Homemade Stew -- Another Sign I'm Healing


So tonight after working all day to clean out my cupboards, freezers, and fridge, I made a stew from scratch.  Big deal, you say.  Well it is a big deal for me.  It's yet another sign that I've turned another corner on the road to wellness.

Nearly four and a half years ago I did nearly everything from scratch and spent a whole lot of time in the kitchen cooking food for my family.  In a way, cooking was a creative outlet and one of the few things that my ex was good at telling me I did well.  After my heart attack, after the kids started school, after my marriage fell apart, after my church dumped me, I kinda lost my creativity in the effort it took just to keep my head above water.

The past few years have seen me working to establish a business that would support us all as well as getting kids to and from school.  It has meant long hours and survival was still the name of the game.  But finally, some time is opening up for me to have some time to do things here around my home.  In fact, I'm downstairs in the kitchen/livingroom more in the past month than I have been in the past year.  I'm engaging with my kids and other people more.  Maybe more than I ever have in my life.

Sometimes you don't know you are depressed until it begins to lift.  I think I've been depressed for a long, long time.  The new sense of hope and optimism I have feels very strange and I'm not used to it yet.  I'm also not used to knowing that someone loves me to a depth I've never known before.  Getting used to it is taking some doing, but I think I'm gonna enjoy this.

I wonder what I'll make tomorrow.