You’re still going to struggle from time to time.

Yes, you’ve gotten the help you need to get you back on track, and yes, you are definitely doing better than you were before. However, that doesn’t mean it’s all smiles and sunshine from here on out. There will still come days when you don’t know if you’re going to make it through. The only difference now is that you’ve equipped yourself to be able to push through by getting some form of help. If you went to counseling to get through the depression, keep going. If you met with a mentor or pastor, keep meeting with them. If you started taking medication, keep taking it. You might think that because you’re in a better place now, you no longer require the things that got you there. And while there will come a day that that is the case, it is not right away. Stopping any of these things cold turkey can be extremely dangerous to your healing process. The challenges will come, but now you’re stronger than before. Now you can fight back, and win.

Life went on, people moved on, and you will lose friends you didn’t expect to.

Honestly, this one might be the hardest to accept. Once you’ve heaved yourself out onto the ground beside the hole you’ve been pulling yourself out of, you will look around and realize that many people who were there before are now gone. Some people don’t have the patience or desire to deal with how your depression affects you as well as themselves, and some people just don’t have the compassion for it. And even though you know there was nothing you could have done about it, this will still hurt. It will still feel like your heart has been slashed to pieces, because you will lose people you thought were going to be there no matter what. However, this also means you will have a deeper love and appreciation for the friends who chose to forgo their feelings of neglect or discomfort because they realized this was not something you had any control over. They are the real MVP’s of your life, keep them around.

You need to celebrate your victories, no matter how small they might seem.

There was a point in time, maybe not so long ago, when you were unable to get out of bed, or eat, or do other things that seem like simple tasks. So now that accomplishing those things isn’t quite as difficult, you need to be over the top proud of yourself when you do. It’s that self-encouragement, that confidence in yourself of, “I can do this again, because I did it just now,” that will help propel you forward into accomplishing other things you couldn’t do before. Don’t forget that you are your best friend in this process, and now that you’ve shown yourself you can fight back, encourage yourself daily by reminding yourself of the victories, no matter how small they may seem.