Road To Legacy

 As time moves on, I realize that I am not the only one who has suffered through the lonely road of mental and eating disorders, Shannon Hannaway, a fellow titleholder based out of Colorado, was generous enough to share her story with all of us! 1: how has mental and eating disorders affected you?   Besides seeing it from the outside watching loved ones struggle and die by suicide, I have been impacted by mental illness for as long as I can remember. Growing up I had anxiety with panic attacks, but due to a lack of education and awareness I didn’t know that was what I was experiencing. It took a head injury and Children’s Hospital Colorado for me to get the help and diagnosis I needed from their concussion team. With their help, medication, and therapy I was able to get my anxiety managed and actually came off all of it completely by the time I graduated high school. Unfortunately, my freshman year of college I experienced severe emotional trauma that led to PTSD, and unipolar...

 Good evening ladies and gents, this week has been so busy with all the sports getting underway, but now my attention lies on this next week: NEDA week, National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, and no better to kick this week off with a compelling and inspiring interview with a former colleague of mine who I hold in very high esteem, allow me to introduce Ms. Gabby Cox and her journey with Self Image, Body Positivity and EDs.  1: Which eating disorder(s) did you have? All of this basically started when I was 12 in 5th grade. I had stopped playing sports and had acquired some unhealthy habits. My parents eventually started making me play a sport of my choice so I could be active again. I chose to play soccer because I had played as a child, and my dad played professionally and was a well known coach for over 20 years. Well I quickly realized that I was not very good because I was not in good “soccer shape.” One summer, my dad and I trained everyday and from that training, I wa...

I was born and raised a non-denominational Christian with more of a traditional Pentecostal twist. I was raised on the mission field, I was raised with the thought that mental health was demon possession/ oppression. The bible does talk about people who were possessed by demons that did have similar symptoms to mental health disorders, but obviously, they are not the same thing.  As I have mentioned before, my depression didn't hit me until I was 13-14 years old, but I was mostly silent about it because of my upbringing. I remember when I told my mother that I had attempted to kill myself and she grabbed me and screamed a prayer over me. Now that I am older, I can understand the panic but as a thirteen year old child, I was scared out of my mind. Not only was I brought up in a Christian household that had conservative, traditionalist views on the matter, I was saved when I was six years old and have been a Christian my whole life. As a Christian, it's hard to understand why the...

 January 22, 2021, I became Miss Southeastern Louisiana University 2021. Thirteen months of my life was poured into my university competition. It all paid off, I learned how become a title holder, but within this process, I learned what it meant to be a spokesperson for my cause. I learned how to be a voice for those who don't know how- or when to speak up.  Being a title holder is going to be a lot, but being someone with a cause to back up is going to be even more responsibility, but I wouldn't have competed if I didn't believe I was prepared. I created this blog to share my story, and hopefully inspire others around the world to do the same and lower the stigma that surrounds counseling and recovery. To show that I support those who are willing to fight for a better tomorrow for themselves.  My year of reign will consist of meetings, appearances, speeches, and talks with students, groups, organizations, and administration. I will meet with the Health Center, Counseling...

As a child, I had a very good childhood growing up, and then everything changed once I moved from Peru to the United States again. The depression, anxiety and anorexia all set in and I was so, so along going through that. My parents didn't understand what I was going through and thought that I was demon possessed. They didn't believe in counseling but threatened to put me in a mental hospital. I went through this for years, by myself, putting on a brave face because I was terrified of being put in some mental ward.  This post is about support groups. Support in general, really. Being someone who didn't have that much support going through what I went through, I want to make sure that everyone I come across didn't feel like they were alone. Having support around you, helps you admit that you need help. That's what happened to me once I got to college and once I had a friend that is always there for me but will give me tough love to get me through the day and help me ...

 Anxiety. It just isn't a stage fright where you have to imagine everyone in their underwear so you feel as if they are embarrassed and you are superior as you stand in the spotlight. Anxiety is so much more. From biting the inside of your cheek, to ticks, to knocking on the door a certain number of times. Anxiety has so much variety, that sometimes, it goes unchecked until it can ruin someone's life.  Anxiety hit me as a child, because I was a complete perfectionist. I NEEDED to make sure that my parents were proud of me, I was always impressing the adults at the different churches that we would go to, try make sure that the kids around me saw that I was the mother of the group. I let it consume me. As I grew up, anxiety attacks happened. They happened slowly with small tremors in my hands, my chest tightening up, and cold sweats. I would freak out at the slightest change in my grades, freak out at the .6 that would show up on the scale.  Anxiety was always induced becau...

 Now that holidays are over, I can now give my full attention to my blog. We have started the new year,  finally, it feels like forever ago that the whole entire world turned upside down. Hopefully it's on the up and up now.  While the holidays were upon me, so were all of the holiday foods, desserts, cookies, eggnog, and hot chocolate. Being someone who works out on a daily basis, makes sure to get enough nutrients in my body to make sure I have the strength to lift the weights that I love to lift, having the gym closed was an absolute nightmare.  I thought that I'd be okay, but in truth, I wasn't. I felt as if all of my social media was filled with girls in matching gym sets, at their open gyms, working out and making sure that they don't lose their gains. Honestly, I was a little jealous, and found myself poking at my stomach a whole lot more. Watching the videos and seeing the posts really made me self conscious about what I looked like. I eventually stopped pili...