My Speech from the Orillia Mental Health Initiative Launch

I recently made the decision to speak at the Mental Health Initiative Launch here in Orillia.
Details can be found here http://www.orilliapacket.com/2016/03/30/mental-health-struggles-laid-bare
It was an amazing event and I rekindled a childhood friendship, reinforced I am not alone and heard some amazing people speak.

Part of the reason I made the decision to ask to be a speaker was I needed to move past where I have been stuck in my journey coping with my PTSD.
I have blogged lots about my Anxiety and some about my Depression.  I have glossed over the PTSD.
Mainly because I wasn't ready to deal with it and I was scared.

So here is more or less what I said at the event Tuesday evening.

This has been harder than I thought.  Sharing my story out aloud is scary.

I thought it would be easier because I have written a number of blog enteries.  Some of what I am going to say I have never said out aloud before.  I need to do this as part of my journey.

Let’s start with what I have referred to as the Day of Reckoning.  February 26, 2014.

Sure I had always known I was fighting Depression.  It was why I was sitting there in the Doctor’s office in the first place.

A doctor whom I had only met two times before.

A doctor who would in the end hear me and be the first stranger I had ever told what happened to me when I was a child and I would be diagnosed with not only severe Depression, but Severe Anxiety and PTSD.

I was shell shocked.

But it also made sense.

The more I learned about Anxiety, the more I realized that this was something I had been suffering from since I was a young child.

So many things made sense and were explained.

I wasn’t a bad, misbehaving a child.  I was anxious and didn’t know how to express or cope with it.

It was the anxiety and the need to be seen as well behaved and good that was preyed upon by a monster who ultimately is the reason behind the PTSD.

The Depression was a bi-product to many factors in my life including the anxiety and PTSD, work stress, failing relationship stress, life.

The PTSD.  I’d love to say it is gone, but it isn’t.  I cope better than I ever have.  Medication and counselling has helped with that.

I was sexually abused by a “family friend” when I was 9 years old.  I also witnessed the abuse of my brother at the hands of the same person.  My sister says there is more, but it is locked away and perhaps given what I did finally remember 12 years ago, that is for the best.

Eight of those twelve years I suffered in silence.  Ashamed, fearful that people would see me as disgusting, hateful and ugly.  Why wouldn’t they?  It was how I viewed myself.

I also blamed myself.  The 9-year-old self who convinced the others not to tell because we would get into trouble and I was so desperate to please.

So desperate.  I was so afraid of being in trouble because it felt like I was always in trouble for something because of my emotions.

It took along time to let myself come to terms with the fact *I* did nothing wrong.

I won’t lie.  I still struggle.  That moment in time, that monster stealing our innocence, started a domino affect that would divide and ruin our family.  My brother still blames me.

Because if we had told, he wouldn’t later have been abused again by the same family friend.

I was nine and that man preyed on my naïve, innocent need to please and I believed him when he said we would be in trouble and that it was my fault it had happened.

For eight years I pretended nothing was wrong while I struggled to keep myself among the living.

Actually the only reason I am among the living is because I gave birth.

I can say with the utmost certainty that I would not be standing here today if I had not had my son.

The only thing I ever wanted out of life was to be a mom.  If I could have just become a mom when I finished high school, I would have.

It’s how I ended up working in child care.

The happiest moment in my life is the moment I learned I was pregnant followed by the moment I gave birth.

On the hard nights, when nightmares plagued me, despair overwhelmed me and I was hanging by a thread to find the will to live, fully believing no would notice me if I disappeared, I would go pick up my baby and hold him, rock him, tell him Love You Forever by Robert Munsch and cry.

He was my reason for living.

It was because of him I went to the doctor the first time (old doctor, not the good one I have now) to ask for help. 

To be brushed off, despite holding a survey in hand from the Health Canada website that clearly showed I was “Moderately Depressed” and should seek medical help.

I was instead told to sleep more, exercise more and eat less.

I was devastated and that was probably the closest I ever came to taking my life was that night after that appointment.  This was even harder to hear because the people around me didn’t think I could be depressed because I seemed so happy all of the time.  I was just very good at pretending, because that was that way it had to be.

So you can see why it was such a big deal to me that my brand new doctor listened to me.

I finally said aloud that I was sexually abused.  IT was the scary, but the world didn’t end even if that was what it felt like would happen.

And that’s the thing.  Don’t stop looking for help.  Never give up.  Get a second opinion, a third opinion and if all else fails go to the hospital.

Life is too precious and even when we are in the deepest, darkest wells we have to cling to hope.  Hope of getting help, finding others who understand. Break the stigma. 

We are not alone. 

Thank you for letting me continue my journey and thank you for listening,.