07/17/2024
It’s actually kind of overwhelming to try to put words to what 2024 has been for me (jk it’s sucked).
As most of you know, I lost my mother-in-law this March; someone who was a strong pillar in my life, who I looked up to and grew very close to, so the unexpected loss was extremely difficult for everyone that knew her. It was a harrowing and traumatic few months leading up to her passing, and has since been one of the most challenging times of my life for many reasons. I’ve been slowly rebuilding myself from the ground up since.
I’ve always been fairly open about my personal journey with mental health, but I’ve never really chosen to share a lot about it here because it involves some incredibly painful parts of my life. Sherrie’s passing was a catalyst into a full breakdown, it shattered pieces in me that have been crumbling for many, many years, and I’ve finally had to listen to my body and mind before I hit that point of no return. It sounds so dramatic to even explain it that way but it’s the truth.
These last few months have been, simply put, transformative for me. I am not the same person I was in March. I’ve done a lot of work to get myself back up off the ground and it has truly been some of the hardest work I’ve ever done and still is. I have to choose myself everyday and I’ll be honest it was really hard to do that in the beginning when I started fully working on myself. I realized that medications simply aren’t enough for me and I’ve started therapy for grief, CPTSD, and ADHD. I’m learning to rework my brain, how to process the grief of such a huge loss in my family’s life, and the grief/sadness/anger of the things younger Ashton has survived. I am in the trenches of healing deep wounds and most of the days I am exhausted, but I’ve also felt more freedom in who I am than I’ve ever felt before (continued in comments)…