My Experience
My story begins with lost memories. There is a period of approximately three years between the ages of five and eight that I have no recollection of my life as a child. I associate tremendous shame with this period of time. I know there were many significant events that occurred during this period, but I can't remember starting school, welcoming my baby brother or moving from Saskatchewan to British Columbia.
I was an outgoing child and the object of much attention from family, friends and even strangers. What I experienced as a young girl was having my hair shaved off my head just before starting school. This was done to me in the hope that my hair would grow back thicker. It had a traumatic and lasting effect on me. I immediately changed from being the center of positive attention to being the object of scorn and ridicule. This was the beginning of my entrance into a world of darkness.
Rejection
I can remember my mother talking to a doctor about giving me "nerve pills" when I was a pre teen. As a teenager, I experienced the repeated rejection of a close friend and soon began to experience the torment that depression can bring.
As a young mother, I fell into a deep post-partum depression. This experience was the most painful. Attacks of depression continued over the next seven years. They would vary in length with the longest period lasting for nine months. I lived in a very isolated area of north-central British Columbia and rarely visited a doctor or talked with other people. One thing I continued to do though, was talk to God and cry out in my despair.
