Introduction

I am a single mum of two beautiful girls. They are my world and literally the reason I am still alive today.

I have suffered severe depression and anxiety on and off since I suddenly lost my mum almost 15 years ago and those two girls are what stops the thoughts going to the darkest place in my darkest times.
When I look back, I undoubtedly suffered both long before that but not in the same way, and not to the severity I suffered after. Mum's passing was a pretty big trigger, as I'm sure it would be for many people and whilst the anxieties were there, doing their thing in the background, it was only the depression I recognised and did anything about, leaving anxieties to build and worsen over time.
I affectionately refer to my anxieties as crazies - there is no disrespect there, I just find a bit of satire helps my process. I refer to myself as a nutter, a loon or as bat-shit-crazy on a regular basis.
After a particularly bad bout of anxiety (a month off work bad), and with thanks to someone close pointing out some of my crazies, I decided to start being more public about what goes on inside my head. Nothing big initially, just admitting I wasn't okay on bad days. From there, I started to post little tid-bits on Facebook, to a restricted audience and opened it up over time to include all of my 'friends' and eventually, their friends too. The response was far and above anything I had expected, it became a personal therapy - people reached out to let me know that what I thought of as my own particular brand of crazy wasn't actually all that different to theirs, that I wasn't quite as unique as my brain would have me believe. What's more, they said it helped them to know they weren't alone, that others genuinely did have similar thought patterns, problems and worries. (That same someone close had already told me that but I hadn't really believed it, maybe still don't).
And now, here we are...graduating from Facebook to post more specifically about my situation because I want to be able to take breaks from that brand of social media and this is my therapy now so I don't want to stop when I need that break.
If you've gotten this far into a particularly boring intro post, then I hope you'll stick around for the first installment...

TTFN

p.s. The pic is simply a pretty flower from my Grandad's garden.