Welcome!

Hello…is this thing on? Oh, hello there! I’m Anjum and I’m reaching out to you from this corner of the internet to say and tell you a little bit about myself.

I was born in India and grew up in Nigeria until the age of 13. At this point, I went to boarding school in India and my whole world turned upside down and inside out. I struggled – a lot – in all aspects of life. I guess you could say that I suffered from a bit of an identity crisis and ended up with some pretty severe depression. As time went on, I learned how to handle it. I told myself it was no big deal and continued to live life. I now recognize that I ended up with what can be referred to as “high functioning depression”. From the outside, most people wouldn’t have known how I was feeling.

Fast forward to the present day – I am 37 years old and for the first time in my life I started seeing a therapist a few months ago. I have been seeing a cognitive behavioural therapist and have been doing a lot of processing in between sessions as well. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts and have done a couple of courses to better understand myself. And one day I realized something that I felt was quite profound. I realized that until now, I had not given myself permission to fully accept how I had been feeling. I kept telling myself that I had not gone through anything THAT major to warrant how I was feeling – and therefore I just had to get over it. This lead to me repressing my feelings, which I have learned is not a healthy place to be.

I also realized that I must not be the only one who feels this way – who feels that their issues are not that huge and therefore they don’t really have a “right” to feel that way – they don’t “deserve” the help – that they are not important enough for this to be that important. I decided to start writing about how I feel and some of the things that I have found to be helpful, in the hopes that it will help someone else realize that their feelings are valid – that they are not alone.

Feel free to reach out if you need an ear to listen to and know that there is someone else who gets it.

“Just because no one else can heal or do your inner work for you doesn’t mean you can, should, or need to do it alone.”

~ Lisa Olivera