I have struggled with depression and anxiety my entire life. That struggle has taken so many opportunities from me. I let the fear of what-ifs stop me from trying so many things that I wanted to do from the ages of 12 to my mid twenties. I was afraid to succeed and afraid to fail. In my late twenties, I met someone, got married and I thought my depression was cured. Anxiety was still there but I was working out, trying to eat healthy. I had friends and I didn’t fight to get out of bed every morning. I daydreamed about going to college to and having a career that enabled me to travel and care for a family, but anxiety and doubt would creep in. I let that negative voice inside tell me that I wasn’t good enough and never would be. That I should just be happy with what I have because I was lucky to even have that. It wasn’t until I had a miscarriage that brought all the depression I had been hiding from myself to the forefront. I was deep in it as though I’d never left, never put it away and never dealt with. My grief confirmed all the things that I’d ever told myself I couldn’t do. This time was different because I had friends and my husband. They helped me come back from a dark place of grieving a potential that I never would have been able to do on my own. My daughter was born a little over a year later and while I was so excited to be in that season of life, the combination of once again underlying depression and the rampant anxiety of a first pregnancy/child post loss was something I was in no way prepared for. After countless nights of caring for a newborn and both of us crying constantly and realizing that I was suicidal, I reached out for help. I was able to find a therapist for myself, and eventually a couples therapist for myself and my husband. They helped me begin to figure out and deal postpartum depression, PTSD from my childhood trauma and my out of control anxiety. Even though there is still healing to be done, and those first few months of therapy were incredibly difficult, realizing that I didn’t have to live that way anymore was a weight off my chest. I finally felt like I could breathe and wasn’t just treading water trying to survive life. Now I’m breaking the cycle of childhood trauma with my daughter. I’m in college and on the path to build a career to provide for myself and my family but also to be a role model for my daughter. I know that I would not be where I am today if I had not been able to ask for and receive the help I desperately needed. Mental health has such a stigma associated with speaking out about it. It can discourage people from asking for help when they need it. Sometimes you just need someone to give you the same level of care as though you were dealing with a fractured bone or a chronic illness. Now that I am on the other side of experiencing mental health issues, I have become vocal about my story. If I only help one person climb out of the same hole I was in, it is worth it to try.