Browse Personal Stories

Hannah shares her story of surviving domestic abuse, the loss of her parents, and severe mental health struggles, and ultimately finding healing through therapy, sobriety, and yoga while rebuilding a safe life for herself and her children.

Ale Lasas shares her experience with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and severe burnout and how practices such as journaling, meditation and movement, as well as finding a support community and allowing herself to ask for help, became essential tools in her recovery.

Trinity shares her battle with borderline personality disorder, marked by intense emotions and fear of abandonment, and how she has found resilience and healing through therapy, faith, and the belief she is more than her impulses.

The thing about a tragic event is that the physicalness of it passes, time moves on, and life continues. We mourn and commemorate, but the world doesn’t stop. When I finally got the help that I needed, I started to feel growth

Don’t give up fighting for your mental health when your gut knows something’s not right either with you, or with the diagnosis you’ve been given, fight to live.

Other times when I have felt safe is by reading other people’s stories. Stories help us connect with people, feel less alone, validate our feelings, and are vital to people who are struggling with all kinds of mental disorders.

I was irritable with everyone. I lost the ability to smile. It would take years for all of my issues to manifest fully and come to the surface. But being able to go through PTSD behavioral classes with a one-on-one counselor helped me a lot, and I found it also uplifting and relieving at the same time to find "like minded" people to share my mental health issues with.

Do not be discouraged when confronted with the impossible. I’m living proof that anything can be done. At 25, with a young family, I was struck with the onset of schizophrenia and anxiety and everything in my world had come to a screeching halt. But I knew I had to push past my fear.

For me, my experiences with mental illness guided me on a path of wanting to be physically and psychologically well and healthy, and also being grateful for and appreciating the beauty of life.

I know the road to recovery is long and fraught with challenges, but with the support of my community and the solidarity of those who share my struggle, I am committed to changing the narrative. I am no longer alone, and together, we are stepping out of the shadows to fight the unseen battles.

Growing up in Japan with a workaholic surgeon father and an often-absent socialite mother, I was raised by a revolving cast of caregivers who worked at my father's hospital. An unstable home environment and lack of a consistent caregiver created in me a melancholic, anxious child prone to insomnia.

To me, a survivor of trauma was someone who had been in a gruesome war or was violently abused or someone who was trafficked. I was just in a really bad accident, no one intended to hurt me. I should be happy that I survived when others didn’t and yes I was in pain all the time and I felt lousy, but I was one of the lucky ones. How could I be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? 

Well, there was something wrong with me and it wasn't until years later that I realized that I had become emotionally numb.  In the following years I read several self-help books that gave me hope and something to believe in but it took a very long time for my emotions to wake up. 

The physical aspect of my recovery, though difficult at many times, didn't come close to the mental battle I was unaware and unprepared to face. I sought out therapy. It took an adjustment period for my mind and body to find a sense of balance as I began to dig deep into the psychosis of what had happened to me. By vocalizing and working with a community I am in a much better place and want others to know they’re not alone either.

Over the past 5 years, I have worked very hard not only to heal from the past trauma that I experienced but to become the man on the outside that I have always been inside. It's not been an easy journey at all, and it is not a choice, but it is worth it.

“Discarded” and “Subjugated” are part of a series called "Surviving in Isolation: The Black Mental Health Experience." These pieces are featured in Atac160 x ARTivism Initiative’s activism art show “Postcard Project”. Both are about the feeling of isolation and abandonment many black people with mental illness struggle with.

After lots of falling down and getting back up again in the process of recovery, I now know that PTSD is not a life sentence. Today my nightmares are gone, I rarely startle, and incredibly I have fallen in love with life. The world isn’t out to get me after all, and I feel safe. Finally, I am living in real time and not trapped in the past.