Loosing anxiety's grip on my life.

How a Type A, riven woman learned to let go and let God

I struggled for all of my adolescence with anxiety. Not severe, but it was definitely there. There was a time in 5th grade I was making a D in math and I was so afraid to tell my parents because I thought they would be disappointed in me and I didn’t want to disappoint them. When I called them to tell them they weren’t mad at all they told me it was okay and it’s just fifth grade. Even now, I am fighting the urge to tell you this because I’m afraid I’ll be judged or that you’ll think I haven’t actually beat the anxiety but I’m writing it, so that’s proof that I’m able to fight these thoughts. This theme of anxiety in school continued.

In highschool, I was supposed to do a senior year capstone project where I picked an organization to partner with and then present on it. For whatever reason, I never actually went to the organization I set up a partnership with. For the presentation, I winged it and was able to lie my way through it. Afterward, the guild was eating me alive and I was afraid that the teachers were going to figure out I lied and then I wasn’t going to get to graduate. Coach Myers, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for lying and hope you’re doing well.

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For college, I started at a small liberal arts college called Catawba and the classes were relatively small so testing didn’t bother me. Though I'd never been a great test taker, my grades were always very good because I studied hard. When I transferred to UNC, I was in Econ 101, which was a combination of micro and macro economic principles. Now, my dad is an economics professor and I had already taken intro to microeconomics at Catawba but not macroeconomics (there they separate micro and macro and ss an economics major, I had to retake the course to receive that credit).

I was acing all the homework and assignments but failing tests. I didn’t understand why. I knew this material very well. My grades were so bad (I was also taking multivariable calculus, which is the most failed math class at UNC–pretty dumb move for a sophomore to dive into) that my sorority had a meeting with me telling me I had to get them up or I wouldn’t be able to stay.

I’d always done well in school because of my work ethic (and I’m pretty smart ;) ) and found myself drowning. What was the difference now? Why was I failing? It should be noted that UNC’s ECON 101 class had 400 kids in a huge auditorium. Up to that point, I had only had about 25 kids in my class. I was anxious about the time running out and constantly checked the clock instead of focusing on the problem on the test. I was distracted by the other kids finishing before me and turning their tests in.

I decided to do something because this couldn’t continue. I got an evaluation with a psychiatrist to see if I met UNC’s requirements for testing accommodations due to my test anxiety. I did and I was able to take my tests in a separate room with time and a half and I started to pass with flying colors.

Then I graduated and moved to DC and my anxiety really took a pause, save for some anxiety in romantic relationships. I was thriving. Working on the Hill for a senator, deputy fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, deputy director in the personnel office in the White House, congressional liaison at USAID, and then advisor to the Deputy Administrator at USAID. I decided to move back home to Charlotte, NC after my last role to work on the 2020 Republican National Convention as the Event Manager and then Deputy Director of Operations. I did all of this from ages 21 to 26. With COVID ruining the big convention plans, you would have thought I would have been super anxious and stressed, but I wasn’t.

After my political career I chose to stay in Charlotte to settle down and get out of politics. I found a job with Carolina CAT, a Caterpillar dealer in the Carolinas. I was the Executive Assistant to the CEO and then for the CFO. He then became the COO and was filling in for much of the C-Suite as we looked to fill that position. I was tasked with not only scheduling meetings and interviews with the rest of the C-Suite but also planning company wide events. I was never really that anxious in this roll either. Eventually I decided to stay home with my daughter after working for a year remotely as a new mom just wasn’t working. And I want to say here that this is such a hard decision and position for women to make and be in. Especially with the economy and the insane cost of childcare, the decision is near impossible. I have many friends that have chosen to stay home not only because they want to but also because it doesn’t make financial sense to work and have basically all of their paycheck go to having someone else watch their child(ren) during the day. Other’s keep working because they need the extra income, even if it’s not a lot due to daycare costs. Other’s simply want to keep working to maintain a sense of self or find their careers as their passion. All of that is valid and I am not saying any is better than the other. I have personal beliefs on the benefits of staying home when your children are alone and fortunately, we have the means for me to do that. But that’s not to say that should you choose to return to work you’re a bad mom or doing it wrong. We are all different and have different circumstances that impact our choices and we need to respect that and do what’s best for us and our families without comparison to others.

Got on a little tangent there but, I say all of this to illustrate that I am very much a go getter, driven, type A person. But I was great at work. My ability to connect with people, work hard, and problem solve made me absolutely thrive. People liked me—I was friends with my bosses. I was admired by peers. Maybe one day I’ll write a book about all my experiences in my professional career, but that’s not the point of this book.

My journey into motherhood was not quite so smooth. And that crushed me. I was used to everything going my way. For things to come easy to me. Plus I’d always wanted to be a mom and was always great with kids. I babysat a family all day every day in the summers. There were three of them and they were basically my practice kids. I love them and they love me. I hope you’re reading this Coyle Crew! So why was I not loving being a mom right out of the gate? Why did I struggle to find myself in this new job? Shouldn’t this come easier than anything else because I was born to do this?

What I learned is that becoming a mom changes your life. I mean duh—that’s not groundbreaking. But what I wasn’t expecting was to lose myself, my sense of identity. It takes time to feel like you’ve found your groove. And with me being impatient, I wanted to feel confident and in control right away. But God humbled me in many ways and taught me to fully rely on him. But it wasn’t without some very difficult trials.

When I was 33 weeks pregnant with my first child, I had a seizure and we discovered the reason for that was due to a brain tumor. I underwent surgery at 34 weeks. By the grace of God, I was covered in a supernatural peace and they were able to remove the whole tumor. It was also in an area that didn’t impair my personality or affect my memory, etc. We would later find out that it caused a mood disorder and dealt with a lot of ups and deep downs because of it. But before that, I was still working remotely for CAT and found myself no longer finding joy in what I did. I was leaving in the middle of the day to do things that brought me more joy and dropping balls at work (very unlike me) and it was causing a problem with my boss. He was very understanding due to all I had gone through and I’m so thankful but it became very clear that it was time for me to leave that job. The day I quit I fell into a DEEP depression. Like, catatonic type depression. I couldn’t think of what to do. My husband found me in the kitchen one morning with a carton of eggs just standing staring blankly at the stove. He asked me what I was doing and I said I need to make eggs for breakfast but I don’t know how. It was scary for everyone.

I sought help from a psychiatrist who dismissed all that I went through (IVF, pregnancy, brain surgery, postpartum depression, the loss of a dear friend’s child, and leaving my job to stay home) and just wanted to put me on medication which, at the time, I didn’t think was necessary. Slowly, with the support of my husband, his mother (who was living with us at the time) and my family and friends, I was able to come out of it and feel like myself again.

Then came the summer and things took a turn for the worse but in the other direction. I was manic. Not a severe case of mania, but mania just the same. I was fighting with my husband and his mom frequently. I was spending too much money and trying to hide it from everyone. Any little thing would set me off. It should be noted I was also pregnant at the time and my hormones definitely played a role in my mood and these outbursts. I sought help with a psychiatrist that my husband found through a recommendation by a college best friend and she was amazing. She recommended I seek help through an organization called Hopeway. I lived there for two weeks (residential), then went M-F from 9-4 for two weeks (partial hospitalization program), and then a week of going three half days a week (intensive outpatient program). It was amazing. I made lifelong friends who were going through something similar or maybe completely different but we bonded over feeling misunderstood by our loved ones and feeling out of control of our own lives. I am forever grateful for these awesome humans and the kind of care Hopeway provides. I’m also grateful that throughout this whole mental health journey I was surrounded by incredible therapists and supportive friends and family. I held an info session about my diagnosis and how they can support me through it and had about 30 folks on the call. Alison, my psychiatrist, was blown away by how much support I had and I felt so blessed to have that many people care about me and my well being to take time out of their day to listen to what was going on and how they can best help me. But I wasn’t totally in the clear.

Things were mostly peaceful after my time at Hopeway in my house and with my friends. Then came Halloween. I started having a panic attack that I was about to fall into a depression again like the fall/winter prior. My husband was talking me off a ledge. We practiced some deep breathing exercises and they helped but that whole night I was fighting this urge to harm myself or my family. I didn’t want to but the intrusive thoughts kept coming into my mind. So much so, that I woke my husband up and told him to take out all the knives or anything sharp so that it wasn’t even a possibility. I texted the suicide hotline but they didn’t know how to help because I wasn’t totally suicidal. I didn’t want to end things but the urge to was there if that makes any sense. I now see that this was an attack from the enemy but God was working in me to fight those thoughts. Thank God. But when it was time to start the day the feelings hadn’t escaped me. I called my mom and told her. I was awake before anyone else in my family and I was afraid that if I didn’t go to the hospital I was going to end up doing harm to myself or my toddler. Not because I wanted to but I felt that I may not be able to withstand a toddler tantrum without reacting in a negative way. And I felt that at some point I was going to snap. So I was adamant that I go to the hospital and be committed. My husband wanted me to stay home and try to work through it but I knew I needed to act. Thank God for his work in me because in the hospital I experienced auditory and visual hallucinations. In the ER they did a doppler on me to ensure my was okay (after me asking several times because I was convinced something was wrong). I didn’t hear a heartbeat and saw the doctor make a face like the baby is gone but didn’t want to tell me to make my mental state worse. My mom and husband heard the heartbeat and told me that he was okay but I told them they were just lying to me so I didn’t freak out. I was also convinced that they were texting the nursing staff about me and I didn't like that but they weren’t. Again, I thought they were lying to me to keep me calm. While in that room I had to actively fight the thought of banging my head on the corner of the countertop to do harm. My daughter was walking towards me and I had to fight the urge to hurt her. I told my husband to take her away so I didn’t do anything to her. If you’re not a believer, I hope you can see that God was supernaturally interceding to protect me and my family (husband, toddler, and unborn child).

Later when everyone left to go home and I spent the night, I was hearing my husband talking with the doctors and nurses. I could hear my daughter calling for me and crying in the hallway. I could hear the staff telling him visiting hours were over and that he needed to go home. I heard him talk to a doctor and they said the only thing they could do would be to abort TJ. The sound of opening and closing the door sounded like a shotgun being pumped. I was convinced that they were going to kill me. And then I was convinced that I was actually dead. When the nurse came to do my vitals I was convinced that there was nothing there. I saw the same discouraged face that I saw when the earlier nurse searched for a heartbeat. I was afraid that if I stood up I was going to fall over because I wasn’t actually alive. When they transferred me to the psychiatric ward in Salisbury (where I’m from and my family lives–another God moment), I thought we were being followed and they were going to hit our car to kill me. When we arrived, I was slipping in and out of understanding what was going on. I was able to communicate to them what I felt but then I would quickly lose touch with reality and say something absurd. For example, I thought there was a code word “shotgun” and that if I said that they were going to lock me up. That code word changed and I believed it to be “now I know” and I kept repeating that thinking they would understand the secret. I was supposed to call my support system and give them a four digit code so they could come visit me. Somehow, by God’s grace, I remembered my husband’s and my mom’s number to talk to them. I gave the correct code to my husband, but I told my mom the code was 911.

Once I was committed, I heard a lot of voices of friends and family that I thought were visiting. My husband’s relationship with my parents at the time was very strained and I heard him yelling at them that this was their fault for not believing him when he was telling them something was going on with me. I heard CC screaming in the hallways and my parents trying to explain that they were trying to do what was best for me and that they were sorry. The doors shutting in the hospital, I thought was Emiliano slamming the door to leave. I heard friends from DC, my neighborhood, etc. visiting and asking the doctors what was going on. What’s weird is I heard voices of people I wasn’t even close with. A girl I do Green Compass with but was not particularly close with “was there” asking why she couldn’t just say she farts in front of her husband (she finds poop humor hilarious so this isn’t far off, but odd that I heard her there and talking about that). A woman I used to work with as a second shooter and photography editor was there saying that she wanted to tell me that she wasn’t actually getting divorced from her husband, just said that in the summer to relate to the problems I was having in my own marriage.

At one point, I was laying in my bed and I saw doctors on the ceiling in what was like a mirror trying to harm me to get me to sleep. They brought in all sorts of things to get me to sleep.Their fingers looked like Edward Scissorhands. My mother in law “was there” to help get me out of this dark place and this time, I didn’t just hear her, I saw her. Except, it was understood that she was dead. She was wearing a cap as if she’d lost her hair from chemo. My MIL did have breast cancer and was recently cancer free so it’s interesting that I saw her like this. She was trying to convince me to cooperate with the doctors so that I could just go to sleep but I wasn’t able to. Then, my husband came in with the doctors and he was trying to get me to cooperate. Eventually they brought in my daughter and said I need to cooperate or they would hurt my daughter. Emiliano was okay with this and then they did hurt her. He was upset that they did but not overly upset. He just said “did you really do it”? Meaning kill her. I saw her body lifeless. I’m struggling to even write this because it’s just so horrific and I can’t believe I endure this but it’s important for me to write it so it’s clear the severity of what I experienced. There were several other things I believed were happening that weren’t. I believed I was set apart to be saved for the end of the world and I knew the secret word to save me. There was a time I got frustrated with my mom because I was trying to get her to say the word but I wasn’t verbalizing anything and she couldn’t guess the word. I thought she was going to die because she wasn’t saved since she didn’t know the word. She and everyone I saw, save for my husband, had a demon face. If you’ve never heard of this, look it up. What you’ll see is a distorted face that’s stretched out horizontally. Mine was a vertical stretching of the case and everyone’s teeth were sharp. I remember thinking “they look like a lion” and I felt I was in danger. At one point, I assaulted a nurse by swiping at her face and taking off her glasses because she looked like a demon to me. I then ran up to the working station for the nurses and banged on the glass of their locked office asking them to let me in. I thought a male nurse was a cop coming to take me to jail. I believe shortly after that they gave me an antipsychotic and started to slowly get a grip on reality.

My friend’s dad is an OB/GYN at that hospital and he was on call while I was there and came to do rounds on me to monitor TJ while I was taking the medications to ensure everything was alright (another God moment, y’all). I remember how terrified his face looked. I’m sure for him it was very scary seeing a girl who grew up with his daughter in such a horrible state. The medications brought me out of a completely catatonic state (I assume this is when I was hallucinating, but to me all the days blend together). And while I’m generally in the “use natural solutions” camp, there is a time and place for modern medicine. This was one of those times. Even now, I’ve tweaked my medications down but noticed I might be slipping into a manic episode so I tweaked it back up. However, my mood has been brought down a little bit so I’m monitoring for a week and then may go back down. My hope is to be able to get to a point to be able to completely treat my disorder with my CBD regimen. Which is totally possible. But it’s all about being patient and not jump in too fast so you don’t enter a spot you don’t want to be in.

Coming home I was still very much feeling down and socially awkward. For me, this is a huge hindrance because I recharge and get energized from social interaction. So while it seems like not a big deal to most, it’s huge for me. Feeling awkward and not knowing what to say keeps me down for longer if that makes sense. But overtime, I just force myself to go and know that it will get better and I’ll feel like me again soon. Another thing that happens when I’m down is getting so overwhelmed I’m paralyzed.

For example, we did Thanksgiving completely on our own the year I came home from the hospital (which was only 11 days after getting out of the psych ward). In my type A, perfectionist mindset I started to think of all the food we needed to have on the menu. A full feast you’d see at any thanksgiving gathering. But that just was not going to happen this year. And it didn’t need to because we only had two people and a toddler eating. Still, I felt overwhelmed with the small menu we created and thought the food wasn’t going to be ready in time (there is literally no pressure to have it ready by any set time, it’s just us). We woke up early and cooked everything and it was ready by noon (earlier than I even wanted the meal to be ready anyway). I should point out that part of this was prepping my veggies and some items the day before.

Something that has happened in both depressive episodes is being overly concerned about meals. Feeling like I don’t know what to make for lunch and dinner and that turns into the absolutely ridiculous thought that our family is going to starve because I can’t decide what I need to buy or what I should make. Something I used to hold onto (because when my mother and law lived with us, this is what we did) was making a full blown lunch. Basically a dinner for lunch. Totally unnecessary. I now decide on the fly and often we all eat something different depending on what we’re in the mood for.

For example, today I won’t be home for lunch because we have lots of errands to run to prepare for a big Easter brunch. So I'm going to pack a lunch for CC, bring something small and easy for me, and my husband will have leftovers.

Getting sidetracked here. Anyway, slowly, I started to be able to do things again without feeling anxious socially or overwhelmed by all the things I had to do around the house. I found the confidence to run my house efficiently and was able to focus on and grow my CBD business. I’m hitting such a sweet spot in life where I really feel fulfilled in my role as a mom and confident that I’m doing it right. I would be remiss if I didn’t give glory to God for the faith he gave me to get through all of these trials. I also can’t ignore the role CBD has played in my ability to just let things go and employ skills I learned at Hopeway.

Now that you have some background on who I am and what I’ve been through, let’s dive into some practical ways you can let things go in your motherhood journey as well. I want to make this clear first, if you like rigidity in your routines/schedules, please keep doing that. For me, it made me more stressed to feel like I had to fit what the guides said because if I missed something, I was failing. If this is you, read on.

Takeaway: God has got you. He will carry you through the darkest times and grant you more grace and peace than you can imagine.I struggled for all of my adolescence with anxiety. Not severe, but it was definitely there. There was a time in 5th grade I was making a D in math and I was so afraid to tell my parents because I thought they would be disappointed in me and I didn’t want to disappoint them. When I called them to tell them they weren’t mad at all they told me it was okay and it’s just fifth grade. Even now, I am fighting the urge to tell you this because I’m afraid I’ll be judged or that you’ll think I haven’t actually beat the anxiety but I’m writing it, so that’s proof that I’m able to fight these thoughts. This theme of anxiety in school continued.

In highschool, I was supposed to do a senior year capstone project where I picked an organization to partner with and then present on it. For whatever reason, I never actually went to the organization I set up a partnership with. For the presentation, I winged it and was able to lie my way through it. Afterward, the guild was eating me alive and I was afraid that the teachers were going to figure out I lied and then I wasn’t going to get to graduate. Coach Myers, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry for lying and hope you’re doing well.

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For college, I started at a small liberal arts college called Catawba and the classes were relatively small so testing didn’t bother me. Though I'd never been a great test taker, my grades were always very good because I studied hard. When I transferred to UNC, I was in Econ 101, which was a combination of micro and macro economic principles. Now, my dad is an economics professor and I had already taken intro to microeconomics at Catawba but not macroeconomics (there they separate micro and macro and ss an economics major, I had to retake the course to receive that credit).

I was acing all the homework and assignments but failing tests. I didn’t understand why. I knew this material very well. My grades were so bad (I was also taking multivariable calculus, which is the most failed math class at UNC–pretty dumb move for a sophomore to dive into) that my sorority had a meeting with me telling me I had to get them up or I wouldn’t be able to stay.

I’d always done well in school because of my work ethic (and I’m pretty smart ;) ) and found myself drowning. What was the difference now? Why was I failing? It should be noted that UNC’s ECON 101 class had 400 kids in a huge auditorium. Up to that point, I had only had about 25 kids in my class. I was anxious about the time running out and constantly checked the clock instead of focusing on the problem on the test. I was distracted by the other kids finishing before me and turning their tests in.

I decided to do something because this couldn’t continue. I got an evaluation with a psychiatrist to see if I met UNC’s requirements for testing accommodations due to my test anxiety. I did and I was able to take my tests in a separate room with time and a half and I started to pass with flying colors.

Then I graduated and moved to DC and my anxiety really took a pause, save for some anxiety in romantic relationships. I was thriving. Working on the Hill for a senator, deputy fundraiser for the Republican National Committee, deputy director in the personnel office in the White House, congressional liaison at USAID, and then advisor to the Deputy Administrator at USAID. I decided to move back home to Charlotte, NC after my last role to work on the 2020 Republican National Convention as the Event Manager and then Deputy Director of Operations. I did all of this from ages 21 to 26. With COVID ruining the big convention plans, you would have thought I would have been super anxious and stressed, but I wasn’t.

After my political career I chose to stay in Charlotte to settle down and get out of politics. I found a job with Carolina CAT, a Caterpillar dealer in the Carolinas. I was the Executive Assistant to the CEO and then for the CFO. He then became the COO and was filling in for much of the C-Suite as we looked to fill that position. I was tasked with not only scheduling meetings and interviews with the rest of the C-Suite but also planning company wide events. I was never really that anxious in this roll either. Eventually I decided to stay home with my daughter after working for a year remotely as a new mom just wasn’t working. And I want to say here that this is such a hard decision and position for women to make and be in. Especially with the economy and the insane cost of childcare, the decision is near impossible. I have many friends that have chosen to stay home not only because they want to but also because it doesn’t make financial sense to work and have basically all of their paycheck go to having someone else watch their child(ren) during the day. Other’s keep working because they need the extra income, even if it’s not a lot due to daycare costs. Other’s simply want to keep working to maintain a sense of self or find their careers as their passion. All of that is valid and I am not saying any is better than the other. I have personal beliefs on the benefits of staying home when your children are alone and fortunately, we have the means for me to do that. But that’s not to say that should you choose to return to work you’re a bad mom or doing it wrong. We are all different and have different circumstances that impact our choices and we need to respect that and do what’s best for us and our families without comparison to others.

Got on a little tangent there but, I say all of this to illustrate that I am very much a go getter, driven, type A person. But I was great at work. My ability to connect with people, work hard, and problem solve made me absolutely thrive. People liked me—I was friends with my bosses. I was admired by peers. Maybe one day I’ll write a book about all my experiences in my professional career, but that’s not the point of this book.

My journey into motherhood was not quite so smooth. And that crushed me. I was used to everything going my way. For things to come easy to me. Plus I’d always wanted to be a mom and was always great with kids. I babysat a family all day every day in the summers. There were three of them and they were basically my practice kids. I love them and they love me. I hope you’re reading this Coyle Crew! So why was I not loving being a mom right out of the gate? Why did I struggle to find myself in this new job? Shouldn’t this come easier than anything else because I was born to do this?

What I learned is that becoming a mom changes your life. I mean duh—that’s not groundbreaking. But what I wasn’t expecting was to lose myself, my sense of identity. It takes time to feel like you’ve found your groove. And with me being impatient, I wanted to feel confident and in control right away. But God humbled me in many ways and taught me to fully rely on him. But it wasn’t without some very difficult trials.

When I was 33 weeks pregnant with my first child, I had a seizure and we discovered the reason for that was due to a brain tumor. I underwent surgery at 34 weeks. By the grace of God, I was covered in a supernatural peace and they were able to remove the whole tumor. It was also in an area that didn’t impair my personality or affect my memory, etc. We would later find out that it caused a mood disorder and dealt with a lot of ups and deep downs because of it. But before that, I was still working remotely for CAT and found myself no longer finding joy in what I did. I was leaving in the middle of the day to do things that brought me more joy and dropping balls at work (very unlike me) and it was causing a problem with my boss. He was very understanding due to all I had gone through and I’m so thankful but it became very clear that it was time for me to leave that job. The day I quit I fell into a DEEP depression. Like, catatonic type depression. I couldn’t think of what to do. My husband found me in the kitchen one morning with a carton of eggs just standing staring blankly at the stove. He asked me what I was doing and I said I need to make eggs for breakfast but I don’t know how. It was scary for everyone.

I sought help from a psychiatrist who dismissed all that I went through (IVF, pregnancy, brain surgery, postpartum depression, the loss of a dear friend’s child, and leaving my job to stay home) and just wanted to put me on medication which, at the time, I didn’t think was necessary. Slowly, with the support of my husband, his mother (who was living with us at the time) and my family and friends, I was able to come out of it and feel like myself again.

Then came the summer and things took a turn for the worse but in the other direction. I was manic. Not a severe case of mania, but mania just the same. I was fighting with my husband and his mom frequently. I was spending too much money and trying to hide it from everyone. Any little thing would set me off. It should be noted I was also pregnant at the time and my hormones definitely played a role in my mood and these outbursts. I sought help with a psychiatrist that my husband found through a recommendation by a college best friend and she was amazing. She recommended I seek help through an organization called Hopeway. I lived there for two weeks (residential), then went M-F from 9-4 for two weeks (partial hospitalization program), and then a week of going three half days a week (intensive outpatient program). It was amazing. I made lifelong friends who were going through something similar or maybe completely different but we bonded over feeling misunderstood by our loved ones and feeling out of control of our own lives. I am forever grateful for these awesome humans and the kind of care Hopeway provides. I’m also grateful that throughout this whole mental health journey I was surrounded by incredible therapists and supportive friends and family. I held an info session about my diagnosis and how they can support me through it and had about 30 folks on the call. Alison, my psychiatrist, was blown away by how much support I had and I felt so blessed to have that many people care about me and my well being to take time out of their day to listen to what was going on and how they can best help me. But I wasn’t totally in the clear.

Things were mostly peaceful after my time at Hopeway in my house and with my friends. Then came Halloween. I started having a panic attack that I was about to fall into a depression again like the fall/winter prior. My husband was talking me off a ledge. We practiced some deep breathing exercises and they helped but that whole night I was fighting this urge to harm myself or my family. I didn’t want to but the intrusive thoughts kept coming into my mind. So much so, that I woke my husband up and told him to take out all the knives or anything sharp so that it wasn’t even a possibility. I texted the suicide hotline but they didn’t know how to help because I wasn’t totally suicidal. I didn’t want to end things but the urge to was there if that makes any sense. I now see that this was an attack from the enemy but God was working in me to fight those thoughts. Thank God. But when it was time to start the day the feelings hadn’t escaped me. I called my mom and told her. I was awake before anyone else in my family and I was afraid that if I didn’t go to the hospital I was going to end up doing harm to myself or my toddler. Not because I wanted to but I felt that I may not be able to withstand a toddler tantrum without reacting in a negative way. And I felt that at some point I was going to snap. So I was adamant that I go to the hospital and be committed. My husband wanted me to stay home and try to work through it but I knew I needed to act. Thank God for his work in me because in the hospital I experienced auditory and visual hallucinations. In the ER they did a doppler on me to ensure my was okay (after me asking several times because I was convinced something was wrong). I didn’t hear a heartbeat and saw the doctor make a face like the baby is gone but didn’t want to tell me to make my mental state worse. My mom and husband heard the heartbeat and told me that he was okay but I told them they were just lying to me so I didn’t freak out. I was also convinced that they were texting the nursing staff about me and I didn't like that but they weren’t. Again, I thought they were lying to me to keep me calm. While in that room I had to actively fight the thought of banging my head on the corner of the countertop to do harm. My daughter was walking towards me and I had to fight the urge to hurt her. I told my husband to take her away so I didn’t do anything to her. If you’re not a believer, I hope you can see that God was supernaturally interceding to protect me and my family (husband, toddler, and unborn child).

Later when everyone left to go home and I spent the night, I was hearing my husband talking with the doctors and nurses. I could hear my daughter calling for me and crying in the hallway. I could hear the staff telling him visiting hours were over and that he needed to go home. I heard him talk to a doctor and they said the only thing they could do would be to abort TJ. The sound of opening and closing the door sounded like a shotgun being pumped. I was convinced that they were going to kill me. And then I was convinced that I was actually dead. When the nurse came to do my vitals I was convinced that there was nothing there. I saw the same discouraged face that I saw when the earlier nurse searched for a heartbeat. I was afraid that if I stood up I was going to fall over because I wasn’t actually alive. When they transferred me to the psychiatric ward in Salisbury (where I’m from and my family lives–another God moment), I thought we were being followed and they were going to hit our car to kill me. When we arrived, I was slipping in and out of understanding what was going on. I was able to communicate to them what I felt but then I would quickly lose touch with reality and say something absurd. For example, I thought there was a code word “shotgun” and that if I said that they were going to lock me up. That code word changed and I believed it to be “now I know” and I kept repeating that thinking they would understand the secret. I was supposed to call my support system and give them a four digit code so they could come visit me. Somehow, by God’s grace, I remembered my husband’s and my mom’s number to talk to them. I gave the correct code to my husband, but I told my mom the code was 911.

Once I was committed, I heard a lot of voices of friends and family that I thought were visiting. My husband’s relationship with my parents at the time was very strained and I heard him yelling at them that this was their fault for not believing him when he was telling them something was going on with me. I heard CC screaming in the hallways and my parents trying to explain that they were trying to do what was best for me and that they were sorry. The doors shutting in the hospital, I thought was Emiliano slamming the door to leave. I heard friends from DC, my neighborhood, etc. visiting and asking the doctors what was going on. What’s weird is I heard voices of people I wasn’t even close with. A girl I do Green Compass with but was not particularly close with “was there” asking why she couldn’t just say she farts in front of her husband (she finds poop humor hilarious so this isn’t far off, but odd that I heard her there and talking about that). A woman I used to work with as a second shooter and photography editor was there saying that she wanted to tell me that she wasn’t actually getting divorced from her husband, just said that in the summer to relate to the problems I was having in my own marriage.

At one point, I was laying in my bed and I saw doctors on the ceiling in what was like a mirror trying to harm me to get me to sleep. They brought in all sorts of things to get me to sleep. Their fingers looked like Edward Scissorhands. My mother in law “was there” to help get me out of this dark place and this time, I didn’t just hear her, I saw her. Except, it was understood that she was dead. She was wearing a cap as if she’d lost her hair from chemo. My MIL did have breast cancer and was recently cancer free so it’s interesting that I saw her like this. She was trying to convince me to cooperate with the doctors so that I could just go to sleep but I wasn’t able to. Then, my husband came in with the doctors and he was trying to get me to cooperate. Eventually they brought in my daughter and said I need to cooperate or they would hurt my daughter. Emiliano was okay with this and then they did hurt her. He was upset that they did but not overly upset. He just said “did you really do it”? Meaning kill her. I saw her body lifeless. I’m struggling to even write this because it’s just so horrific and I can’t believe I endure this but it’s important for me to write it so it’s clear the severity of what I experienced. There were several other things I believed were happening that weren’t. I believed I was set apart to be saved for the end of the world and I knew the secret word to save me. There was a time I got frustrated with my mom because I was trying to get her to say the word but I wasn’t verbalizing anything and she couldn’t guess the word. I thought she was going to die because she wasn’t saved since she didn’t know the word. She and everyone I saw, save for my husband, had a demon face. If you’ve never heard of this, look it up. What you’ll see is a distorted face that’s stretched out horizontally. Mine was a vertical stretching of the case and everyone’s teeth were sharp. I remember thinking “they look like a lion” and I felt I was in danger. At one point, I assaulted a nurse by swiping at her face and taking off her glasses because she looked like a demon to me. I then ran up to the working station for the nurses and banged on the glass of their locked office asking them to let me in. I thought a male nurse was a cop coming to take me to jail. I believe shortly after that they gave me an antipsychotic and started to slowly get a grip on reality.

My friend’s dad is an OB/GYN at that hospital and he was on call while I was there and came to do rounds on me to monitor TJ while I was taking the medications to ensure everything was alright (another God moment, y’all). I remember how terrified his face looked. I’m sure for him it was very scary seeing a girl who grew up with his daughter in such a horrible state. The medications brought me out of a completely catatonic state (I assume this is when I was hallucinating, but to me all the days blend together). And while I’m generally in the “use natural solutions” camp, there is a time and place for modern medicine. This was one of those times. Even now, I’ve tweaked my medications down but noticed I might be slipping into a manic episode so I tweaked it back up. However, my mood has been brought down a little bit so I’m monitoring for a week and then may go back down. My hope is to be able to get to a point to be able to completely treat my disorder with my CBD regimen. Which is totally possible. But it’s all about being patient and not jump in too fast so you don’t enter a spot you don’t want to be in.

Coming home I was still very much feeling down and socially awkward. For me, this is a huge hindrance because I recharge and get energized from social interaction. So while it seems like not a big deal to most, it’s huge for me. Feeling awkward and not knowing what to say keeps me down for longer if that makes sense. But overtime, I just force myself to go and know that it will get better and I’ll feel like me again soon. Another thing that happens when I’m down is getting so overwhelmed I’m paralyzed.

For example, we did Thanksgiving completely on our own the year I came home from the hospital (which was only 11 days after getting out of the psych ward). In my type A, perfectionist mindset I started to think of all the food we needed to have on the menu. A full feast you’d see at any thanksgiving gathering. But that just was not going to happen this year. And it didn’t need to because we only had two people and a toddler eating. Still, I felt overwhelmed with the small menu we created and thought the food wasn’t going to be ready in time (there is literally no pressure to have it ready by any set time, it’s just us). We woke up early and cooked everything and it was ready by noon (earlier than I even wanted the meal to be ready anyway). I should point out that part of this was prepping my veggies and some items the day before.

Something that has happened in both depressive episodes is being overly concerned about meals. Feeling like I don’t know what to make for lunch and dinner and that turns into the absolutely ridiculous thought that our family is going to starve because I can’t decide what I need to buy or what I should make. Something I used to hold onto (because when my mother and law lived with us, this is what we did) was making a full blown lunch. Basically a dinner for lunch. Totally unnecessary. I now decide on the fly and often we all eat something different depending on what we’re in the mood for.

For example, today I won’t be home for lunch because we have lots of errands to run to prepare for a big Easter brunch. So I'm going to pack a lunch for CC, bring something small and easy for me, and my husband will have leftovers.

Getting sidetracked here. Anyway, slowly, I started to be able to do things again without feeling anxious socially or overwhelmed by all the things I had to do around the house. I found the confidence to run my house efficiently and was able to focus on and grow my CBD business. I’m hitting such a sweet spot in life where I really feel fulfilled in my role as a mom and confident that I’m doing it right. I would be remiss if I didn’t give glory to God for the faith he gave me to get through all of these trials. I also can’t ignore the role CBD has played in my ability to just let things go and employ skills I learned at Hopeway.

Now that you have some background on who I am and what I’ve been through, let’s dive into some practical ways you can let things go in your motherhood journey as well. I want to make this clear first, if you like rigidity in your routines/schedules, please keep doing that. For me, it made me more stressed to feel like I had to fit what the guides said because if I missed something, I was failing. If this is you, read on.

Takeaway: God has got you. He will carry you through the darkest times and grant you more grace and peace than you can imagine.