On Health and Wellness

Sometimes I wonder why it took me so long to realize that unresolved trauma and disconnection from self were affecting every facet of my health.

This bumpy road to self-discovery began in 2013. I moved to California and immediately started working at an incredibly toxic organization. The hours were long and the work grueling and I pushed myself, ever the perfectionist. I had also once again found myself in a religious environment where I had to put on a constant front, even outside of work, to keep my job. These stressors began to have an effect on my sleep patterns, causing me to develop severe insomnia.

In 2016, burnt out and defeated, I was recruited by my old boss for a new job at a health system which would require a move closer to LA. This job was my ticket out of hell and I latched on for dear life, moving the very next month. At the same time, I found out that my father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, the same disease my mother had been suffering from for the past five years. I started my new job and immediately broke out in stress-induced shingles by my left eye and had to be hospitalized for four days.

In the fall of 2017, as my marriage started crumbling, I began experiencing what seemed to be the world’s worst bladder infection. Months of tests and thousands of dollars later, the cause was determined: interstitial cystitis, a chronic autoimmune disorder with no cure, often associated with and exacerbated by anxiety and depression.

As I was starting to get my symptoms under control through diet and lifestyle modifications, I broke my arm on vacation in spring of 2018 and my relationship and quality of life began spiraling faster. I slipped into a deep depression, even entertaining suicidal thoughts at some points.

And yet, through all of this, I didn’t grasp the connection between mental, physical, and emotional health. I was treating the individual physical problems as they’d arise, without facing the bigger underlying issues.

I was so disconnected from my self that I had no awareness. I was reliant on others’ opinions of me for how I should feel about myself. This led me into cycles of numbing through partying and unhealthy relationships.

It wasn’t until October of 2019 that something in me broke. I was tired of the way things had been going and knew that I wanted something different, but I didn’t know how to get out of my own way. I was stuck in patterns of familiar behavior.

Until January of 2020, when I began to make changes in my life. I found a therapist, I made decisions in my life and about my lifestyle that others didn’t understand but that were right for me and then stuck with them, I began expressing and communicating my needs and wants in my relationships, and I started to feel stronger.

And as I did that, I realized there were certain people in my life and certain relationship dynamics which were not healthy and had never been healthy. And that I had not known what healthy relationships looked like, with myself or with others, as I’d never witnessed them as a child. Fractured relationships and dissociations from self were all that were familiar. Slowly I began to separate myself from these relationships and forge my own path. With each step I took, I felt more sure of who I was and what I was worth.

A year later, as I delve into a new chapter in my life that I never thought I’d be courageous enough to begin, I wish I could say that I have it all figured out. And that I am at peace always. I am not. There are many difficult days. There are cry in your car days and I’ve made a step backwards days and I don’t think I can do this days. But there is also so much hope ahead. And on my good days, I can feel it. I can feel it mentally, I can feel it physically, I can feel it emotionally. I am finally healing.