This week, I’m pleased to share the story of my dear friend, Breann Pedersen.
A wife for 6 wonderful years with 4 step-kids, Breann Pedersen is a ray of sunshine to everyone around her. Working as the FMLA Administrator for her company, she deals with a lot of other peoples’ mental health struggles. She has succeeded and failed at many things in life, but is a fighter through and through. Breann was born with Cystic Fibrosis and has encountered many challenges, both mentally and physically, as a result. While she is not one to give up, it is a daily battle to maintain the right mindset and meds in order to continue feeling like herself.
I was brought up on the old adages, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” It is very self-motivating to think that anything can be solved if you just keep pressing forward. So when I started having problems coping with my emotions as life started throwing hard knocks at me, I didn’t know what to do.
I was raised with a healthy dose of reality and the physical limitations that come with having Cystic Fibrosis. I thought I was doing well through collapsed lungs and year after year of pneumonia, but I didn’t realize that the physical pain I was going through was masking the mental struggle of dealing with a chronic illness. When I had something physical to focus on, I could work through it. But when I was able to get to a maintenance stage of my physical disease, my mental disease started coming to the forefront.
When I went to college, I started noticing the waves of emotion. In silent moments when everything should have been good, I would start to cry. I have cried over many things in my life and don’t necessarily have a problem crying, but this didn’t make sense to me. Because of my physical illness, I just thought these bouts of sadness were my body’s way of telling me that another sickness was coming on and it was time to start my medical regimen.
After a few years of believing this sadness was simply a physical manifestation of my disease, I finally realized it wasn’t a physical, but a mental illness that I should be attacking. When I went to have an annual checkup I decided to take up the offer to talk with a therapist. Realizing that I was truly facing life and death hit me hard. I then realized I had been putting off others because I didn’t want closeness. And I didn’t want to take one more pill or have one more thing wrong with me. I spent years working through therapy.
Therapy was great and helpful, but I didn’t go consistently. I would be fine and then some other bill or situation would come up, and caring for myself or my mental health had to take the backseat so I could deal with what was in front of me. In fact, it wasn’t until I was married and my husband started suggesting that I truly take the time, money, and effort to get my mental health in line with my physical that I decided to do just that. When I saw him cry because I was crying again for no particular reason, I knew that it wasn’t just affecting me–it was affecting my loved ones too.
I wish I could say that I have fully come to grips with my mental illness and health, but I haven’t. It is a struggle for me to not go back to familiar behaviors and those old adages. However, I do know that my husband is not looking down on me or judging me through my struggles, and that tomorrow is another day to try again. It is worth it for me to take the medication every day for the sake of both my physical and mental wellbeing because I know that if I don’t, I am not whole. And my family needs me whole. I deserve to feel whole.