Survive: Choosing Life amid Darkness. For some, survival isn’t just about paying the bills

Survive: Choosing Life amid Darkness. For some, survival isn't just about paying the bills or making it through a hard week; it's about just living to see the next day.

I've battled anxiety and depression for as long as I can remember. I'm 49 years old now, and I've come to realize something important — my anxiety has been the louder, more constant voice all along.

For most of my life, I believed I wasn't enough. Not good enough.Not thin enough.Not pretty enough.

And the strange thing is… it never came from my family or my friends. They never said I was lacking. Those thoughts were planted deep inside me, and I carried them everywhere.

The scale was always too high. The mirror always showed something to fix —too much weight to lose, or sometimes weight I "should" gain. My skin wasn't clear enough. My hair wasn't curly enough.

And underneath it all, society kept handing me these impossible rules for what a woman should look like, act like, be like. We're told to fit into boxes we didn't choose, to chase perfection that doesn't even exist.

I think that's where so many of our struggles come from — not just in our appearance, but in how we see ourselves. The real fight is not with our bodies, but with the lies we've been taught to believe about them.

But here's what I know now: We don't have to keep fighting ourselves. We can question those lies . We can reclaim our worth and recognize that it's not defined by a number on a scale, a wrinkle on our face, or a rule that was never ours to begin with.

If you're struggling — with anxiety, depression, or simply feeling like you're not enough — please hear me when I say this: You already are.Not "will be," not "if you change," but right now, exactly as you are.

We may not silence every voice of doubt, but we can choose which ones we listen to. And the one that says "You are enough"? That's the one we're going to let grow louder.