I know sometimes it can feel like we get up just so we can fall down again – and that the process of getting up can seem to take forever…because we are human and can only heal so much at a time. Even while we heal we are fending off new threats to our well-being; whether it’s a chronic problem or the worry of what’s going to happen next to us or our loved ones.

It often feels like it would take a miracle to rescue us from the despair, to fortify our souls, to make us whole.

Over the last month I’ve thought about this process – of getting back up. I thought about hopelessness, and depression, anxiety and shame. I thought about change, and risk, and consequence, faith and love. I also thought about miracles and how we abdicate our power to the universe – as if circumstances, or our perception of circumstances, could never improve without the application of supernatural force.

After all that thinking – and please understand, when I’m “thinking” it’s less like a calm journal exercise and more like a cage fight between my heart and brain – after all that, one idea was clear: Don’t wait for miracles. You ARE the miracle.

We choose change or we choose to remain the same. It’s not good or bad, it is what we choose. We pray, we meditate, we work hard, we even ask for help…all the time it’s us, we’re the force that can move our own “mountain.” We’re also miracles for others…by example…showing them how to get back up again; being a searchlight.

As someone that lives with chronic pain and mental illness, I want people to know that right now, as I type, I’m in a depression…and it took weeks for me to “get up” and write these few paragraphs. During that time I got a biopsy done (results came back fine), evacuated from Hurricane Matthew (also came through fine), came to terms with a break up (still working on that) and even with all my heart/brain cage fighting I still feel a little bit lost about exactly how I’m going to get back up again. I write about these things as I’m working them out for myself…not because I’m an expert…because I’m human.

Honestly, when I’m being rotten to myself I’ll stifle these kinds of posts (or delete them later, which I hate)…because as a self-ascribed “mess” what business do I have “helping” anyone? Before I wrote this post I thought about something I said during the intensely triggering #notokay twitter storm – when assholes were trolling others about why they don’t report their sexual assaults:

I speak for myself and those that understand my story because it’s their story too. I speak so that we feel less alone. ♡

Which is the same reason I’m sharing this post right now – so that we can feel less alone and each find our own way, together.