Each day during the month of November, I put on a dress and posted a photograph of myself on each of my social media accounts. I am not the kind of person who typically dresses up, but I was celebrating my own “No Nonsense November,” complete with hashtag and motivational anecdotes when I could think of them. It was an exercise in my own visibility. My battle with depression and anxiety began when I was very young, after a series of sexual experiences with a family member that lingers in my mind still today. I participated because I so desperately wanted to be accepted. I cannot remember a time when I felt confident, secure, and comfortable in my body. I spent most of my life hiding, afraid to be seen and wary of the way others viewed me and my quiet nature. When I was five years old, I had a new pair of yellow flip flops. They were purchased from the Dollar General store in town. I was very proud of my new flip flops as it was so rare for me to get anything new. My family didn’t have much. A man was speaking to my mother on the front porch. I grabbed my new flip flops from a cluttered table in the corner of our covered porch and made my way toward the man so I could show him my shiny new shoes that still had the new plastic smell. I stopped when I realized this man would not care about my flip flops. What a silly little girl I was! How could I be so proud of a two-dollar pair of what barely amounted to sandals? I turned around and put the flip flops down on the table, my face flush with embarrassment. I never said a word. This scenario played out many times over the course of my life. I allowed men to take advantage of me repeatedly. I avoided speaking most of the time, and when I did speak, I took my time and chose my words carefully. When I misspoke, I agonized over it for years, lying awake at night and staring at the ceiling while exploring all the ways I should have said what I was trying to say. During my service in the U.S. Marine Corps, I learned alcohol was a miracle elixir for my moroseness and irrational fear of anything social. I few drinks on Friday night quickly became a few drinks every night, which quickly became general drunkenness. While intoxicated, I felt like I could run the world. When I came down, the hopelessness felt more hopeless, the anxiety was more intense than ever, and a nagging nausea accompanied me until I could douse it with a couple of shots. Everything I did was a masked attempt to feel accepted, just like that little girl who didn’t know how to say no to sexual activity she didn’t understand and who felt too proud of her two-dollar shoes. I got married and divorced twice, the second time to a narcissist whose emotional and mental abuse extended beyond me to my children. I didn’t know then that people like him prey on people like me. With the help of a very dear friend, I finally took my children and left. That was the beginning of my path to healing. My depression and anxiety held me back for 37 years. This year, during the COVID-19 pandemic and as an escape from the monotony of quarantine, I enrolled in a graduate writing program and wrote a lyric essay about my experiences as a child and how they followed me throughout adulthood. The essay focused on a series of dresses - most of them worn by me and one or two worn by other women - that symbolized significant events in my life which contributed to my lifelong mental health battle. It was an exhausting journey I took through my life, beginning with my childhood trauma and traveling through the death of my mother, my experience as a woman in the military, the loss of my adult virginity, my failed marriages, my abusive relationship, and my alcohol dependence. When I finished writing the essay, I realized I had opened a portal to my darkest secrets and worked through all the trauma that had led me down the path to deeper and deeper depression throughout my life. I felt like a new woman – a woman with work to do and skeletons to handle – but a new, stronger woman. “No Nonsense November” was an empowering journey that used the dress artifact that dragged me through my healing to bring hope and inspiration to other women. I did it for every woman who has ever felt invisible, hated the way she looks in photos, been taken advantage of, cried alone, hidden from the world, had her heart broken, or been made to feel like she wasn’t allowed to feel. Now, I’m working on my own thrifted fashion brand with the goal of ending the stigma around mental health issues and empowering women to love themselves and command the respect they deserve. My mental health journey has been a long, hard, exhausting one, but it won’t be for naught. My experience will be a beacon for other women, and I hope to facilitate the kind of freedom I felt this November for all women who have hidden themselves in order to maintain the strength they needed to go on for another day.