New Mornings.

My blogging debut ☀️

Hey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Welcome to my blog 🤪

I’ve been having a deep craving for expression.

Maybe it’s seasonal depression, maybe it’s living alone as a 50% extravert – but as I’ve emerged from a solid five years of brain fog I’ve begun to see pieces of myself fall back into place and started to have an itch to creatively express. It kind of feels like watching a video where an object crumbles or explodes, and then you watch it in reverse and it builds itself right back up. Does that make sense? That’s how my brain and soul feel. The feeling of seeing the sun after 3 straight weeks of clouds. Healing.

I’ve spent the last five years tearing down everything in my life so that God could rebuild it into something greater, stronger, steadier. My mental health, my spiritual health, my physical health – I remember YEARS of feeling like I had completely lost myself. I was reflecting today on how little I used to be able to give; every ounce of energy went into survival mode and trying to literally just skate by. Unable to talk to people because I had no energy to give. Unable to explore new hobbies because all of said energy went into my basic needs, like eating and brushing my teeth. So when the skies finally started to part and my soul began to heal, so started the desire to rediscover myself in a way that didn’t involve exploring the crevices of my mind, spirit, and trauma.

I wouldn’t even call it self expression – to me that’s more about how we choose to represent ourselves. How we dress, how we color our hair, how many piercings one chooses to get, etc. Self expression feels more like being authentic in your personality and who you are. This kind of expression feels more like expressing what’s in my soul – which sounds SO dramatic lol. But I think all of us need an outlet?! I went to treatment for an eating disorder in 2020 and part of the intensive therapy was art therapy. I was super against it. 🤠 Not because I believed it didn’t work but because I make art all day, so therefore I was not about to invest a single ounce of creativity into anything else (como se dice “burnout” in español. C’est moi.)

Anyways, turns out it's super legit and has brought abundant healing into my heart and soul. I think especially for emotional suppressors (again, c’est moi) learning to express everything inside and give space for all the weird little things taking up residence within is a necessary step in the healing journey. This started a couple years ago for me – wanting to express without needing a 55 minute therapy session and a mental breakdown. I also simultaneously felt the itch to buy a box of crayons. So 126 Crayola Crayons and a drive to the North Shore later I sat along Superior picking colors to match what I couldn’t verbalize within, drawing them in the corresponding textures of intensity I felt. Thus began a sweet process of bringing me back to myself – regathering energy for things outside of therapy and work to fill my cup and empty my soul. There’s just something about expression without a goal!!! Expressing to express!!! It’s giving abstract art professor when I say that but it’s so true – hobbies without the need to perform and achieve will change your life.

So why blogging? Crayons > Sketching > Oil Pastels > Gardening > Ballet > Blogging. Now that I’ve got the visual and physical expression down, I’m curious to get some words out of my head. Plus I hate social media too much to be an influencer so this is the next best thing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Why “New Mornings”?

22
The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
His mercies never cease.

23
Great is his faithfulness;
His mercies begin afresh each morning.

Lamentations 3:22-23

In the world of navigating mental illness/mental health/chronic illness it can get real easy real fast to become distressed when things start to flare up again. Symptoms come out of nowhere, energy levels dip and suddenly your brain starts to freak out that you’re going back to the hell you just climbed out of. As I was enduring such a flare this past year the Holy Spirit began to illuminate this verse in a ton of different ways to me and reminded me of the hope God brings – no matter how dark the night, the morning is going to be different. The Lord is going to be there and deliver me, even if He does it in a way that I don’t expect. When you’re trapped in a vicious cycle it’s hard to explain how glorious a revelation like that is in your soul! Comparable feeling to the end of MN winters frankly lol.

Typically after some flare up I wind up getting depressed when it ends. Feeling defeated, exhausted, ashamed and realizing how much work it will take to “get back on track” is not for the faint of heart. But this December I woke up one morning after such a flare and had a joy in my soul – the feeling of bouncing back. Buoyancy, if you will. Choosing to let go and just be thankful to be back is not natural, so I knew it was supernatural. Proverbs 24:16 was randomly floating in my heart –

16 …for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again,

And so my friends, to tie all of this up with a bow – I’m blogging to express and get some words out of my brain. “New Mornings” is my theme, and though not every writing will tie to this directly this is the truth I carry in my heart and hopefully to everything I do. God is FAITHFUL – let my life always declare this! I wrote this on NYE and I feel like it’s fitting:

I’m not a “this year is going to be the best year of my life” type of girl (I might be slightly jaded lol) — but I do know that God is faithful and He always keeps His promises, and that I rest on!

“The godly may fall 7 times but they rise again”

“His mercies are new every morning”

“There may be pain in the night, but joy comes in the morning”

is the joy I take into this year 🧡 what a gift to rise and rise and rise again!

- Annie

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