With Depression and Anxiety
Once I had to leave the military, becoming a farmer was the closest thing to being military again. Find your next group, your next tribe, and then start honing your passion and pour your passion into something.
Kelly, United States Navy, Operations Specialist, 2001 to 2006. It took a long time to get into the Navy. They only had a certain amount of women that they were allowing into the military. There were race things, There were, there was sexual violence. After that, it was incredibly difficult to feel safe at night, safe in crowds, safe... safe even at work.Not just the military, but life itself has taught me to be extremely wary of men in general. Leaving the military, it started to get harder and harder to be around people. Every new trauma would just wreck me, like all the way back to the beginning. My mother is diagnosed with cancer, suddenly my child is graduating. You know, like It's all these things and so I reached out to the VA hoping that they had help.
When I started doing therapy, it was like releasing the toxins, releasing the buildup of the fear or the rage or the, the overwhelming feelings of shame. Let a professional remind me that I am worthy of love and protection and safety. Let a, let an expert remind me that I did, that I've done the best I can with the resources that I have, with the knowledge of resources that I have. It... It's been transformative, for sure. I've been diagnosed with depression and anxiety. What therapy does for me is allows me to say what I need to say, the way that I need to say it. We have to get this off of our hearts, off of our minds, whether it's military related, whether it's family related. You know, we… we can't just hold on to it because just being able to tell the truth, that helps me every single day. It is so worth it.
I'm the founder and executive director of Acta Non Verba, Youth Urban Farm Project, located in Oakland, California. Acta Non Verba is Latin for ‘deeds, not words.’ We have four farms now throughout the city of Oakland that are run by youth, age 5 to 25 and the kids plan, plant, harvest and sell the produce that we grow. 100% of the profits are placed into individual savings accounts for the kids that participate. The kids have changed the ‘deeds, not words’ to mean ‘Don't talk about it, be about it.’ You know, and I think that's, that’s what we all need to be doing. We all need to be about it. The least, the very very bare minimum that we can do as a country is ensure that our Veterans have access to not just mental health resources, but really good ones.
My ex-husband, my, the father of my child killed himself at the beginning of the, of the pandemic in 2020 with no warning. And he was just suddenly part of the 22-a-day statistic. You know, just… when my child was looking at me, you know, heartbroken, I had to let them know that I believe Chris forgot that tomorrow's another day that we do have the power and the right to wake up the next day and try to do something different and think that it's too easy, especially in this time, to let despair be all there is. We have to find someone that can hear us, encourage us, and send us back out into the world to, to fight another day.
