my story

My name is Helen. I am a mother of two boys. I live in Whangarei by the sea and I’ve lived there for fourteen years now.

What initially happened was that, before I became depressed, at first I was incredibly anxious with the birth of my first child. And then I remember giving birth, lying on the bed and looking at my baby, and I could feel a dial of adrenaline turning on in my body. And it’s never really gone away, certainly not in the time I’ve kind of become accustomed to that. And then it was the birth of my second child that changed into a sunken kind of… this is it now. And the exhaustion of it, you know, breast feeding all night long, all day long, broken sleep, a crappy relationship and lack of support.

The scary feeling about feeling depressed is it’s just really sad. It’s just a sad place to be.  Sad and lonely. It’s a disengaged with the world kind of a place, yeah.

For me, my triggers would be lack of sleep. A lot of stress, my kids going through their own stresses. Yeah, just life not going well.  Yeah, where life is not going well. 

my way through

What I did was got out of a pretty negative relationship which was in a rut. I moved, I bought my own home which was great. And I enrolled in a degree programme and became a registered nurse, which was also wonderful and a very empowering thing to do.
 
So for me, exercise and particularly cycling and walking. Brisk walking for an hour, has changed my life. I’ve lost weight, which is a bonus. But that wasn’t my intention. My intention from doing it was to feel really good. Your body releases endorphins which make you feel good and that has a quite a cumulative effect. The more you do it, you can go a few days without exercise and still have that feeling. So it’s not an effort for me, it’s just something that I really want to keep doing.

staying well

I think it’s important, as I say, to have quite a good routine for the week. You know, I need to make sure that I get plenty of sleep. That I don’t get over stimulated. I think I’m just really lucky that I own my home and I’ve got a sense of power and control in my own life, that’s really important for me. 

When I think of when I was really depressed, I always felt like my family and friends were my cushions that were beneath me, and that were my life, you know, my life guards, jackets, whatever you want to … who I clung to and who were there always.