recovery Archives

How to Restore your Soul when Feeling Flat and Drained Out?

Feeling flat and empty can become an invite to feeling full of depth and not a step into depression. Focusing in on something and someone bigger than ourselves can revive a flagging soul. There are times when I feel flat. Life feels meaningless and like it’s one cyclical trip of […]

Mental health Spiritual Formation

For Your Mental Health Be a Shield Maiden Thrush.

Mental health is discovering what you were born to create, building a supportive nest around it and protecting it like a Viking shield maiden. It was the scary wild eyes that made me take a step back. Recently I have been doing some gardening at a retirement village. This isn’t just […]

Getting Well Staying Well Mental health

Crossing Boundaries Crushes the Shape of the Heart

People will always keep crossing your boundaries when your heart is bent and buckled out of shape. But that heart can recover and be filled with courage. It takes time and catching some breath. Crossing boundaries ‘You need to set some boundaries’. As they said this my heart sank. I […]

"An ice climber scaling a sheer frozen wall, with text 'Want to die? 37 Sentences to stop the slide.'"

Getting Well Staying Well

Suicide. 37 Sentences to Stop the Slide

When you’re on a slippery slope towards suicide, you need self-talk sentences to arrest your fall. The dark self-talk of ‘I want to die’ needs to replaced with ‘I need help and I can get it’. Change your words and you change your life. The ice pick slammed into the […]

Mental health

You Don’t Want to, But you Keep Going back

You just keep going back to something that actually repulses you. It maybe sniffing the vomit or wallowing in the mud, but you keep returning to foolishness. Perhaps it’s a change of heart that’s needed. They kept on repeatedly going back to experience the same abuse. They could see that […]

Getting Well Staying Well

When Women with Depression Discover their Beauty

Women have a God-given beauty within them that, when squashed and sullied, grows a depression. When we discover God’s view of what is beautiful, then hope can blossom in a seemingly barren field. She was 1.52m (5ft) high, never applied any makeup, no fancy hairstyle, diamond earrings, or expensive gowns. […]

Mental Health is ... Giving Grace to Failure and Rethinking Expectations

Getting Well Staying Well Mental health

Give Grace to Failure and Rethink Expectations

When we have realistic expectations, we can build resilience and an internal wisdom that is gentle with our humanity. We can grace ourselves and others when there is a failure to meet expectations. What caused the breakdown? Was it a genetic weakness? The piling up of expectations? Lack of sleep, […]

Getting Well Staying Well Mental health

Mental Health is … Accepting the Pain to Get the Gain

If you want long-term gain, you need to accept short-term pain. We want ‘quick-fix’ solutions and instant gratification but reaping never comes before sowing. When my counselor said we would have to go through this unbearable feeling, I felt a kind of pulling back. Did I really want to go […]

Getting Well Staying Well Mental health

Mental Health is … You Taking Ownership of You

When we take ownership of the choices, we have made and their resulting consequences we can take a huge leap forward in our mental wellness. It’s called self-determination. We discover we are indeed the captain of our own soul. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments […]

Getting Well Staying Well Mental Illnesses

How God meets us when we are Anxious

When God says ‘don’t be anxious’ it’s not a command it’s an invitation to grow closer in trust. We see a small corner of the picture, but God sees the whole. I was living in the sense of dread. I didn’t know what the next day would bring, and my […]