The Ruth Project

As I start to write this post, I keep hearing the song lyrics to Anna Nalick - Breath (2am)  and funny enough, as I decided to look into the song a little bit more to see if it was an appropriate connection for this post, I was pleasantly surprised.  An explanation for the songs meaning, which I found at a site called Genius , is that the song is about needing to breath, take a moment before carrying on. This is basically what I was going to say. Sometimes in our world as people let alone parents we need to do as Anna sings cradle your head in your hands and just breath. Below is a graphic on a very simple breathing exercise that I do regularly...sometimes a lot more regularly than others. For me, healing from depression and still working on anxiety, it is very easy for me to become triggered to the noise of happy children. Yes, the noise of happy children. I make that point because there has been many times that I have caught myself loosing the plot, telling them off, snapping simply

  As we come to the end of the year we enter into the time of self-reflection ... well I do anyway. Often I find myself looking back on the year that was and can start to overthink all the things I could have done differently. This always leads me down a path of negative thinking, beating myself up for my imperfections and seeing the year as a colour of black.  However this year, I have been reminded about an exercise I did when I was in the depth of depression and high anxiety, this exercise was simply writing down 3 things I was thankful for each day for 21 days. When I took part in this exercise, my perspective and thoughts really started to shift as I realised I had alot to be thankful for, alot to celebrate and positive things to focus on rather than the crises I seemed to have found myself in. So this got me to thinking that this year as I reflect on what has happened, I think acknowledging the negative, challenges or down moments do have a place as I can learn and grow from thos