*trigger warning - miscarriage, mental health. 

You know when something is going on in your knee or gut and you say to yourself or someone you love “something’s not quite right with my [enter part of the body]; that's how I’ve felt about my brain this year. I just kept thinking and saying and observing “hmmm my brain is not okay.”  It sounds a bit funny to write it out but it now doesn’t feel too scary to acknowledge. 

My brain needs a little help and that’s okay. 

I've had two mental health crisis's where I've needed psychiatric support and I've always felt like they came out of the blue. Earlier this year I was in crisis mode again but I feel like I knew this one was coming and thank goodness we knew from experience where and how to get help. 

Without going into things too deeply, I'll save that for a future journal post in our new cute looking journal. But in the last 365 days I've been pregnant 3 times and sadly lost each pregnancy.

Alongside trying to process all this, manage my business to support my family, be the best mum I can be and take on way too many pressurising projects as well as navigate hospital and fertility appointments and naively come off my mental health medication, my brain and body simply said nope no more thank you! 

I feel a bit silly when I write it out like that because I should no better than this. How could I have let this happen. We forget we aren't machines sometimes don't we. And I think over the last few years, I've lost the ability to truly rest but not at all in a "poor me I can't rest" way, it's because I've been feeling so good in my mental health for so long.

I'm back on my mental health medication and at first I felt sad about it but now I feel safe, settled, stable. When I'm not well, it feels inescapable, the world and mostly my inner world is so dark and scary. Minute by minute, second by second feels like a struggle, I can't escape the self torture of my ruminating thoughts.

I've been reading some light romance novels and in a Emily Henry book I just finished, the main male character describes how antidepressants feel for him and it's describes a little how it feels for me...

It's like spending..."seventeen years operating on fifty-five percent lung capacity without realising breathing just wasn’t supposed to be that hard. Starting antidepressants was like that for me. I felt like shit all the time, and then suddenly I didn’t. And all this stuff seemed possible for the first time. My mind felt . . . quieter, maybe. Lighter."

Everything is so so hard without my medication, from showering to passing you something across the table to thinking about what to simply do next, it's so hard to explain.

But somehow it’s now March and by taking one foot in front of the other each day it’s felt like I’ve soared a little. I’m too blessed in life to curl up in bed and not keep fighting. I'm so lucky to be able to do something meaningful with this little life. I have you all to thank so much for that. 

As you know I’m always trying, little by little, to make LMP a platform, a space, an online neighbourhood where you feel you belong, where you want to roll out your mat and practice alongside us and where you feel safe to trust your mind and body. 

I know what it’s like for your mind to feel scary and for your body to feel somewhat not your own and I’m not hear to tell you that every day moving forwards your going to feel magic but I do know, believe and witness that a little Pilates, a little movement can and does make a difference. I’m just hoping to be alongside you on the mat. 

I want to do this for life, so thank you for your presence, patience and loyalty as we step on the mat together. I'm truly grateful.

Anyhoo, when my mind and the world has paralysed me in fear recently, gently and gradually I move and I breathe. I move and I breathe. Keep moving and breathing friend. I’m right there with you moving and breathing, struggling and soaring. Wobbling on the mat and wobbly in life together. 

Wrapping you in love,

Lottie x