“I feel like for a long time, I depended on other people for happiness. My parents divorced when I was 18. At that time, I was in a relationship that wasn’t healthy and once that ended, I jumped into another relationship that wasn’t healthy. When I got out of those relationships I was 23. I spent two and a half years just being by myself. I made it a priority. I was really down at that point. I felt really depressed. I lived by myself and I remember thinking, what am I going to do? How can I pick myself up at this moment? What makes me feel good about myself? It’s helping other people. I did some volunteering. I started doing little things like dropping groceries off at the Bolton Refuge House, and Special Olympics bowling. It made me feel better about myself. It made me happy. I would also take days where I would go to a park by myself and just sit down and enjoy being outside alone. I took a lot of time to feel the emotions that I was going through. I think that was important for me. I got to know my strengths and weaknesses and the things I wanted to work on and I had a lot of time to work on them. I’m in a really awesome place now. I’m getting married soon. I’m a registered nurse. I worked inpatient cardiology for just over a year and now I’ve been working inpatient behavioral health for the last few months, and I really like it. I’ve had anxiety and depression since I was 11. It’s something I’m always working on. I think that’s the reason I want to continue working in mental health, because I understand a lot of these people and what they’re going through. I’m very passionate about my career. I really like what I do.”