you all are ♡).  

I've always advised friends going through a difficult time to use blogging, writing, running or any creative outlet and/or outdoor activity to help them "get out of their mind", when it is caught in the spiral of negative thinking, and that feeling of being overwhelmed with life.  

Today, I am taking my own advice.

Waiting.

We all have to wait.

We all have different kinds of waiting.

I'm not good at waiting.

Are you?

The ironic thing about life, it throws you in situations you are not good at (repeatedly!!!!!!!!!).

Or you find yourself constantly dealing with circumstances, which leaves you feeling trapped and alone.

Very alone.

All these situations and circumstances eventually makes you learn how to cope better and come out a winner.

One of my treasured "Moving-In Pictures"
- March, 2009 - the year we moved to the Netherlands from Germany
Holland is the third country I moved to (third continent I lived in) since leaving the Philippines in 1993

How?

Bravely face the painful patterns, have the courage to break it and feel confident to face the next challenge.

Simple, right? Right.

Believe it is, and it will be.  I speak from experience. 

The paradox: the painful patterns makes one stronger, braver, more courageous & confident.

Main motivation why I begun with blogging 7 years ago:
actively battle the cycles of my manic-depression; stop my mind from imprisoning myself.
Discovering 365 projects, in 2007 have helped me "get out" of that self-imposed prison
using the creativity of blogging
image from blog published: 11th of February, 2011 (midnight, minutes before the 12.02.11)

Believe.

One truly can come out of repeated painful life patterns, and come out of it a winner. 

I do not mean a winner in the sense of winning competitions or being champion at sports events. 

You can be of course, if that is what you want.

If that is the goal you would like to set to make you feel like a winner.

Since life will show you  :

• if you set a goal, 
• truly know the why behind this goal, 
• commit 
• and focus, 

you will attain what ever it is you set out to do. 

If you welcome life and all the possibilities it throws at you, you can be the winner of your goals & dreams.

A collage of my first ever 8K, October, 2011
TCS Amsterdam Marathon
image courtesy of my running blog
Happy Feet in the Netherlands

My first 10M Dam tot Damloop September, 2012
image courtesy of my running blog
Happy Feet in the Netherlands

A favourite Before & After collage
Left: My 1st Run2Day Ladies Damloop
Right: My 1st 10M Dam tot Damloop
image courtesy of my running blog
Happy Feet in the Netherlands

Marathons from 2012-2013, 2014
clockwise from the top : ING Night Marathon ran June 2013, September on the website page; invited to run 2014 Edition
right: Berlin Marathon & Amsterdam Marathon September & October 2012
left: Paris Marathon April 2013

There is a different kind of winning, though.

Being your own silent winner.

Being your own champion.

Winning your own silent battles is in the end the most important battle you will face.  The most fulfilling battle you can win.

Silent battles are battles each normal human being face.

Only not many talk, write about it...and yes, choose to "suffer in silence".

Sometimes, it seems it is the "only" choice.  We discover in time, this is not true.

Blogging Projects... have literally awakened my mind when it starts isolating itself.
image from blog published: 21st of June, 2011

I've done a lot of waiting.  I've done a lot of silent suffering.

Waiting  and suffering in one's youth; waiting and suffering in one's adulthood.

In youth: waiting to finish going to school - finally be freeeeeeeeee!

Be a free adult, and live life in the way I visualise a happy life to be.

In adulthood: waiting to be able to go to school again, learn the true essentials of life - finally be free.

Be free from silent suffering adults go through.

Since you are told from childhood on, that school prepares you for adult life.

Logic follows, that there is another school, when you have become an adult.

The kind of school that will teach you, "How to Live: when you have reached that point in life, that you should *actually, already know* how to!"

Acceptance & Growth. . .

There is one last, and most important school we will ever attend in our life time,  where there is only one degree to master:  Growth and Acceptance.

You might ask me, "Is there such a school?!? Where, when and how can I sign up for this degree???"

I have come to call this school: Life school. 

image courtesy of Google Images

Where: Within you; it is in that inner fighting spirit that refuse to give up & keep on learning what life teaches
When: Now. The beginning of learning is always in the now.
How: Participate. Positively. Actively.

May, 2010
at Keukenhof  - Holland's pride,
the World's most beautiful Spring Garden

June, 2013after running ING's Luxembourg's Night Marathon

image courtesy of notsalmon.com

image taken October, 2011
during the TCS Amsterdam Marathon Fair
as I picked up my 8K starting number

Everyone has their own Life School. 

Everyone.

The important thing to note, and is worth repeating:

everyone has their own school to go, individual classes to attend fit for each individual, and the individual time period, when the search arise for such a school.

Still, we are never - I repeat, NEVER- alone in this everlasting learning process.

Never alone.

image courtesy of The Optimism Revolution
managed by blogger Jim Willet, ultra-runner

 BEing

4th of September, 2013
When not running & blogging, I stay creatively & meditatively in motion through biking
@ The Lightness of Being on the Bike
in late Summer

Life School for me is about, acceptance, growth but most importantly: being.

Being authentic. Being who we truly are.

Simply being. 

We can say, life learning is all about:

• loving learning, 
• making the learning fun, 
• plowing on when the learning gets hard,
• asking - and yes, even crying out for help when the learning gets unbearable.

Still, in the end the core is: being.

Do we ever graduate from Life School?

I often think no one graduates from Life School. 

I want to believe though (the romantic in me!), that when we mastered *being*, we can be counsellors.

We counsel while we continue learning ourselves, how to...

• breathe - show ourselves with each breath, that we might think and feel we are dead but we  are not
• look inside ourselves, accept and grow - the bad, the good, the ugly, the beautiful . . .
• express who we are - actively, creatively, honestly, passionately . . .
• share - I can repeat it again, and again, we are never alone, we should not feel alone...but we need to reach out...
• make a step forward - stepping forward, even in the unknown ...eliciting change because no movement means staying frozen, where we are
• go back from the start and repeat 

 

24th of September, 2013
When not running & blogging, I stay creatively & meditatively in motion through biking
@ The Lightness of Being on the Bike
in Autumn

Waking up to Monday

There is a strong inclination to sleep through this Monday. But I won't.
Just like I resist on the inclination to give up on this year's Blogathon!
image courtesy of 365 project from 2011

“Never underestimate the pain of a person, because in all honesty, everyone is struggling. Some people are just better at hiding it than others.”

― Will Smith

When I begun this blog page, I have vowed to be honest in writing about myself, how I deal with manic-depression, and how I try not to let it rule my life.

I do not ask for pity, nor praise. My purpose is to create an awareness (there can never be enough!), that this mental illness exists and no one should be ashamed of it.

It's not always easy to do both: writing honestly about what I go through, and believing it myself, that I should not be ashamed of what afflicts me.

The weekend has been tough. Well, the past half a year has not been that easy. Oh, while I am at it, I can't remember when it was!  Ignore that last remark; it is my current dark mood talking.

With or without manic-depression, life is never a walk in the park.  Only with manic-depression, your brain convinces you, that you should not even think of walking in the park!

There is no huge revelation with this post. Only another page to pile on heaps of other posts declaring: giving up on life will NEVER EVER be my option.

Learning to Live Again

My greatest support: mijn liefste P. (from June, 2013)

@ Happy Feet in the Netherlands - I write about running, and my pursuit of a healthier life: physically & mentally

It's good to feel alive! 

Yesterday, I once again felt how far I have come in my pursuit to be a stronger person, after writing about running a race in our village: Driedorpenloop 2013: Running Home. I felt I've finally come home in every sense of the word.

You do not know how much happiness it brings me to be able to do the most normal things, that others take for granted.  As simple as writing what I did, and how I feel about it.

This month, I am making a huge effort to write in my blogs how running and writing helped me learn to live again, a life of quality. After suffering silently from manic-depression, -  undiagnosed until I was 30 years old -  it took blogging to make me confront and deal with it, and reach out to ask others for help and support.

collage from March 2009 - celebrating the month we moved to the Netherlands

When I moved to the Netherlands with the girls to begin a new life with mijn liefste P, I made a pact with myself, that I would do everything to not let my manic-depression beat me. I would do everything I can to live a full life, and make sure that the girls grow up with strong personalities; most of all create strong memories with them of a beautiful childhood.

from January, 2011

Blogathon 2013 is one of my way of documenting in words the struggle and triumphs of the years that passed since I decided to be pro-active in living with manic-depression, and not let it keep me from living a full life.

In this way, I hope to help others like I was generously helped.

Hilversum, Horns and Horses

The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
John Vance Cheney 

please click on collage for better view

For the first time today, since we moved to the Netherlands, the girls and I biked to Hilversum a total of 22 kms to and fro.

I was very proud of them, as was P, when he welcomed them home.  He had to work today, and I shared and showed our bike outing to him, through the pictures I took of our tour, while he let the dinner he was cooking simmer on the stove..

This week was a pretty hard week for me - emotionally, and psychologically rendering me physically weak as it mostly happens.  For this, I am extra grateful, that today, a lovely sunny Saturday, I was able to finally fulfill my promise to the girls of going with them to Hilversum on the bike.  

It was not only a fun laid back Saturday excursion but also a graspable experience for them, that although I deal with depression, I do not let it affect the plans we set out to do.  We might not do it right away, but we will eventually.  A promise is a promise.


As we planned we got scoops of their chosen ice-cream at a shop we discovered last week, after buying middle-daughter's first communion dress.


I'll be writing more about our bike tour in my other blog, The Lightness of Being on the Bike,  which I finally shared to family and friends on my FB page this afternoon; now I am sharing it here, as well.

The first post and currently the only post on the blog page, was posted on the 11th of April, also the same  day I created the blog and had the idea to record bike tours, travels, thoughts, ideas, experiences and memories recalled while on the bike.

I felt inspired by Tina Su, a blogger I admire, creator of  Think Simple Now, whose words on her FB post (talking from her personal experience), to put  ideas into reality, and share it "out there" even if it is not yet fully developed, and it is still taking shape, made me move into action myself.

Sometimes, somethings simply needs an inspiration from the outside and empowering roar in the inside of one's being, to make it happen.  And I did my mighty roar: just do it!


 How do you celebrate when the darkness has lifted from you, and the sun shines again in your heart?

Thoughts As Mother's Day Approaches (2)

Two years, one week and one day ago I took this picture of the girls. . .

I look at it again tonight filled with love and deep yearning, that I may hold them all in my arms sooner than tomorrow.

Through the years, I have been very hard on myself because I felt, that I have let manic-depression rule over my life, thus short-changing my daughters, whom I all have wished for all of my life, of a mother they deserve.

Luckily, I have been blessed with family, friends, and random wonderful kind-hearted people, whom I all have met throughout my journey to healing, who all have helped me in my struggles, and have not let me give up.

When  feelings of helplessness, fear, and all the myriad emotions, that one goes through when the dark moments revisit, I look at the images of my daughters, of moments captured that I would not like to forget, and after a while I see them in my mind, and their eyes, and see, to them, I am just the best that they could ever have as a mother.

I try to hold on to that image because not believing it is giving in to the darkness of my mind, and not the light of love of my daughters.

BlogNote 0:09 AM (this is actually more a note for me, so I will not forget...)

I almost did not write today, and spent half an hour in the bathroom crying, purging all the negative feelings I was having over myself before I literally shook my head, and made myself focus on "simply being there", no matter how I feel, and no matter what thoughts will pour out on the keyboard and on to the computer screen.

Yeah, 365 are not free from tears.

Living 365 ~ January, a look back and a look forward

Desperation is a necessary ingredient to learning anything, or creating anything. Period. If you ain't desperate at some point, you ain't interesting. ~ Jim Carrey

I love this quote, as I adore Jim Carrey as an actor.


In my case, one could replace the word "desperation" on the quote with depression.  I still need to tell you about myself, but isn't a daily discovery about bits and pieces much more interesting that laying it all in one blog?  Well, tonight that depression bit, is what you will learn about me.

I was diagnosed with manic-depression 8 years ago, while still living in Germany.  Previously to that diagnosis, I had years of isolation with what I was going through.  My life went on like everyone elses but I struggled with what I was going through alone.

In part, this blog was born to have a platform to talk about how life could be very productive and positive after going through years of depression.  But also to record the success in finding natural ways to overcome the daily battles with this ailment.

Tonight, while looking for a quote for today's image, I stumbled upon a site called, Real Depression Help.  The site led me to Christina's Home Remedies, which offers natural help for depression.

This is what I find rewarding with 365, it leads me to the path I need and want to take, as I take steps towards other goals.  Two for a price of one!

Looking back to the month of January, it was very rewarding, not only in feeling accomplishment of confronting many fears and issues head on but also in setting a trend for what lies ahead.  It strengthened my motto, and battle cry: simplify, simplify, simplify!

Fire away, February! :)