During this quarantine, I am truly conceptualizing my future and self. I am trying to get really clear about what I want, what it will take to get it, and to get stronger. To be quite honest, and to really open up: I have been struggling with Postpartum Depression for nearly a year now. It has been quite heavy. It really put me in touch with writing for relief of these deep, dark emotions. That is why I am here, at least more frequently than I was when I first began two years ago.
I truly believe there is an outlet for emotional suffering. I believe this outlet not to be pharmaceutical. I believe the body knows what it is doing when it enters a state of dis-ease. I believe that it does it for a purpose and our goal is to understand why. I reject philosophies which suggest in some ways that we were in born defective. That's an easy out.
I want to know why.
Who am I? I am a college student. I have my undergraduate degree from Salt Lake Community College. I obtained 90 credits and got accepted into Chiropractic College as a form of early acceptance. The Chiropractic College I attend will take about four years to complete, a little less for some.
I am on year two. During the next few years I will obtain my bachelors of science, and graduate as a doctor of chiropractic (D.C.) I want to go further with my education after this? I would like to probably go into some sort of neuroscience PhD program, and I also would love to get a masters in statistical research. However, I will probably defer this to a later segment of time in my life -- as I first desire to open up an office in California for a couple of years.
Why? What's this drive to do this? My drive has always been the same really. I grew up in a family that valued education as a means to gain answers for problems. And I have a huge problem with the mental health industry. Maybe because I was inside a cavern of the industry not many people get to witness. I want to see changes happen inside this industry that better serves patients. I want to learn as much as I possibly can about the subject.
And then I want to somehow make a billion dollars (2040/2050) -- and buy hundreds/thousands of treatment centers and run them as a non-profit for anyone who suffers. Anyone can get help. And it will work. It will work better than any method we currently are using as of 2020.
At this point in my life I will be older. I want to have the level of eduction in which I can correctly shape treatment protocols after a chiropractic model of care. It would be centered around brain health and repatterning neurological triggers and patterns.
A model of care, that I can back up with research.
Research I've been working on my whole life.
I know that sounds like such an odd life plan. Some it is very vague and grandiose perhaps? Like the whole billions of dollars and I buy all these treatment centers for little girls who were just like me.
Little me, sitting, sleeping, eating, living in these mental health facilities, 2000 miles from any semblance of a home. I lived in a treatment center esque house from the time I arose, till the time I went to bed for years.
I wanted better help.
In a lot of ways, being there -- created more trauma.
And I don't want that happening to anyone else.
I've also lost a lot of friends, I've lost a lot of people in my life due to overdose and drugs. And each suicide has been devastating. Because, I feel like we need relief from this issue. We are willing to shut down our entire country (and world) for 40,000 deaths. I mean; how horrible that people have died. I do not want to belittle this.
67,300 Americans died from drug-involved overdose in 2018.
and 48,344 recorded suicides.
yearly, reoccurring, onwards and upwards.
and here we are in 2020 and
opiates are still being prescribed as the go to pain killer.
and cannabis is still illegal.
This is a problem. And I'll be bold enough to say that this is bigger than corona.
That's who I am and why I am here. I am writing on HIVE as a means of self expression first and foremost. I want to build this community HERE; which I can constantly just put my thoughts and work on blockchain. I want to preserve my thoughts a bit. I want to understand what I was thinking about -- and how I was processing during certain time periods in my life. I think it could be really beneficial to me.
The other day I posted a blog post entitled "Chemical Imbalance HOAX". It was intended to be just a comment to respond to someone in my other article on addiction (one that I wrote about a week ago).
You can check it out here, if you desire.
@laurabell/chemical-imbalance-hoax
@laurabell/addiction-plant-medicine-choice
I guess the reason I posted it was because first -- It wouldn't fit as a comment. And I wanted to preserve my thoughts for the model that I can invision in my mind. One that is getting clearer. However, 
What he doesn't know is that one day, I hope too.
So what is my quarantine story? I am in graduate school. I was on a quarter system, meaning there are four quarters per year. We were ending our winter quarter with our eleventh week finals. Studying all weekend in order to prepare and on sunday evening the news came. All finals were to be online, or take your grade as it is.
I finished up and took this as a signal to slow down. I decided to take this quarter off. I wanted to heal. I desperately wanted to heal. I had a baby last year, he is turning one in a month. I wanted to spend some time with him as well as rest. I wanted to completely nest (which I didn't do in school... due to being in school). I wanted to give him a proper nursery. I wanted to dive deep into everything I owned and ask myself the question, "does this bring me joy?"
And if not, into the donation pile it went.
I am currently in the process of painting my room hot pink.
I am writing almost all day.
I am looking at healing my childhood.
As a mother, when I held my child for the first time. I instantly saw myself in his eyes. The world suddenly became cyclical. I began seeing the life cycle, and here I was in the middle of it. I was no longer a child. I had a child. And I found myself suffocating.
I am suffering with pride and with dignity. Meaning, I don't believe I am broken. I don't believe my body is broken. That some reason after birth I got sad? Because, "chemicals" or "hormones" -- as if we could actually know if that was the case or not by some sort of objective means?
I believe the model is backwards. When the body goes into depression, it is trying to tell you something. And your goal is to figure out what as the clock ticks. It's why I immediately dove back into art. It's why I dove into writing.
I am taking my healing as number one priority.
And my healing isn't based off of my currently feeling GPS. My healing is set on a location in the distance, and I am climbing a mountain to get there. Healing is a journey, a processes; I am just glad I am no longer walking around with open wounds anymore.
As someone with a history mental health issues, I walked around with a lot of baggage prior to my birth. I carried a lot of history, I carried a lot of anxiety. And my birth, never went as planned. So my body created a giant wound that covered all the other wounds I've ever had in my childhood. And reopened all my sores at once. That is postpartum depression.
I think it's a natural process of the body if one didn't get a chance to heal during childhood. I believe there is a rhyme and a reason to why the body causes dis-ease, every type of dis-ease. Including the ones that are complicated and not well understood: such as mental illness.
So I am writing. I am healing. I am learning. I am loving myself.
I am learning to love myself, and that is healing. And that is what writing does to me. It allows me to put pen on paper. I get to share some incredibly vulnerable things with all of you. And walk out feeling okay.
Like -- I shared that, and the world didn't blow up.
It's liberating to be honest with yourself. To be truly honest with yourself. I think I lacked that honesty to a long time. And it's not that I wanted to be dishonest, it's that it was better than telling them who I really was. I wanted to fabricate who I was. I wanted to change constantly, I never felt good enough just being me.
Just being me, honestly. And standing in that honesty is difficult. It makes you acknowledge little hidden secrets about yourself. And sometimes, we don't like those secrets. So we find it very easy to hide inside smoke and mirrors. The smoke and mirrors, then start to feel real. And then we all begin to get drunk on our own delusions.
For some reason the seven of cups came to mind during this writing stint. I really enjoy Tarot actually, I think there is so much that you can learn about symbolic meanings and self inside these cards.
The seven of cups means...
To draw the Seven of Cups in a reading shows that you need to clearly see the shadows and visions in your imagination, not only in your dreams but also in the real world. You should be careful of wishful thinking and be alert of the choices that you make. In one sense, the Seven of Cups indicates that you are a dreamer who is both excited and afraid of the things that you see in your unconscious. In another, the Seven of Cups is a reminder that although it is good to have dreams and wishes, it is even better to take action attaining those dreams. At one point in life, you will need to stop fantasizing and face the reality of life.
If you are unable to make a decision due to the many options that are available, you should evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each option so as to make the best choice. It is important to exercise caution when you are making your decision, as the card itself seems to show there is not only wonders and treasures that are available to you, but also monsters and shadows.
There are some cases when the Seven of Cups may show that you are living in ways that are not necessarily grounded in real life - that your actions are guided by illusions that you feed yourself. Your ideas may be so up in the clouds, developed only on your imagination. As such, you will need to separate what is real and what is not so that you can make better choices.
source: https://labyrinthos.co/blogs/tarot-card-meanings-list/seven-of-cups-meaning-tarot-card-meanings
Today, I've been doing a lot of processing about the difference between shame and guilt. I want to do a break down of the two words real quickly for you. I think we walk around not truly understanding the meaning and definition of words. We learn words through context, and multiple different contexts over time. We pick up definition through this method.
However, sometimes we don't understand the word in the same way that another person understands the same word. It's interesting when you get multiple people to define the same word. You get a bunch of different answers thus far.
So if you made it to here. WOW. I am impressed -- now, in the comment section below comment your definition for "jealousy" and your definition for "envy". See if you really know the difference between these two words. And do you use them in contextual appropriateness? Curious. Let's see how many people have slightly nuanced definitions.
Want to know the difference? Here is a good article on the topic: http://www.afterpsychotherapy.com/envy-and-jealousy/
That slight variation of meaning can make a huge difference when communicating. Understanding words, is very important. And agreeing upon definition of words, could really be helpful. Trust me, or anyone who have every spoken words to another human being.
So what is the similarities between shame and guilt?
Although many people use the two words "guilt" and "shame" interchangeably, from a psychological perspective, they actually refer to different experiences.
SOURCE: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shame/201305/the-difference-between-guilt-and-shame
shame
/SHām/
noun
a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. The painful feeling arising from the consciousness of something dishonorable, improper, ridiculous, etc., done by oneself or another.
guilt
/ɡilt/
noun
the fact of having committed a specified or implied offense or crime; a feeling of responsibility or remorse for some offense, crime, wrong, etc., whether real or imagined.
guilt involves the awareness of having done something wrong; it arises from our actions (even if it might be one that occurs in fantasy). [Shame, on the other hand is]...a painful feeling about how we appear to others (and to ourselves) and doesn't necessarily depend on our having done anything.
I once said something hurtful at a dinner party, and on some level, I intended it to be hurtful. Afterward, I felt guilty because I could see that I had hurt my friend. More painfully, I also felt ashamed that I was the sort of person who would behave that way. Guilt arose as a result of inflicting pain on somebody else; I felt shame in relation to myself.
I guess, I've been wrestling with the concept lately. Am what I holding onto shame, guilt or both? And how can I free myself from this pressure? I am trying to gain a new insight on how I think. How do I talk to myself? What is the method in which I am parenting my body?
Sometimes I don't even notice how I sound. It wasn't until having a baby that I began to understand how to be gentle. What my words meant, what my vibe was doing. It made me pay attention to the subtle things. It made me slow down.
andlisten.
shhhhhhhhhhh
and I began to hear my voice again.