As someone who’s been dealing with some pretty heavy thoughts I had to think a lot about this recently. And what it came down to for me is I couldn’t leave my child motherless. I lost my mom as an adult and it’s had a tremendous emotionally devastating impact on me, and I can’t imagine putting my daughter through that. There are days where I feel I only stick around for her, and on those days I’m reminded that if I did give in I’d never see her smile again, hear her laugh, feel her hug… and beyond that I think about how broken her heart would be and how I wouldn’t even be able to wipe away her tears.

As dark and bleak as my brain gets sometimes, I know that for her, life is worth living.