Pep Rallies and Prescription Bottles: My Journey Back to Me
From adolescent overachiever to overwhelmed mother: this is how I reclaimed my voice and rewrote my story
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One of the very first of so many roles that I have assumed in this life was that of... cheerleading captain. And this was an obviously earned role that I had trained hard for all the previous middle school year. I had perfected the execution of each type of jump, every position of my arms, the splits (on my right side), and the base position of all of the stunts allowed at that level of the sport. Cheer WAS still an official sport back then, and as was said and still is repeated by me, "Some athletes lift weights; Cheerleaders lift athletes."
Not to re-live my youthful days of after-school practice, summer camps, performing at ball games, and competing at national competitions, but I very proudly took up every duty of my title and faced all of its implications head-on wearing fresh spankies and ribbons in my ponytail. As the leader of my peers on the squad, showing up halfway was never even an option for me. I remember even literally crying one morning in the car with my mother before cheer camp that day for some vague reason having to do with my heavy and all too human nerves (more on that topic to come), and then having to quickly put it all behind me only minutes later as I blew my whistle on the field to signal the beginning of our warm-up routine. My mother had to all but forcibly kick me out of the vehicle before she drove off frowning, and it was lucky that there was hardly any makeup on my face to repair at that young age.
A brief while later on in my life, I assumed another role that I would take up with pride... As the layout editor and a journalist for my high school's cutting-edge magazine-style newspaper, I overly enjoyed writing articles that brushed up against every single boundary outlining the scope of allowance that the stakeholders and review board had established for us students. One of my more popular articles about school tolerance of sexism among its male students, for which I had painstakingly conducted an interview via telephone with an anonymous John Doe football star from my class, drew silence from the rest of the newspaper staff, hesitation from our instructor, and a loss for the next steps to take from the review board as it dangerously approached being vetoed. Thankfully, the story did end up running in the very next issue, and my byline that I had excitedly formatted using our publishing software earned me all of the due praises, smiles, attention, and adult concern that I had originally intended on for that particular piece.
Back then, I knew who I was: loud, joyful, and full of vision. I led cheers. I led revolutions... I got straight A’s and I stood tall under the spotlights and expectations. I felt loud, vibrant, and myself.
Next throughout young adult life, my mental health struggles became increasingly more difficult to manage with a smile underneath the heavier and much more important responsibilities quickly heaped onto me. There were jobs to perform while ill and well that paid me far too much money to spend for someone as young. Then, there was all of the educational ambition required of a honors double-major student with a full-ride scholarship to an enviable out-of-state University (Roll Tide!). I struggled with my burdens regularly and enjoyed forgetting all about them during the weekends at parties and bars with handsome young men that I would invite over to the apartment I shared with my best friend at the time; it was hardly ever the same boy for two consecutive weekends.
The admirable hustle of my role eventually became replaced by a steely survival mode as my untimely depression amped up aided by a foundational loneliness much deeper than a boyfriend or even many could soothe. I returned to a regimen of medication-assisted clinical treatment that I had first come to minimally experience in junior high school. Only now, the drug dosages were larger... Then the tablets and capsules themselves changed in their name, nature, and combination, and finally the multiples in their quantity would always go up and up each month under the care of my doctor and the attending physician.
After a long plateau and then decline, this slow erosion of my sense of self met its very bottom shortly into the beginning of my motherhood. Textbook postpartum depression mingled with the weight of back-to-back additional diagnoses... only this time it was the disorder within my own two children situated along two totally different places along the autism spectrum. Soon, the specialist clinic visits, the physical, speech/feeding, and occupational therapy sessions, and the necessary late-night self-education spirals that crushed my soul and tested my fraying sanity flawlessly consumed what was the remainder of who I had come to know as myself... My identity was not actively taken away from me in malicious intent by any one conscious force; I had instead freely decided to give it up myself in order to meet the demands swirling in the perfect maelstrom persisting around me. Motherhood did not steal my identity... I had handed it over one decision at a time because I thought that’s what a healthy love looked like.
I came to truly not recognize myself or the role I assumed in every sense of the phrase. That girl from the pep rally and from the byline in the paper?.. She was gone, and I wasn't even sure of when I had finally come to stop missing who she was. As a mother, there were the senses of grief, resentment, and numbness to accompany me all throughout that time for the sake of fulfilling my title of "parent" and I knew them all very well.
But the thing about motherhood is that it has the most magickal ability to inspire some of the most profound transformation possible in this life within an ordinary, unsuspecting woman... I eventually found my turning point in the chance reunion with an old, old love of mine that I sadly hadn't known for decades: writing. In my journaling and the sharing of the hidden parts of myself buried deep under layers and layers of caregiving misery, I experienced a nearly Spiritual rededication to the cause of myself. There was definitely a place for therapy there as well, and also the need for my wholeness in the efficient advocacy required of me for nurturing and raising both of my neurodivergent children. But in the initial ideation and formation of the very email inbox publication that you are skimming currently, I had managed to breathe new life into my previous existence of only surviving in the day-to-day. I didn't quite find myself anywhere along the way, rather I had managed to begin rebuilding myself on my own new terms into a brand-new and encouraging presence that remained ever-ready to reclaim and warmly welcome back any and all of my fragmented parts still left.
It was a slow and meaningful work towards my re-emergence as a whole and multi-faceted woman of substance. I started by asking myself the important questions that I had completely forgotten the answers to like, ‘What do I want?’ and ‘Who am I when I’m not caregiving?’ Slowly, I stopped looking backward before going forward, and I started designing my life going forward from where I was. The honesty and clarity I then experienced with myself manifested itself in my writing, my expression, and my experience. My life soon began resembling, and still remains as, an artful work of my sole intention.
I gratefully accept that my new identity is no one destination to arrive at, and gracefully allows for my continual evolution as a woman. Today, I don't have a desire to become more like the girl that I once was, as phenomenal as she was. I’m now becoming the woman I need who is many things with much to live for and share. And at this time, I have developed use of the tools that support my fullness and all of the unique parts of who I am today, even those beyond my role of mother and caregiver to my two exceptional children.
With heart and honesty,
Cheniece ♡
P.S. Did something whisper to you as you read this? Perhaps it was recognition of the woman you were before, or maybe a gentle reminder that you still exist beyond your caregiving role. Whatever resonated, I want you to know: what you're feeling isn't wrong, and you aren't walking alone. Your journey back to yourself doesn't need grand gestures or perfect execution—it only requires your permission to begin. I'm right there beside you, finding my way back too. One small, brave step at a time.
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Good to see your name & read your story here, Cheniece. 💕