My respectable, church-going, traditional grandfather fell asleep on top of a piano. On this line of talk with my grandmother, I also found out that he doesn't remember much of their wedding day because he'd had a lot to drink. According to my grandmother he also forgot his vows.

I thought this might get a laugh out of someone. Have a good day :)

So yea just cut contact with my dad. We haven't talked since August. First conversation we have? To let him know my maternal grandpa passed away. His response? "That sucks". Since my mom died he's done a 180. He remarried an absolutely awful person and wants to act like his kids don't exist. He has his new family after all. One where my siblings and I aren't welcomed. Every so often his wife will try to cross boundaries with me and my dad gets pissed that I don't thank her for doing it. Like her demanding my at the time newborn spend the night at her house in a whole nother state. When I said my kid is not spending the night with anyone for at least the next few years his response was to just never see my kid again. He met my son once. He doesn't even know what his own grandson looks like cause he never asks for updates. My son can recongize his paternal grandfather from a picture and refers to him as "papa", one of the few words he knows. My son wouldn't even recongize my dad. He's a total stranger. My dad has been to my city multiple times over the years and has visited me once in that time. I've personally seen him 3 times in the last 5 years. It's not lack of trying on my end.

Hard to believe this is the same man that use to drive me around for hours even in the middle of the night when I was having a bad mental health day all cause he knew car rides improved my mood. The same man I use to be close to. I just can't anymore. This isn't the first time I've reach out to him about something emotional or needed him to be a parent for one fucking minute only to get brushed off. He's capable of responding appropriately. He only started doing that crap a few years ago. This isn't a grief response. This was something I've been considering for a while. That was just the final straw. I've been slowly cutting off toxic family members the last few years. I've built a family for myself and don't need people in my life who don't care about me.

Anyhow yay to officially "orphaning" myself. Hate that my grandparent had to die for me to do it, but at least I did it.

So I haven't really done anything all weekend, just sat arround moping with no motivation to do productive stuff or even just play video games, but this morning before I go to work I finally got in the mood for one of my games (minecraft, of course) and so I was playing on the cube craft server and I ACTUALLY WON SOMETHING! I GOT FIRST IN MINERWARE! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

I went to a doctor appointment alone for the first time today! It was very anxiety inducing and was not by choice, but I still did it!!

Yay! 🥂 here’s to successfully leaving behind a path that wasn’t truly mine to begin with.

My Samsung washer was making a massive racket and I really didn’t want to buy another $1000 washer. I ordered the parts and used YouTube academy of excellence to get the job done. Pretty excited that it’s all back together and running just like new all over again. No leaks no drama.

I know it doesn’t seem like a lot but I’ve struggled with selective mutism for years and I’m so surprised on how I did it

I've made a couple of steps to believe in myself and did some preparatory ground work to apply to grad schools!!

tldr; never taught to believe in myself, broke down a first task into tiny steps and did them!

Backstory: I went back to school a few years ago to finish a whole new undergrad, a science degree in Public Health. Worked for a couple years, been out of work for four months after getting burnt out in the nonprofit world. Not finding a job in that time (very competitive market where I live), as well as the recent election results and all its implications plunged me into a depression.
I knew I wanted to aim for grad school at some point, but needing to work after getting my Bachelors degree took precedent. Self-limiting beliefs also threw a nasty wrench into the mix and I would emotionally collapse or get major anxiety that stopped me from acting. I had great grades and got lovely feedback from professors about my passion and intelligence.
My biggest initial obstacle was writing to professors I connected with; fear that they wouldn't remember me (finished degree during lockdown), believe in me, or even reply to a request for a letter of reference made me freeze and not take any action. No good.

This weekend, I broke the task into bite-sized chunks and could accomplish them! Take that anxiety!
a) Dug through years of backups in my external hard drive to find papers from the relevant professors' courses, along with the class grade to include in the email
b) Found a template letter to work from
c) looked up a few schools and made note of their application process and submission deadlines
d) BONUS ACTION: reached out to a couple advisors from dream grad schools to learn more about specific programs etc.

This might seem small and basic to some, but for me, it's huge.
This is a really intimidating task that can seem hopeless, especially with the anticipated route public health systems and funding will likely take soon, but I have to do something to keep learning and trying to do good while I'm alive---as well as try for a safer financial future (I'm in my 30's and been working class or in poverty my whole adulthood). Fingers crossed for sending out these emails to my 5 or 6 professors this week----and getting responses!!! Eeeeeek.
Please congratulate me lol

i was just doing my hair and was just so happy because i can see how much it’s grown. i remember years back i always wanted long hair and at the state it’s in right now, it already looks pretty long. earlier this year, me and my mom found a good protective style that i liked and i noticed that my hair was growing a lot with it. i’m just so happy lol.

It was on sale (shout out to the Black Friday gods for 30% off!!) and it won't be here until April of next year but I finally did it. And I can't tell my mom cause she'll find a way to make it all about her like she always does..

So I'm telling Reddit lol

I finally found a job with better hours, pay, and holidays off! I am so nervous. Hopefully, I don't mess this up!

I was diagnosed bipolar in 2019 and put on antipsychotics, the antipsychotics ( and my eating disorder ) helped me gain 60lbs, it affected my triglycerides and blood sugar levels. I ended up prediabetic ( 1 point in bloods away from type 2 ) with high blood pressure, cholesterol, and developed non alcoholic fatty liver.

With eating disorder therapy and almost 30 weeks of hard work challenging my behaviours, ive managed to completely reverse prediabetes and am now in normal range. My blood pressure and cholesterol are in normal range too and my liver function although still high had massively improved !!

I'm over the moon and all the hard work and decisions I've made for my physical health have been worth it.

I wouldn’t even know something was wrong until i realized I have to aggressively take care of my body because others aren’t. It was incredibly hard to notice I’m doing this with no IRL emotional support and it’s mentally draining. But I got up today and made coffee. Just wanted to tell someone, I woke up.

I started my WeGovy weight loss journey on July 1. I have around 120 pounds to lose. I'd been losing 1-2 pounds per week until late October, when it suddenly stopped. I started getting frustrated by the plateau, and then, as Thanksgiving approached, I started getting nervous that I'd actually regain some of my losses.

I decided to not weigh myself every morning all of last week. I was just going to do my best to not overeat, even though that's kind of the point of the holiday. We have two Thanksgiving meals here: one on Thursday, then we go to my in-laws for another one on Friday.

Both days, I made a conscious effort to not overeat. That was, of course, made a lot easier by the medicine, which is the point of the medicine.

I weighed myself for the first time in a week this morning, fully expecting to have gained some weight over the week. But, instead, I'm down two pounds to a new low. I broke through the plateau.

I finally did it, I'm 10 months sober. Only 2 months left to go and then I've achieved a year of sobriety...

I’m so proud of myself after hiking with friends and finishing at around 7k steps. I went to different places and did the 10k+… I’m questioning how to do it again by myself if I wasn’t on a hiking trail

I used to struggle really really bad with self-harm, and have really been wanting to relapse. But I've made good progress not relapsing and have made it to 6 months and 16 days! :]

Im a 25-year old from Brooklyn, New York who loves making music for fun and I just hit a big accomplishment (in my opinion) of hitting 50,000 total streams on Spotify and like the title, I have no one to share it with. It might not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but to me, this is everything and nothing in life has ever made me feel as good as I feel right now. As I sit here in my bedroom writing this, I can't help but be incredibly grateful for every single one of those people who listened to my songs, shared them around, and supported me. Anyways, I just wanted to share this accomplishment with you guys as this is a big day for me and I'm really happy right now.

I rescued a puppy (now 4 months old) a month ago and she was really shy and reserved, so it's been hard to get her out of the house and further than the mailbox. Today though, I managed to get her out and we went for a half hour walk with my son! I'm not very fit, so this isn't something I would have usually done without her. I'm glad I got her, she's been really great for my mental health and she seems to be doing really well!

I kept not eating vegetables. I promised myself if I ate a salad that I could seek attention here. 😆🙏🏻🎉Organic greens, black olives, garlic stuffed green olives, kimchi mixed with plain yogurt and other spices for the dressing, steamed broccoli, roasted sweet potatoes

Sooooo I’m a picture hoarder. I had 10k photos at the start. I take a lot of pictures of random things and forget to delete them later. A lot of my pictures are of my pets, and I really struggle to delete those because when I had my tiger salamander, I would delete most of the photos I had of him, thinking “oh I’ll be able to get more, he will be around for a while,” and it left me with five photos of him, because I didn’t have him for very long.

I was getting frustrated with having to scroll back through a bunch of junk just to find things like my honeymoon photos, actually important ones. Well, today I said screw it and spent almost an hour and a half just deleting pictures. I deleted a lot of pet pics which was hard, but I’m still happy I did it. I fully intend on keeping up with it from now on, but we shall see.

I'm in my last couple semesters of my MBA and just received word that my last portfolio paper needed to graduate has passed with a 97%!!!!

It was a 20 page paper that I was sure I'd fail, but nope! Now as long as I pass the last 3 classes I have, I'll be the first person on my mom's side of the family to ever have a Master's degree

I’m in my late 20s & my nervous system has always been stuck in fight or flight, scared of doing anything different or moving too much in case I draw too much attention to myself - including dancing without being under the influence. But I did it!!! And I’m happy!

So I write songs for fun, mostly using an online tool called Jummbox. A while back i decided, why not post what I wrote on YouTube? I didn't really expect it to get any attention, I just wanted to get it out there. In the past, my songs haven't really gotten a lot of views and most of the ones they did get were either me listening to them again to try to boost them or from random people I asked to listen. However, recently, my newest song has been getting a lot of views just on its own! It has over 150 views and it's only been 2 weeks! I know it's a small thing but it's just really nice to see something I put so much time in effort into getting attention :D

Last year, my dad, who was my absolute shining beacon on what a good man looked like, passed away suddenly from pancreatic cancer. He was fighting this cancer for 15 months, which in an of itself was amazing, but within a week of learning that no further treatments would be completed, his body and mind deteriorated at an alarmingly rapid pace.

I was lucky in that I am employed at a company that was gracious enough to extend my leave of absence beyond the bereavement period. The hospice process, and the days and weeks following his death, was the single most challenging period of my life.

I spent all of my time and energy fulfilling a promise I made to him, which was that I would make sure his death did not tear apart the family. I took that to mean that I would make sure that his wife, my stepmother, would not need for a thing until she was ready. So I dedicated myself to managing the funeral and the after funeral tasks. I rallied family and friends to deep clean his home. I learned a few things about home repair by taking on some projects like fixing a washing machine, replacing a sprinkler head, troubleshooting and repairing hardware for the internet and security cameras, and many other little things.

Once it was time to go back home, I dedicated my energy into my work. I was off for an entire month and I needed to really show that I was grateful for the time away. Up until now, that is all that I did. I would work, even on my days off. I would schedule PTO, and still check on my team. I was promoted in this time, and had a life changing salary increase, but all that did was motivate me to spend more of my time and energy at work.

While this is happening, my partner is taking care of our house. Outside of taking out the trash and picking up clutter around my own areas, my partner really did all of the house chores, even the ones that I normally did like mowing the lawn. I would like to think that this happened because I was trying to get us to a point where my partner didn't have to work, but really it was that I was distracting myself from the grief.

This all came to a head, today, when I finished working some unpaid, voluntary overtime, that I looked at kitchen and noticed that the dishes from yesterday were still in the sink. I don't know what came over me, because in the past when I saw that, I would think to myself I should do it, but ultimately did something else. Today, however, I deep cleaned the kitchen.

I started unloading the dishwasher and loading it back up. Then I washed and sanitized the sink and counters. Then I did the same to the stove. I cleared off the dining room table that had turned into an extension of our pile system organization and even checked mail that had been piling up (including a bill for a dentist that I had not seen in more than 8 months).

I know this is so small, but I wanted to share with someone. I feel shame for sharing it with my partner because they had been doing it all this time, so here I am.

Thank you in advance for any kind words. I am off to vacuum the entire house now!

TLDR; After 13 months of avoiding my grief following the death of my dad, and focusing all of my energy into work to the detriment of my household, I finally managed to clean my kitchen. Now I have momentum to clean other areas of the house!

So this is a follow up post to me starting therapy one year ago. Therapy has changed my life for the better. I now find joy in my life again. I also starting working out. I have not really been the epitome of fitness all my life, tried going to the gym many a times in the past, but never went more than 20 days. But today I am celebrating a whole year of going to the gym regularly. Fitness is a part of my routine now. I can see the small changes in my appearance that help me keep going. This is an appeal to everyone to please seek out help for your mental health. The night is darkest, just before the sunrise.

PS: maybe you can trace my old post on the sub-reddit (idk if one can really trace archived posts)

im still hesitant because my advisor is the head of the dept and shes notorious for being super busy and forgetful, but i just had a meeting with her and she said id be able to do research (on my dream topic tbh) during the school year and over the summer!! if it works out i could even get paid for it next quarter and certainly over the summer, as well as get research units this upcoming quarter.

i really hope it works out because ive been lost all of freshman year so im glad sophomore year might (??) be panning out. no one irl knows rn because i just need it finalized but needed to tell it out to someone haha so here we go <3

I'm a GTA in a Master's program, and I'm required to grade student essays as part of the job. I have an anxiety disorder that's massively triggered whenever I can't give someone a great grade. (I'm the sort of person who's moved across the country six times just to get out of unpleasant social encounters.) Commenting on essays always feels like the most nerve-wracking conversation ever, but I'm grading the essays anyway. 😅 I haven't even broken down sobbing lol.

Update: Thank you so much to everyone who replied! I truly appreciate all the support and encouragement. 🥲 Everyone's replies were so genuine, supportive, and helpful!

He showed up at my grandparents and they absolutely do not tolerate cats and im a state from home with no money or vehicle but i found him a home and coordinated the transport and even got a hold of a carrier! Ill be bringing him in the morning ❤️ no more cold nights for this lil buddy