Mental Health – Ashley Blair Smith

Each year before my birthday I sit down to reflect on my life, where I’ve been, and where I think I’m going. This is that little reflection:

✨ On a Healing Journey ✨

“On a healing journey” is the best way I can think to describe my life right now. Some days I feel like I’m thriving, the best version of myself. Other days I feel like I’m just barely surviving, the most broken version of myself I have ever met.

The past couple years have beaten me to the ground. Life has trampled over me, kicked dirt in my eyes, spit in my face. There have been days I’ve wanted it all to end. Days I didn’t care anymore. Days I wanted to throw in the towel and let the devil win.

But there have also been days where I felt strong, like I could take on the world. Brave, ready to look pain in the eyes and face my fears. Resilient, having so many heavy things hit me so hard so fast, yet I stood my ground and fought.

The truth is life sucks. I never thought I would have walked this road. I never imagined I would be struggling with my mental health. But here I am. There’s no way to dance around it, so I have chosen to boldly walk through it. This is my life and I am working on accepting what has been, so I can change what will be.

While I would have never chosen to walk some of these paths I’ve been led down, I can see how God is using them for good in my life. Some days that’s hard to admit, but I know it’s true. I may be strong, brave, and resilient, but I am only capable of those things because of God. I wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for Him.

God let the world break me, so that I truly had to depend on Him. My faith has been tested, my world has been rocked. But through it all He has remained constant.

I pray that I continue to walk this life I have been given in love, humility, and grace. And I pray that I can be like my Maw in the way she carried herself and always, no matter what, pointed others to Jesus.

Jesus was willing to endure mockery, betrayal, and the cross when he didn’t deserve it. I’ve always known that, but never fully understood the weight of that until I had to walk through hard things myself. Trust in God, sweet friends. The world and people will always let you down, but He never will.

Here’s to healing ✨ and hopefully a beautiful last year in my 20s.

I remember that when I took this photo on my birthday weekend in 2020 I thought 27 was going to be “my year”. After the past few months with the pandemic going on and the craziness that the world was in, I thought that surely this coming year would be better and things would start looking up.

I imagined being 27, spending cozy fall evenings cuddling up at home enjoying my autumn decor. I imagined having friends over more often for small dinner gatherings where I would make a delicious homemade meal and there would be soft jazz music playing in the background. I imagined being more bold and confident in who I was as a person, living the way I thought was best for me and not caring what other people thought. But, the following months I felt anything but confident, I didn’t want to have people over, rather I slowly started pulling away from others. There weren’t many happy cozy evenings that October, instead I spent many nights up late, the hours fading into the early morning, crying and unable to sleep.

Last fall my anxiety reached an all time high, the Postpartum Depression I chose to ignore came flooding back in full force, and I don’t know how many people around me actually knew how much I was suffering. I had trouble letting others in, I didn’t want to tell others the thoughts I was having or the way I was feeling. It all felt so hard and complicated to put into words, plus I really didn’t want to burden people with my problems.

Looking back, I wish I had let people in sooner. I wish that I didn’t push people away, or try to pretend that things were okay when clearly they were not. I wish that I hadn’t spent so many sleepless nights up by myself, with just the tv on for comfort because I was too afraid of what others might think of me and what I was going through.

I thought 27 was going to be a year where things slowly started to look up, because how could they get any worse? But I didn’t realize that I would have to reach my breaking point, the lowest of lows, before I reached out to my best friend, before I asked for prayer, before I started going to counseling. I didn’t know that in order to seek true healing, I would have to actually ask for help. I thought I could do it on my own or ignore it until it went away. But God doesn’t want us to go through life, and especially the soul crushing seasons of life, alone.

I am so grateful that I am finally in a better, healthier place now and am actively working on overcoming my Postpartum Depression and Anxiety. There has been a lot that has happened over the past 2 1/2 years of my life that has played into this, things I will be working on healing from for quite some time. But May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and I’m so grateful for the conversations that are being had and the resources that are being shared about this topic. And I am so happy that I feel like I am finally in a healthy enough place that I feel lead to share more about my experience. Mental illness is real and many people suffer from it and we should not feel ashamed about it. I plan on sharing more about this season of my life as I feel lead to. ❤️