EP. 2 - "I Just Want to Be Seen" with guest, Ashley, a South Louisiana native and an advocate for mental health transparency, especially in families and teaching communities.
Join the conversation as our own Eli talks with Ashley about the road of recovery after a breakdown after suicidal ideation drove her to her limit. She opens up about motherhood, teaching, and navigating family dynamics and generational stigmas.
Be sure to tune in right here every Wednesday at 2 PM Eastern for more REAL talk with REAL people. We are survivors, thrivers, advocates, and Allies. We see you. We love you. BE UNSILENT 💚
#mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthadvocate #mentalhealthsupport #mentalhealthstigma #mentalhealthstories #mentalhealthstoriesmatter #suicideprevention #suicideintervention #mentalhealthallies #anxietyawareness #depressionawareness #suicideattemptsurvivor #suicidelosssurvivor #suicideloss
SHOW NOTES:
Ashley:
I pretty much, you know, my husband came home from work and I said, I'm leaving, I'm going and he's like, where are you going? And I'm like, I don't know. And I kissed all my kids goodbye. I kissed him goodbye. And I just saw him before I left to say, you know, just so you know, my wedding rings are in the top drawer of the dresser
Eli:
This is Unsilent, a speak series from no stigmas that champions mental health advocacy and challenges the stigmas that prevent people from getting the help they need. I'm Eli Lawson, a producer for the show. This week, I'll be having a conversation with Ashley, a teacher and mother. We’ll hear about Ashley's home culture and the stigma that surrounded her decades-long battle with depression. But we'll also see how Ashley's journey radically shifted and how she became an advocate for teachers and mental health. If you want to learn more, or contact us, visit sostigmas.org Don't face it alone. Be Unsilent.
Eli:
This week's episode contains content that may be triggering for some listeners. There's mention of suicide. Nothing graphic of course, but it plays an important part in today's story. It's okay if you need to skip this one. Do what's right for you.
Ashley:
I’m from and grew up and ended up moving back here to south Louisiana. A real small-knit community, you know, just a real conservative area. As you know, my brother is who kind of hooked this up. And so my parents are no longer- they're not together anymore. They're both remarried, divorced and remarried, and so my brother and I have two stepsisters on one side and two stepbrothers on the other side. So it's definitely a blended family dynamic for sure. Both ways.
Ashley:
So I just grew up staunch, conservative everything, political and religious views, the whole nine yards. So a pretty streamline childhood in that regard. Down where we are from, it's just now becoming more, I guess, an open dialogue and less taboo to even discuss mental health at all. But in South Louisiana, you know, we're Catholic and Cajun. That's just generally the population that we're in. And so, there's kind of that unspoken expectation, like in the communities that we grew up in that, whatever comes your way, you just deal with it. We’re strong, and we're resilient. That's the kind of people we are and we just deal with it. And I get it because our area does get- it goes through a lot.
Eli:
In south Louisiana, yeah. That’s like hurricane central.
Ashley:
Right, right. So whether it be the weather, or it's our educational system is really not up to par, or the job market is not up to par. So there's a lot of things that we go through in the community that's like, yeah, we really do have to work hard for what we have, and if it doesn't come easy, well there isn't this “Okay let’s process it,” it's more just hunker down and push through. Families down here, multi generation, the roots are really really, really deep.
Eli:
Okay.
Ashley:
So it's not uncommon at all for families of four generations to be living in the same community and the young ones help the older ones and vice versa. So that's just kind of our culture. And it made it really difficult to not be perfect, I guess. If you didn't have your stuff together, everybody knew it. So what ended up happening is on my mother's side, there's a history of some severe mental health. And then on my dad's side, we have five generations of mental health challenges on that side, and every single generation, with the exception of my brother and I, they've all medicated with substance abuse. It just wasn't something that you came up for air and said, I'm not okay. I remember, of course, whenever you're young, you don't really have the vocabulary for that, you’re kind of trying to just do life as a young person. But I remember actually being in eighth grade and seriously having such terrible self worth, and self esteem issues. I found that I was constantly trying to be perfect in all these other areas. So I was always a straight A student. I was always involved in whatever's happening on campus. I played sports growing up. And none of that, even as a middle schooler was enough. And I remember visiting my middle school guidance counselor and telling her, I don't feel right. I don't see myself the way other people say that they see me. There was a seed of self hate I think that started then. And it just lingered and continued. At the time, I will say that that was a really tumultuous time for my parents. It was a really tough time because I was trying to make sense of everything. And I still felt that responsibility to protect as an older sibling, to be an easy child for my parents, going through the divorce, because I thought if I were easier, then that made their situation easier. And so, by the time I got to high school I was like, well, if I can't control this stuff going on around me externally, I can control how I see myself. To see myself in a positive light, I needed to to literally see myself differently in the mirror. So it was just a really skewed time mentally for me.And still, flourishing, academically flourishing with extracurriculars, it's like I never put that torch down. I was kind of like, okay, well, this is going to be my saving grace here and this is going to be this here, and I'm going to anchor myself on all these things.But on the inside, I still felt like a mess. So there was a lot of, oh, you're fine, just get over it. You didn't inherit depression, you didn't inherit anxiety. And so those were the messages that I was hearing from family.
Eli:
Wow. While feeling it.
Ashley:
While feeling it. It was like, well, you're not really feeling that. You're not really going through that. So, by the time I was a senior in high school,I was just determined. This is not going to plague me. Nobody really gets it anyway, I really don't have any support. So even if I really wanted to deal with it, I couldn't. And I just kept stuffing it and stuffing it. When I graduated from college, I went into education and started teaching. And so as an educator, especially in a private school, it was definitely frowned upon if you had anything wrong with you that could be noted. You definitely didn't bring that to light.
Eli:
As a teacher?
Ashley:
As a teacher.
Eli:
Why was it frowned upon?
Ashley:
Well, because I was an educator. I was in second grade and also taught pre K. So, there was this kind of stigma of, if you're taking care of small children and you're not mentally well, then you have no place taking care of small children. To fit the mold of what a teacher is supposed to be. She's supposed to be able to do everything and wear many, many hats and be underpaid and all the other things, and it's not supposed to affect her. There was a level of fatigue that I had hit, which now I know was my depression. That was making it like, I really felt like every day at school, I was teaching in a cloud. That’s the best way I can describe it, it was like this fog constantly, almost to a point where it felt surreal. Like, is this real time or am I half asleep? It was always kind of blurred. And like, this cannot be how other people function in daily life. This can't seem normal, you know? So I ended up meeting my husband along the way here and we were engaged. We were both actually teaching at the same school, and that stuffed a lot of it, it distracted me a lot. I think, in getting married and starting a family that there were those distractions. And then it just kind of was- I was in such a habit at that point, that my mode of operation was denial of myself. So the idea of self-compassion is, by this point in my early 20s, well, mid 20s at this point, self-compassion was the last thing that I was- it wasn’t even on my radar. It was more of someone else's care trumps my care. And I had rationalized that I don't have time, at this point in my life with all these responsibilities, to just hit the pause button and revert to self-care mode. There's just too much responsibility and not enough time for me, so it's just going to be what it's gonna be. Which I think happens for a lot of people, they fall into that trap and think that it'll just go away with more living, with more life experience. or with a different job, or with a different marital status or relationship status and it just doesn't.
Eli:
If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org for support via live chat. If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, please call 911. Other resources are linked in the show notes.
Ashley:
We started our family and I was pretty much steadily pregnant, in and out of pregnancy, in and out of having babies for 1.8 years straight. And it wasn't until after my fourth child, in 2016, she was only about- I think she was about eight months old. And I had a severe mental breakdown. I would tell my husband, I don't feel anything. I don't feel anything through you. I don't feel anything through my kids. I was completely numbed over. I didn't realize it at that point but I hadn't cried in almost a year. There was a day in the summer of 2017, and my husband came home from work and I said I'm leaving I'm going, and he's like where are you going, and I'm like I don’t know. And I kissed all my kids goodbye. I kissed him goodbye and I just told him before I left, just so you know my wedding rings are in the top drawer of the dresser. He's like, why are you telling me that? And I got in my car, and I drove, and I had every intention of ending my life that day.
Ashley:
I'm very grateful, let me just say this, to have had that experience interrupted. I was driving and I literally got stuck in traffic at a four way stop in the middle of this rural area that, honestly, I do not know to this day how I got myself there. I was stuck in traffic and something in me was like, just turn off and there was this little gravel road. I turned off to kind of catch my breath just to check myself in, you know, am I really going to do this today? Is this really happening? And I remember my thought in that moment when I looked down was nobody sees me. Nobody has ever seen me. I just want to be seen. That's what I was feeling in that moment. And I looked up and there was this field in front of me with these horses. And this one horse had lifted her head and locked eyes with me and did not look away. I just remember it felt, and my psychiatrist tells me all the time, she's like that was your aha moment. Where it felt like there was a glass ceiling that just shattered and all of a sudden I was with it again. I burst into tears. I remember I had this, this really aggressive physiological response. I got really nauseous. I was really weak and lightheaded and really thirsty, and all these things were happening and I knew. I'm really sick. I felt at this point, I'm not well. And I recognized where I was and at this point I'm going, how did I get here. And so I made my way back to my husband and our home and he was waiting for me outside. I had left my cell phone so he had no way to find me.
Eli:
Oh geez.
Ashley:
Yeah. And so he was waiting for me and I didn't even have to get out of the car. I mean, he knew. And the first thing he told me when he gave me a hug, he said you ready to get some help now? And I’m like, I am. That was the life-changing curve in the road for me. Where it really became impossible for everybody in my life up to that point to deny that there was something going on. It was eye-opening for all of us. It was. I had to leave my eight month old to go into recovery. That was hard. That meant that my parents had to step in and help with childcare. And they knew this is a life or death time. And it's either I do what I need to do to take care of myself or my kids may be short changed a mother at some point. And so it's scary to have the conversation with people that you love. It's even scarier when you try to have the conversation and it’s not received.
Eli:
Right. It’s already hard enough to work up the courage to talk about that, much less to have it disregarded.
Ashley:
Right. Well, it's easier to hide, than to own where I’m at and risk the rejection piece. Because of the stigmas with all this and I don't understand, honestly, why it has gotten to be so stigmatized. Because it's just like anything else. Any other part of our body that's sick, we tend to.
Eli:
Right, yeah.
Ashley:
I was convinced that there was no option to wave a white flag and really surrender to getting some help for anything, because it was only going to make it worse. In my mind I thought, and I truly believe, this is just going to make it worse. I'm not going to be seen as the person I'm seen as now, so I don't want to mess that up. I'd rather just not even be here. So it was a fear of being alone afterwards. The fear of losing all that I gained professionally. How would those relationships change, parents of children I had. At this point, I had moved up to high school education. So I mean, I had young people that were now young adults getting started in their lives and still looking up to me like, oh, they have it together. And I'm on the inside going no I don’t. Please don't put me on that platform. Look at the people in our lives that do seem like they have it all together and that they can pretty much take on the world. Because a lot of times those are the ones that are barely holding it all together.
Eli:
Right
Ashley:
So it’s safe to check in with them. And I'm sure this is kind of like preaching to the choir for you, but you open up that dialogue, it's amazing that the difference it makes for other people, and the freedom and permission that it gives others to open up as well. And so when I was asked to sit with you and visit with you about this, I mean it's nothing I want to go back and revisit in my head for sure. And it's nothing- but at the same time it's- if it allows somebody else the freedom and it gives them the courage to say, I really need to have that conversation, and I really need to be open and say this. It literally could save somebody's life. I think if more people knew that there were other options. When you're dealing with mental health, there isn't just one way to seek recovery or seek help with it. There's so much out there now that is available to us that just wasn't even in the picture 10 years ago even. So it gives you hope. Okay, if this method doesn't work, then maybe this would work instead. It’s okay, really, to not be okay. I remember just thinking in my head how much I wish somebody would have just reached a hand out and pulled me out of the water. I didn't even need somebody to say that they knew what it was going to take to make me well, I just would have given anything to have a hand to just pull me up so I could get a breath in.
Eli:
You just wanted to be seen.
Ashley:
I just wanted to be seen. And that goes back to the presence and the dismissiveness that I had experienced, not intentionally by the people that love me, but just because that's how we live. You dismiss those things.It really, really facilitated that downward spiral for me. The part that I think gave me the courage to say yes to this conversation today was really because in our country right now, educators are going through a really hard time. There's a lot going on. In the field of education that is trying. And just with a pandemic and everything and there are a lot of teachers that are really trying to keep it all together, and really do love and care for their students. And we are of the industry that, usually, people overlook when you think of mental health challenges. We're not typically the ones that you would say, oh yeah, well let me go check on that teacher down there. See how she's doing mentally, you know?
Eli:
Yeah
Ashley:
We are kind of on the front lines right now with the kids and everything that they're enduring. So I would just say, to not overlook and stigmatize. Have that stigma for educators that we got it all together. There's a lot riding on our shoulders, and a lot of responsibility and weight there. And so, that's just an industry that I personally wish some stigmas could get lifted there.
Eli:
Yeah, check in on the caregivers that are giving us care.
Ashley:
Yeah.
Eli:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Ashley:
Well, thank you for having me and for helping me to feel so comfortable to do this. You know, it's not easy. It’s not easy to talk about.
Eli:
Of course, you're so welcome. I'm happy to listen.
Eli:
This is Unsilent. Thank you for listening. Today's episode was hosted and produced by me, Eli Lawson, Lance Bordelon, John Panicucci, and the rest of the incredible NoStigmas marketing team. Special thanks to Ashley for sharing her story to see and being a voice for teachers across the world. To go beyond the show, connect with us on social media or visit nostigmas.org to learn more about mental health topics. Please leave us a five star review and share with others wherever you listen to podcasts. We’d really appreciate it. New episodes of Unsilent come on every Wednesday at 2:00pm Eastern time. And finally, remember that whatever you're going through, you don't have to do it alone. Be Unsilent. We’ll see you next week.