Your Trauma IS Valid: The Journey to Understanding My PTSD

My healing began with work on accepting myself for who I am.

I knew I had the power to fix what had been lost.

Rather than numbing my complex feelings, I allow myself to experience them and express them in an honest and healthy way.

During the rough times after my husband’s death, I started paddle boarding with a friend and colleague to help with my anxiety.

I struggled to complete everyday tasks. I was missing and failing school. I was sleeping majority of the days, crying a lot. I was sad and in such a dark place every single day. But why?

I resigned myself to a sad, hopeless, unfulfilling life. Friends saw me struggle. Family saw me struggle. I never spoke up.

I came to realize that healing and finding appropriate resources while in a treatment center can be an isolating experience. Because of this, I wanted to share my story to help others who may be feeling that loneliness.

In the past few years, Officer Victor Machese has lost five of his close friends on the force due to suicide. It was these losses that moved Victor to do more to stem the tide of first responder deaths by suicide.

Getting arrested saved my life; though I have two felonies on my record, those incidents encouraged me to get mental health treatment.

As I read about other people’s stories of mental illness and recovery, I found myself frustrated by the experiences I could not relate to — the stories where people spoke of being fully healed.