Soulful Journeys Within

I’m sharing this story in series of posts for mental health awareness and for caregivers who are walking a path they never expected. #1 Mental illness rarely announces itself loudly at the beginning. For us, it arrived quietly; disguised as anxiety, depression, fleeting psychosis that felt like a vivid nightmare, and heightened sensitivity. Like many families, we believed we were dealing with something temporary like school stress, puberty or a phase. She was bright, thoughtful, and deeply sensitive. Early Signs We Didn’t Understand She was born with separation anxiety and had scarlet fever at age eleven, something that may have triggered underlying vulnerabilities, though nothing became obvious at the time. Faith, Fear, and Missed Language The real shift came years later, when I took a job 400 miles away and she was left to manage her daily life on her own at sixteen. I couldn’t hear what wasn’t being said. She couldn’t make sense of the conflicting thoughts she was having; th...