BREAKDOWN

We begin at my breakdown.

I went into my 40th year of life feeling like a resilient, mother-f*cking Phoenix that had risen from the ashes to claim all the things I had fought for - because dammit, I had earned it.

I was a fighter, a survivor, a warrior.

I was the cycle-breaker, and I had the resume to prove it.

I had overcome multiple childhood traumas, battled panic attacks, and weathered the tragic loss of my three closest friends. I had endured divorce, infertility, miscarriage, and the loss of my home more times than I could count.

I had faced my greatest fear, the death of my mother two years prior, and I somehow made it to the other side of it all without messing up my children, becoming an addict, or landing in the psych ward like virtually all those who had come before me did.

I had spent two decades chasing every single one of my heart's desires with such bold and fierce determination that I somehow managed to build the kind of life that statistics said no one with as many ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences) as I could.

I had built the kind of family that was filled with all the safety, security, and belonging I had always longed for as a child and never received. I had erected the kind of home where my husband, children, and I could gather around a dinner table and eat meals from large bowls just as I had always asked my mother to do as a child.

I had been blessed with So. Much. Love - more love than I ever imagined was possible - and I built a white picket fence around it just all to prove that miracles do exist.

But then, just like that,

Just like it always had,

The bottom dropped out…again.

When my five-year-old daughter woke up one random morning in March with a severe and sudden onset of psychiatric symptoms, my entire world shattered overnight.

This wasn't the first time the rug of my life had been pulled out from under my feet - I had been brought to my knees more than most. But nothing I’d ever been through prepared me for the kind of pain and torment I experienced when my daughter began experiencing such intense anxiety, OCD, verbal tics, and frequent urination, that she would flail, scream, bite, and kick me for hours on end.

I had never felt more helpless than I did the day my daughter threw her exhausted, sobbing body against mine, and begged me to "make her brain stop," and I couldn't do a damned thing to stop it.

Desperate, I went running to the same doctors' offices and hospitals I’d spent my entire life avoiding, begging anyone and everyone to bring my baby back to be. Yet, all anyone could offer me was more tests, psychiatric wards, and a myriad of psychiatric medications - all solutions I refused to take.

No one could tell me why the f*ck this was happening to her, no one could validate what I was witnessing and experiencing, and no one, I mean no one, could do a damn thing to fix her.

Watching your child suffer while feeling utterly powerless to stop it is one of the most horrifying human experiences on the planet, but being forced to fight the medical community to substantiate the legitimacy of your child's pain and suffering is a specific kind of hell I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy.

Medical gaslighting occurs every day, and battling an invisible illness is traumatic for anyone who experiences it, but experiencing this specific form of trauma as a mother, without processing or healing the virtually identical trauma I endured as a little girl who felt responsible for saving her mother’s life while she slipped through the cracks of a broken mental healthcare system, was what finally pushed my nervous system past its utter limit.

The second my daughter got sick, all the pain, loss, and trauma that I had stored so deep within my body for so many years began to hemorrhage out of me.

I was covered bathroom floors in blood as I curled my body over the toilet bowl, violently vomiting for weeks on end. My endometriosis and ulcerative colitis began flaring so uncontrollably that I was wracked by wave after wave of relentless pain. The relentless stress put such strain on my nervous system that every joint in my body burned and throbbed and ached.

And just like the blood and the vomit, the feelings, memories, traumas, and losses started spewing out of me with such velocity that I couldn’t keep them down anymore.

It was becoming painfully clear that I was not okay….

I was breaking.

I needed to heal.

I needed to feel.

But this was not the time or place for me to have a breakdown.

This was not the time or place for me to face my past and heal.

This was not the time or place for me to feel any of my f*cking feelings…

This time, I was going to feel less and do more than ever before - even if it broke me - even if it killed me…

Because this f*cking time, I was going to save my daughter.