The biggest challenge of starting and running this farm has been my mental health.

My mental health challenge is depression. For me, depression is an amplifier of all my negative emotions: anger, sorrow, despair, being overwhelmed; and dampens my experience of joy, satisfaction, enjoyment, and drive.

At times it is so painful and life’s challenges seem so overwhelming and insurmountable that I don’t want to live. So far my family has kept me here.

It is also challenging to address depression, as it affects your mind and motivation, and the solutions involve using exactly those things.

I am lucky to have insurance that covers mental health services & (most of) my medications. I have been seeing a therapist to help me develop strategies to live with and overcome my depression. It is slow and hard.

I also see a psychiatrist, who is helping me find the right mix of medications to bring the depression to a manageable level to better implement the strategies I am working on with my therapist.

Mental health is tough to talk about, and hard to even see as a health issue. Especially since it can appear as laziness, grumpiness, procrastination, or an unwillingness to deal with reality.

For me, here are some of the things that have helped:
Getting good sleep.
Recognizing my limits.
Recognizing my achievements, even the small ones.
Pausing to appreciate.
Sometimes spoiling myself.
People.

I hope this helps somebody, even just to empathize with someone in your life who may be struggling.
It’s hard. I still struggle, all the time - as documented this week if you have been following along.