Drops of Inspira

 Hello! I know last week's post was a bit heavy, so this week, I wanted to tackle another angle of patience that is near and dear to my heart: Patience and How it Affects Mental Health. If you've followed my blog for awhile, you know that I struggle a lot with both anxiety and depression. As a kid, I never thought I would be dealing with either, but it happened.  Lately, I've been fascinated by just how much impatience takes a toll on the mind and body.  Did you know that impatience can raise your blood pressure, raise your cortisol levels and adrenaline? When these are raised, your body enters a fight or flight response and your stress levels raise. When your stress levels rise, your body is prone to physical illness as well as mental illness. Many illnesses start in the mind. It controls more than we realize. And no, I'm not saying it's all in your head. That saying is one that has been going around for far too long in my opinion. It basically means that the sick ...

  Hello! Lately I've been thinking about the lies we tell ourselves and how they can sap our joy.  I'm not into the toxic positivity mindset, so I'm not here to tell you to disregard reality and pretend everything is rosy when it may not be. But there is something to be said about how you talk to yourself. Lies are like earthworms. They burrow deep under the cover of the soil of your life. You can't see them, but their effects make themselves known. Only instead of nurturing the soil, they poison the soil. The plant of joy doesn't flourish. It shrivels up and dies.  I wouldn't say I'm either a positive or a negative person. I'm a realistic person teetering on the brink of negativity. It doesn't take much for circumstances in my life to put one drop too much on the negativity scale, plunging me into the blackest of despair. I'm constantly battling to keep the scales balanced. What are some of the lies you tell yourself?  One of the most insidious ...

                         Welcome back. This post is a bit hard for me to write because it requires me to be very vulnerable, so please bear with me. I mentioned a few posts back that all has not been sunshine and roses. The truth is that I struggle a lot with both depression and anxiety. And they do not play nice. They strike without warning. One moment I will be fine, not a care in the world, and the next, I feel like my emotions are a wildfire and everything is burning down. Which is where the name for this poem came in: Cinder Town. Cinder Town is my name for what happens when I start to crash and burn, when all is not right. It's a messy, destructive place. I plummet, I crash, I burn and it takes awhile for me to come back up again. I had a visit to Cinder Town not too long ago. Things had not gone well at work. It was day sixteen of work-related stress. I stepped out of my car at home, a place that...

  Here we are at December 1st. Congratulations! If you're reading this post, you've made it so far. I think we can make it to the end of the year. I'm coming out of an intense month of school papers and NaNoWriMo (I won! How did I do that with four classes and three papers? I don't know. I really don't.) and somehow... I want to go back and do it again. I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out. November was a blizzard of a month. I flew from one thing to the next to the next. I was exhausted. I cried, and I felt like sleeping for eternity, but I lived! Somehow, in the midst of the chaos, I found peace. The world was crazy, but amid a caffeine induced swamp of reality and flying words, I felt settled. It was awesome! While I'm tempted to look back on November with fondness, this quote reminds me to look ahead and anticipate all that is to come. The good and the bad. The light and the dark. The sadness and the joy. Because through all of it, I feel like I'm gro...

February is known for many things.  Where I live, this month has been known for the odd snow storm or torrential downpour of rain. (Last Valentine's Day I couldn't get into work because the streets were flooded and there was a waterfall running down the slope above our parking lot and into the street.)  Most famously, February is known for Valentines Day. Yep. That day devoted to love, the one that makes single people uncomfortable, one of the holidays overrun with commercialism, flowers, teddy bears, balloons and heart-shaped candy.  When I was little, I loved making old-fashioned Valentine cards with paper lace and giving them out to my siblings and parents. Now that I'm older, I suppose I've gotten a bit jaded with the holiday. It just doesn't have the same feeling it did when I was younger, which is why I was excited when I heard that February is also International Friendship Month.  Yep. You heard that right. A whole month devoted to friendship. Isn...

Hello!  Another month has rolled by and it's the fifteenth once again. Just a reiteration of the rules here: every fifteenth of the month I will try to post a poem I've written recently. You can post your own in the comments section or just use the prompt to write your own off-screen. If nothing else, I hope that this will fight any bouts of Writer's Block you might encounter. This month's prompt is: Please be mindful that this is a PG environment. If you place one of your poems in the comment section, no language or sexual content.  Here is mine: Now go write and have fun! If you liked the poem or just want to leave a comment, please let me know in the comment section below.