The Health of My Heart

The response to my last post, “Surrender,” has been unbelievable. So many precious people have reached out to me and offer me encouragement. Several others reached out to share their similar and extremely painful experiences. Even more reached out to check up on how I am doing. I have been overwhelmed by love and I have felt the weight of every broken heart. To every single person who has reached out - who has expressed love, support, grace, pain, brokenness, etc. - I thank you.

To give an update on the health of my heart - I am happy to report that I am doing very well!

Though the last six months have been peppered with the pain and torment of divorce, I have also experienced so much joy and growth. Every day is a new challenge, as always, but I feel altogether healthy. I have spent a great deal of time this summer and fall seeking out the whole, happy, healthy life I strive to help others find. I have been purposely pursuing total health - relationally, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.

On my journey to find healing, I have gotten to travel a lot (to Memphis, Nashville, Kentucky, Hot Springs, Austin, and Italy). I have plugged into The Porch at Watermark. I’ve made a lot of new friends and reconnected with old ones. I’ve spent hours and hours in counseling. I finished my Master’s degree. I became a Certified Christian Life Coach. I started to substitute teach. I’m eating healthier and staying active (I’ve lost about 20 pounds!) I am writing again. I am dating someone.

In the last six months, I have spent a lot of time hurting. But I have also spent a lot of time healing.

Thank you to all who have reached out to me to check on me. Thank you all for loving me well and giving me so much grace. I also appreciate each of you being patient as I took a sudden and unexpected step back from blogging and coaching. Now that I am feeling healthy and happy again, I feel much more comfortable offering my coaching services and wisdom via writing. (So check out my Coaching Services page and let’s get you into some coaching sessions!)

You are all amazing. I am so thankful to have a place to grow alongside all of you. I am so glad to know we are all in this together - pursuing health, wellness, healing, and happiness. It is humbling to me that you all let me be vulnerable and transparent as we journey together!

As always, you can expect more posts from me regarding how I attempt to practice what I preach. In the meantime, focus on the joy of the Lord and ask Him what it looks like to seek a whole, happy, healthy life. If there's anything I can offer to you so I can spur you on in that way - let me know!

Me, Too.

I don’t want to talk about the time I was five years old and on a Kindergarten field trip, a boy kissed me against my will and threatened to kill me with his karate if I told the teacher.

I don’t want to look back on the numerous times that as a child, I would walk the short distance from my house to the park, and a car would slow down and drive beside me as I walked. A man with a scary voice and a twisted up face would always roll the window down and say things like, “hey baby, where you going?” or “you’re beautiful, you know that?”.

I don’t want to think about the first time (of many) that someone grabbed my butt in the seventh grade hallway. I don’t want to remember turning around, embarrassed and shocked, to see him high-fiving his friends who were sneering and giggling and mocking me.

I don’t want to flash back to the time in ninth grade when I was wearing my “flyaway” cheer skirt, and I caught my history teacher licking his lips at me. I don’t want to recall his big wink and the chuckle he let out when I made eye contact with him.

I don’t want to talk about Halloween my sophomore year, when the boy I loved locked me in his house, pinned me down on his couch and tried to force himself on me. I don’t want to remember having to physically shove him off of me and onto the floor. I don’t want to hear his angry voice calling me “bitch” ringing in my head.

I don’t want to remember when I was fourteen and a boy I didn't like forcibly kissed me when I was laying down on my couch. Or when I was fifteen and another boy forcibly kissed me by grabbing the back of my head and pulling it towards him, sitting in his fancy SUV that was running in my driveway. Or when I was sixteen and another boy grabbed me and forcibly kissed me in front of my English class.

I don’t want to think back on the time I was in college and was filled with so much anxiety and fear after all of these years of sexual mistreatment, harassment, and assault, that when the boy I wanted to marry overstepped the physical and sexual boundaries I was comfortable with, I tailspun into a wild episode of depression and anxiety, unable to properly function for months.

I don’t want to admit that the man I did end up marrying used his addiction to pornography as an excuse to abuse me sexually, to molest me, to attack me in my sleep, and to rape me. Not only that, but when I wasn’t enough for him, when I couldn’t fill his sexual desires, he entered into another sexual relationship with another woman, hurting me even further.

I don’t want to talk about this. I don’t want to remember it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want every bad touch or scary feeling or creepy stare or gross word or sick smile to be seared into my memory. I don’t want to carry this brokenness with me. Because I don't want any of this to have happened. 

But it did. It happened. 

So I do want to talk about it... because I want to share my experiences. I want control of my own narrative. I want the boys who have hurt me to be held accountable. I want others to know they are not alone in their hurt. I want to be a part of opening the dialogue so that this sin has nowhere to hide. I want to remove all shame, all guilt, all embarrassment from every survivor of this kind of sexual torture.

Of course, I also want to be heard and believed. Ultimately, however, I know that not everyone will hear or believe me. Thankfully, though, I know I have a heavenly Father who hears my pleas, mends my broken heart, knows my testimony, and is restoring my soul. He is my hope and my salvation. He is my strength. He is my joy. He is the only reason I am alive and have not taken my own life, despite my flesh’s constant longing to be torn apart.

If you have a story like mine, please know I love you. Please know I want to talk to you and empathize with you. Please know I believe you. And please know that there is an abundance of life and joy and grace and healing and freedom that is found in my Savior.

Well, dear friends. It's about time we take a moment to talk about Major Depressive Disorder and severe anxiety.

I don't know how to start this conversation and I don't exactly know what to say, but speaking up is good. It's healthy, helpful, and necessary.

Just five short weeks from my sixth birthday, my father took his own life. From that day forward, I've struggled with depression. Some seasons have been worse than others; most not unbearable. For some stretches of time, this depression and anxiety have been quite controllable and able to conceal or rationalize. In high school, it hit really hard a couple times. In college, I did pretty good to keep in under control, even during traumatic or stressful periods. But at some point, in the middle of college, it finally all exploded again. After a summer of counseling, that was incredibly healing and helpful, I began my last year of college with hope. Almost immediately, Robby was re-introduced into my life, and I was swept up into a fairy tale.

My sweet Robby came busting into my life and brought all the love and hope and joy possible, putting to bed again my feelings of depression and loneliness and anxiousness and sadness. I believed for the umpteenth time that I had been healed from depression, freed from the need of medication, and powerful enough (with Christ, of course) to conquer it if it was to make another grand entrance into my life.

I was wrong.

Once Robby's dad went into the hospital, once we lived for 6 weeks in the ICU, once I started failing my college courses, once my father-in-law passed away, once I mourned 15 years of being without a father, then I entered into a summer taking my last two college classes, planning a wedding, working a job, and getting ready to graduate, move to a new city, leave my job, leave my church, leave my home, and become a wife. In three short months, my life turned upside down and my depression "came back" with a vengeance.

I was originally diagnosed with Dysthemia and prescribed Lexapro. But I got worse and I got worse. Two weeks before my wedding and graduation, I experienced a severe depressive episode, where I posed a threat to myself. I had to leave my job early, move back in with my mom, and had to finish school/planning my wedding as an embarrassed/anxious/depressed 21 year old living back at home again. Not exactly the way I hoped to begin my life as a new adult...

I visited my doctor again and was taken off of Lexapro. In it's place came Zoloft and Wellbutrin.

Overnight, I felt better.

I woke up the day after my worst episode yet and I felt better than I have felt in years. I successfully navigated through my final two weeks of college, I planned my dream wedding, I walked across a stage and down an aisle the next day. I flew off to Paris with my new husband and enjoyed a magical 10 days with the love of my life (aside from the mono).

However, once we got back, I gradually started to decline again. About a month or two into our marriage, my doctor had me double my Zoloft intake. At my followup visit, I felt the same, no better. I asked if she had any Psychiatric recommendations, so I could get the expert opinion of a specialist.

I fought it and I put it off and I just "knew" it would get better.

But it hasn't. If anything, it's gotten worse.

I am fighting off strong self-harming inclinations, I am reacting aggressively when I become agitated, I bawl my eyes out as if a close family has passed away even when nothing is going wrong. Last night, whilst trying to get ready for my dear friend's surprise birthday party, I found myself sobbing uncontrollably on the closet floor. I throw fits! Like a child!

I went to the psychiatrist on Friday. It's confirmed. Reagan Nash is suffering from a severe anxiety disorder as well as a severe case of MDD. I'm on a couple new medications, I'm set to start another round of counseling, and I have a follow up appointment in two weeks.

It's weird. It's hard. It's embarrassing. It's something I feel guilty over. It's something I don't understand and I don't know how to deal with half the time. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about it, how I'm supposed to treat it, how I'm supposed to talk about it.

But it's a part of me. It's a huge part of who I am. This depression, this broken brain - I carry it within me.

I know it doesn't rule me. I'm not its slave and it's not my master. But I'm wrong to treat it as if it doesn't exist. If I ignore it, I'm being ignorant, and most likely putting myself in danger. I know God is capable of healing my brain, but I also know that He is still good and just if He chooses not to. Maybe depression/anxiety is the "thorn in my side" that I get to live with and struggle through.

But I will struggle through.

This will not defeat me.

I will not let this thorn be manipulated by the enemy. Satan will not take my life.

I am weak. But God is strong.

If you see me, have grace with me. I'm trying to learn how to have grace with myself. I'm learning to have grace with you. I'm learning what grace even means.

That's my word for this year. Grace.

*This post originally appeared on my former blog, Nothing But Nash, on January 25, 2015 and has been republished here to bring all of my thoughts into on consolidated place.