*Insert cool 90s music and record scratch*
I guess you’re wondering how I got here.. Well, it all started back in my college days. I wasn’t where I wanted to be. I wasn’t who I wanted to be.
Without getting into a long-winded timeline of my not so high-vibing past, significant loss and grieving is how I got here. On the outside, I looked great! I was a top performer at work, I aced all of my classes freshman year, and I just completed my final steps to continue my education at my dream college in Chicago. I was doing my best to juggle life while also trying to find ways to numb my pain and manage my battle with constant illnesses caused by stress. On the outside, I looked fine to everyone around me, but on the inside, I felt like my world was collapsing. I guess I thought I was a pro at covering it up, because I wasn’t okay for what felt like forever, and nobody seemed to notice.
Maybe you’ve experienced this too? This is what they call “functional depression”. Yep, there’s a name for everything, darling!
I had this thing for nearly ten years. But here’s why I didn’t think anything was “wrong”…this was my reality for so long, that I just thought it was part of who I was. I thought sadness was a part of my personality. Can you imagine? So I accepted this way of life… which also came with physical conditions and an unhealthy relationship with food.
It took me a while to start taking the steps I needed to heal. I made my next big life decision to get over my fears and shame and seek help. I was afraid to open up about my deepest thoughts because I didn’t want to be judged (nor did I want anyone to know anything was going on with me behind my fake smile that I believed I mastered), but I was even more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t do it.
Growing up in a black Christian household, discussing mental health just isn’t a thing that happens. This can be said about any minority group, actually. In my house, to admit that you needed help for your mental well-being was to admit that there was something wrong with you or that you were being attacked by the devil, demons, everything else was at fault, and you didn’t need help. All you needed to do was go to church, read the bible, and pray it away. My household isn’t special. If you are a person of color, you’ve most likely experienced your own form of this, no matter your culture or religious background. While I still have a prayer practice and spend time in daily devotion, this way of thinking has been proven to be so dangerous to our community. I knew this couldn’t be all that I needed to do. It felt like I was ignoring the root issues of why I felt the way that I did. And I was. It felt wrong.
This is why I devoted myself to learning more about emotions and how they manifest physically, in addition to healing myself through the help of therapy, spiritual coaching, and holistic living. From there, I stumbled across the Institute For Integrative Nutrition, and my mind was opened to managing my health & wellness by looking at many different parts of my life. from there, I moved on to learning about how the brain and the body work together, and how emotions are stored. Anddd… the rest is history!
It was quite a journey to get to a place of genuine happiness, health, and abundant appreciation for who I am. I have honored my pain because without it, I would not be the person I am today, with many important lessons to teach my child throughout her own journey. Asking for help is hard (I know better than anyone), but a life of unhappiness and unfulfillment is even harder. You can come back from anything, and I am living proof of that. Everything I wanted was on the other side of my fear of asking for help, and as I look back at the woman I used to be versus the woman I am as I write this, I could never thank her enough for her bravery and her confidence to say enough is enough. I am far from perfect, and we grow and learn every day, but the first step to a better life is recognizing that a change has to happen, and mustering up the courage to say “I can’t do this alone; I need support”. That is both the hardest and most beautiful step.
