A Life Rewritten: My Personal Growth Journey

If you’ve ever faked happiness to avoid judgement, you’re not alone.

For most of my adult life, I put on a happy face, convincing everyone—including myself—that I was fine. But everything changed around my 40th birthday when I learned the hard way that ignoring mental health struggles doesn’t make them disappear.

For two years, I spiraled—battling addiction, hallucinations, suicide attempts, and multiple stays in mental health institutions. I screamed for help, desperate for someone to come along and fix me. I truly believed that if I could just find the right person, they could save me from the nightmare I was trapped in.

But after my final suicide attempt, something shifted. Death itself had rejected me, and in that moment, I realized I had wasted years waiting for someone to rescue me. The truth hit hard: the only person who could fix me was me.

I had no idea where to begin, so I turned to my long-lost love—reading. I devoured self-help books, searching for answers. As I read, I kept coming across the same concepts over and over. At the time, I didn’t realize it, but those ideas would become the foundation for the best life I could have ever imagined.

I survived a time when I truly believed suicide was my only way out. Now, I share my story to offer hope to anyone who feels as lost and broken as I once did.

BEFORE PERSONAL GROWTH

From my late teens onward, I lived a double life, unknowingly battling what I now recognize as high-functioning depression. On the surface, I seemed fine, but beneath that mask were relentless worries, dark thoughts, and overwhelming emotions that I kept bottled up.

I threw myself into my career, starting my own business at 24. To the outside world, I was a driven entrepreneur, but in reality, work had become my escape. I worked 70-hour weeks, and when I wasn’t working, I was cleaning obsessively or drinking to numb the pain.

I was a people-pleaser to the extreme—desperate for approval, terrified of being disliked. I became a chameleon, changing my personality to fit in with whoever I was around. But no matter how hard I tried, I never felt like the “real me” was good enough.

It never occurred to me to face my pain head-on. I thought I had it under control. But I was wrong.

THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

In 2019, I turned 40. That year, my mental health took a sharp nosedive. I started experiencing uncontrollable emotional outbursts, visible self-harm, terrifying hallucinations, and impulsive suicide attempts.

My husband tried to get me help by admitting me to a psychiatric hospital. Sadly, the system was overwhelmed, so I was quickly diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, given new meds, and sent home after just a week.

That experience shattered any hope I had of getting medical help. I felt helpless, lost, and broken beyond repair.

Not long after, during a family vacation, I made my final suicide attempt—intentionally overdosing. In my mind, it felt like a rational decision. I was hopelessly unfixable, and I didn’t want my family to suffer because of me anymore. To this very day, I still remember the exact moment my heart stopped beating.

A SPARK OF HOPE

The next thing I knew, I was in my husband’s arms. I barely opened my eyes as I heard him say, “She just had another seizure.” Before I slipped back into unconsciousness, I realized something—I was still alive.

Over the next few weeks, I couldn’t shake the question: Why? I knew I had died. I felt it. My husband told me he had felt it too. And yet, I had somehow come back. There had to be a reason, and if I had been given a second chance, I needed to figure out why. But that meant I had to finally face everything I had spent years running from.

The following months were filled with research, lifestyle changes, failures, and setbacks. But somewhere in the mess, I began to experience the new and strange feelings of hope, determination, and confidence. I can’t say exactly when or how it started. And even though I would sometimes go days, or even weeks without feeling them at all, I began to look forward to their sudden appearance in my life.

THE BIRTH OF A PERSONAL GROWTH JOURNEY

The moment I accepted that no one else could “fix” me was the moment I discovered my true purpose: to share my personal growth journey—messy and raw—to help others see that hope isn’t lost and suicide is never the answer.

I started small. I read, I researched, I made changes. I failed, I tried again. Slowly, something shifted and I started believing in myself. And even on the days when I struggled, I kept moving forward with the intention to learn, and a purpose to live.

These first steps became the building blocks of my journey:

• Mindfulness – Learning to be present helped me understand my emotions instead of letting them control me.
• Gratitude – Practicing gratitude made my life meaningful again.
• Journaling – Writing my thoughts down eased my anxiety and helped me process my emotions.
• Self-care – Putting myself first felt unnatural after years of people-pleasing, but it was life-changing.
• Resilience – Instead of seeing setbacks as failures, I started seeing them as opportunities to grow.

Sharing My Journey

When I finally took responsibility for my healing, my entire life improved. I remember telling my husband one day, “If I don’t do the difficult stuff, I’ll never get anywhere.” That realization transformed everything.

I once thought I had lost all hope, but I found it again in personal growth. And I found my purpose in sharing my story—to encourage others to rewrite their own.

If you’re struggling, please know this:

You are not alone.

Hope is not gone forever.

And you are capable of more than you realize.