HomegirlXHealed Part 1
Updated: Jun 9, 2020
A little hippie, a little hood and all heart: My journey through anxiety, depression, healing and finding my purpose
You Need An End, To Have A New Beginning
October 1, 2016:
The day my brain broke
My newborn baby girl was a week old when I hit head first into a concrete wall - not literally but metaphorically. I can pinpoint the exact time my brain broke; it was a Sunday night during the 10pm news. I had a terrifying, scary thought about my new baby that would send me on months long psychosis, extreme anxiety and extremely low depression. This was the night I lost myself for a while.
I should back up a little-
I was 33 when I had my daughter. My husband and I had been together 12 years at this point. In my 20s, I was never very serious about becoming a mom, nor did I believe I was able to get pregnant. Fast forward to my 30s when I decided that there was more to life than the clubs and myself, my husband and I would talk here and there about having baby but I had convinced myself that I wasn't able to get pregnant. I have always had irregular menstrual cycles, mood swings among other symptoms. Now I know that this was a textbook case of imbalanced hormones.
January 19, 2016:
The beginning to the end of the me as I knew me
A few weeks earlier, I went out and had a few drinks but I noticed I got tipsy sooner than before (I was an a regular drinker by this time in my life- maybe more than I would care to admit). Then there were some pretty severe stomach pains, and some queasiness. Since my periods were always irregular I couldn't use that as an indicator of pregnancy, so I went to neighborhood Wal-Mart for a test. I picked the cheapest test possible because I just knew it was going to negative so I wasn't going to spend much on a test when I could use the extra money towards some makeup or a luxury brand purse. So I went home and took the test, waited the 2 minutes and it WAS POSITIVE! I was shocked, started shaking, called my husband and told him what was happening, still shocked, now scared.
This positive test would be like a flag at the start of a race. I made an appointment to see the doctor and I was 6 weeks pregnant with what looked like a peanut. I was a sad, happy, confused but one thing I was sure about and that was for the first time maybe ever in my life, I would need to be brave. So from that day forward it was me and my peanut, who would later become Santana Sunshine.
I had several months of not just morning but all-day-sickness. This nausea would be the first of many opportunities to research natural remedies to heal myself. I used ginger and mint and a lot of it, infused into ice cubes (see instructions below), organic candies, caffeine free teas and that's what got me and Peanut through our first 4 months.
Who was I, to begin with?
Up until now- all I had to do was any and everything I wanted. I had been at my job for 10 years, settled comfortably into my soul-sucking cubicle. I had gotten as far as those gray walls, ergonomic evaluations, meeting rooms, reports, VariDesk and ass kissing was going to take me. By this time, I had worked my way into an office where during my lunch time, I would crawl underneath my desk to escape the nausea from my pregnancy and the fakeness of it all. Despite being burnt out by the tedious work, I still believed in the organization I worked for so I worked hard, sometimes did a little online shopping and occasionally took off early on Fridays so that I could get a head start on my drinking and partying for the weekend (pre-peanut of course). I would walk into the work building (although beautiful) where I worked and think to myself, "how many more times would I walk down this same hall?" I had all but stopped dreaming in exchange for that comfy office chair and guaranteed bi-weekly paycheck. I had suppressed this yearning that I had for more, in exchange for a set work schedule.
At around 5 months pregnant, during one of the many doctor visits, I learned I had an incompetent cervix and was assigned modified bed rest- meaning I still had to go to work (insert eye rolls and a sigh) however my pregnancy quickly turned to more high risk than was first thought. At last, full bed rest for 7 weeks!!! I was excited for the reprieve from the monotony of that long hall and lunch room small talk. Little did I know that this 7 weeks of bed rest would have an impact on my FMLA time off after the peanut arrived. My comfy, cozy, complacent work world of all those years was about to come crashing down.
To be continued.
Ginger Infused Ice Cubes for Morning Sickness Relief
1 Ice Tray
1 Knob of Ginger about index finger size
Fresh Water
Peel a piece of fresh ginger with a dull spoon, using the micro blade side on a grater, grate the ginger until it becomes a fine paste which can then be spooned into each ice cube tray section, add water into each cube section and freeze.
Hollie Gonzales
Ritual Aesthetics x Hollie G and
Home Girl Can Heal