I very rarely use this platform and voice to directly speak about mental health. For many reasons:
1. It’s a protected discussion for me. Seeing unqualified “life coaches” using buzz words, their $300 certification and two years of a rough patch in life as their platform to make your life all rainbows and unicorns about very serious matters is so TRIGGERING for someone who has truly dealt with REAL mental health struggles.
2. It’s still a VERY vulnerable space. I immediately feel like I need to defend it.
I wrote this when Kate Spade took her own life:
“If you’re saddened and then inspired by Kate Spade’s sad hidden struggle and passing and saying things like ‘We need to talk about mental health more’… Please really remember that the next time you call someone with anxiety ‘weak’. Or the next time you call someone with bipolar ‘crazy’. Or the next time you call someone with depression ‘lazy’. Or the next time you call someone with postpartum depression ‘unmotherly’… we’re all guilty.
KNOW that THIS is the reason people don’t talk about the darkness of mental health.
Would she be who she was with that ‘stigma’ attached to her? Would her brand have suffered? Let’s not just TALK about mental health. Let’s be an nonjudgemental ear for those suffering and keep the demeaning labels out of your mouths.’ #realmentalhealthtalk
Emotions? What emotions? I got this.
Tired? I’m not tired? More caffeine.
Adjusting? No adjusting, I’m super Mom. 
And guess what happened?
LACK OF SLEEP makes you delusional. TRAUMA in pregnancy and birth and NICU needs to be dealt with. You don’t just “power through.” Or you do. Until you don’t.
But HEAR this – once they PUT me into the mental health healthcare system there was so much they had no control over. Here is a HEALTHY 24 year old who has a postpartum mind with ZERO history of mental health issues. ZERO. I mean I never ever checked “sad” on a form in my life.
And what did they do? The system FILLED my body with medications – medication after medication. They never addressed the postpartum piece. They never addressed unhealed traumas – when fun fact – often when your mental health breaks like this, many repressed traumas can come through.
THE LITHIUM that Britney Spears was on, and said in her court case, that she was forced to take… I was on that. Just do a quick Google search of the side effects of that medication and ask “Why would you put a 24 year old on that?” (in their mind I would be taking that for the rest of my life). I was out of my mind with exhaustion, but even through the fog I would cry every time I looked down into a handful of pills and KNEW this wasn’t the only answer. At this point, though, I lost the choice. This was what I was told was the “only way” to get better. So, I swallowed, through tears because I wanted to get better.
Finally even my family was like “woah, that’s A LOT”, My husband said “you were a walking zombie of who you used to be.” After a few months… My skin became covered in a rash all over. My hair started falling out and I gained 40 lbs – MORE than I gained while PREGNANT with twins!
It was “working”… or was it?
I hated every therapist they sent me to. They just kept telling me how great I was and I knew I needed DEEP HELP. I now know they were trying to build rapport, but honestly, I was irritable and impatient. I wanted DEEP WORK. If you know me, I despise small talk – it’s the worst way to build rapport with me. One doctor even asked me for workout advice 
At 25 years old a doctor suggested that I go on disability. Surely I would never be able to care for myself and go back to all the things I was doing before. I considered that this may be my new normal – on all these meds I barely had energy to do much of anything. I laughed much less and thought much less… but, it was “working”… right?
Let me say this, I gladly handed my decisions over to my Dad and husband. I NEEDED their help. At one point, BRITNEY SPEARS needed that help too. We all saw her shave her head. She had a breakdown. I’m just so grateful my personal breakdown wasn’t documented for all to see. Before long, for Britney, that HELP turned into POWER and that POWER stole her life. Listening to her testimony was gut wrenching.
I have never been more grateful for my father and husband. They could have easily taken that power, but they didn’t. (Maybe it helps that I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. 
I am sharing this because one of the things they always asked me when it got so bad was “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL US?! How did we not know?”
And here’s the truth: as crazy, over-exhausted and delusional as I was becoming, all I could think was: my husband will leave me and he will take the kids. I will lose everything. All I cared about was my family and all I kept thinking was, they will say “she’s mentally unstable” and I will lose my kids. I HAD to get better “on my own” for my kids.
At one point, I was so delusional that I couldn’t have picked my own kids out of a line up. Yet, in the back of my head, I THOUGHT for sure that if I asked for help they would deem me a bad mother. THIS IS WHY we don’t say anything. I was 24 and I didn’t know a thing about this thing that was happening to me. I just knew I didn’t want to lose my kids.
There’s a book that needs to be written inside of me about my life story waiting to be published. I practice sharing – even though my hands shake with fear of being judged. I will give you the “short ending”. Month after month, I asked my doctors to start tapering down my pills, and month after month… they didn’t listen to me.
My dad being in healthcare told me the proper ways to ask, I did it and they still didn’t listen. My parents warned me over and over about the dangers of coming off of the pills all on my own. That’s the only thing that kept me on sometimes. Eventually, being a stubborn 25 year old and still not healed, I did anyway.
I do not in any way recommend this. You can have seizures or worse from withdrawals.
I hit a wall after months and months of work and the doctors just wouldn’t listen to me anymore. I weaned myself off of all my meds and that will be 14 years ago in October. Once I got off them, It would take me another 2 to 3 years to even get back to feeling like I was truly me AND another five years to realise that I still needed help. This time I knew I could find it and many other ways besides medication.
I share this because listening to Britney Spears testimony reminded me that I was given the freedom to explore other alternatives in mental health. I had unconditional love and support that so many don’t have. With all her power, all her money and even all her “privilege ”, she has been stripped of those options and freedoms. Britney Spears has been caged because she is human. I could go on and on.
Mental health is NOT a trend.
It’s not your chance to feel like a part of something. I
t’s not your time to try and heal everyone.
Mental health is personal, when you share this post (a small part of my story) and when you comment, please know that you will NEVER know someone’s full story. It’s not yours to know. You may judge them (I feel like I just opened up myself to so much judgement sharing this), and frankly I have to share because THE SECOND that I learned that the people I looked up to who were MASSIVELY joyful, and MASSIVELY successful had experienced trauma and struggles like mine, I KNEW that I would be ok.
I KNEW that there were ways to win at life WITH these imbalances and NOT in spite of them. So, I share because had someone not shared that with me, I would have believed the doctors who told me I would never feel like my “old self again” and that I would never be able to do all the things I could do before my break.
I have felt better. I have learned more. I have grown. I have healed. I have levelled up. I am in a place where I can even speak about the embarrassment and shame that surrounded this time of my life.
So, when you see the hashtag #FreeBritney, understand that I am not jumping on a bandwagon. I’m not obsessed with celebrities and never will be. This one hits really really close to home.
*Big sigh. Hits publish. May delete*
