Why we moved to Costa Rica, Part 7: Motherhood, anxiety, and depression.

Dad died when I was 17, a few weeks after I graduated high school. The last time we spoke he told me he had a cold. He was sober - I'm eternally grateful that the last words he spoke to me were "I love you" in his real voice.

The autopsy showed pneumonia was ultimately the final straw that killed him, and I clung to that. I didn't want to tell people he'd died from alcoholism, but that was the truth. His body was so broken from decades of alcohol abuse that he couldn't recover from a cold.

I'm a mom now, and my two boys are my whole world. Looking back at my own childhood through the lens of a mother has reopened old wounds and traumas in ways I never considered. I started looking at my own precious children, thinking, "I would do anything to keep them safe. How could my parents have done that to me?"

The winter of 2024 I woke up one day and realized I was in a deep depression. Our nanny came at 9am and I would leave her with the kids and go upstairs intending on getting something done. Inevitably I would end up lying back down in bed and napping for hours. I told myself it was because the baby was keeping me up at night, but the truth was I was in pain.

The night my dad's spirit appeared in my kitchen changed everything. I finally understood - it was time for me to start healing.

Instead of sleeping all day, I started learning. I read books like The Body Keeps the Score, and practiced mindfulness and meditation. I became aware of the feeling of anxiety in my body. The tension. My breathing.

I was shocked. A year before if you had asked if I suffered from anxiety I would have laughed. Of course not! I don't walk around with shaky hands, having panic attacks. But in reality, that wasn't what anxiety looked like for me.

It looked like an elevated heart rate and shallow breathing at the grocery store. Am I in someone's way? Am I taking too long to unload my cart? Oh my god, my change. Hurry, just throw it in the purse, you can sort it later, there are people waiting behind you for God's sake! Heart pounding the entire time.

My eyes were now open - I didn't have to live this way anymore.

To be continued in Part 8.