Back in university, I was afraid of a group of girls. The athlete girls. You know who I’m talking about. They were the rougher, tougher, smoker, swearer girls.

Several years ago, my friend Heather sent me a care package. In it was a little gratitude journal called 101 Joys Make a Rainbow. The idea was that every day you’d record something you were grateful for and then fold the page. When you were done the booklet, you’d have an entire rainbow of “joys.”

I still remember the day I decided to take a break from church.

For months I had been spiralling after attending the church service each Sunday. I’d go to church, hear the sermon, and it was like every word spoken from the pulpit, every song I heard sung from the congregation was pointing a nasty finger at me, telling me I was defective. I couldn’t get it right. I was unlovable.

Something stinks. I don’t know what it is, but every time I walk into the mudroom of my house, there’s this, this…stench that wafts from…somewhere. It’s gross. It’s disgusting. And it’s driving me crazy.

What the heck is that smell?

In case you’re wondering, I’m not against gratitude. In fact, I recently spent an entire year posting a daily photo and blurb on social media for something I was grateful for each day of the year.

“I feel like a small potato,” I texted to my husband the other day.

Trying to be a voice for mental health, for women of faith, amidst all the noise “out there” some days feels impossible.

I’m not a morning person. And I’m especially not a Monday-morning person. In fact, I hate Mondays so much that I tend to ruin my Sunday in anticipation of Monday. Like what’s wrong with that, right?

I’m here again. After a six-month hiatus from my depression and anxiety, it’s back. When I was “out of it,” back in a clear frame of mind, I wasn’t stupid enough to think it could never come back.