A Complete Breakdown

and coming back

Once I was asked to write a chapter for a book that was a compilation of personal stories. The book was called Enough. I checked in with a therapist I have gone to for decades… she knows my stories. I asked which one I could write about. She said, “Tell when you broke and then had a vision for what you wanted. You have the rare capacity for making the impossible happen.” Wow. This photo was not from the broken time but it is how I felt.

My break came on suddenly. I started to wake up in the morning undone, with severe anxiety and nausea. I had just turned 45. I had known anxiety attacks since I was small… I would ask my mom, when we got dressed up to go downtown, if we could not go in elevators. She knew this territory; she called them “nervous spells,” and I appreciate now all the tools I use to fight this physiology that she had none of. A mother of two in the 1950s and ‘60s had little access to therapy or remedies, aside from shame and hiding. She would choose stores that had escalators for me. I learned at an early age how to work around anxiety.

But these “spells” rocketed back into my life in my mid-40s. This time it felt different. If elevators were my first avoidance spot, it was as if I woke up in an imaginary one, at a complete loss as to how to open the door or get to the main floor. I owned a business with my best friend Mindy — I was the designer of items for the home. We had an incredible factory workspace in San Francisco, flooded with light and a view of the Bay Bridge. At the height of our busy season, we would have 20 staff people busily making things. I managed the people and the creative part; my friend handled reps, sales, and what made it a viable business. I loved what I did. Figuring out how to make things within a light manufacturing environment was dreamy. I don’t think I focused too much on my heart’s calling… the treadmill moved too quickly. Trade shows, deadlines, big orders, reps, seasonal colors, profit: it was all part of the process. And then it stopped. My body screamed out, and within months of my symptoms starting, I dropped 40 pounds off my 5’10” frame.

I was sitting at the end of a dark tunnel. I remember scenes from that time: an endocrinologist who said my cortisol level was the highest he had ever measured; my regular doctor who said Prozac was the answer (I later found out her husband was a pharmaceutical salesperson); trips to the emergency room and visits to doctors who looked at me with sympathetic and yet unknowing eyes. I stopped leaving the house. A simple trip to the grocery store a few blocks down the hill felt undoable. I sought a therapist and found Beth. We began. A support system appeared out of nowhere… friends rang the doorbell, my ex-husband (completely baffled but there for me), the endless calls I made to doctors.

Then a stranger called who had heard of my plight from a good friend in the East Bay. They knew of a woman who treated women over 40 with sudden-onset debilitating anxiety. I was more than intrigued. She was a scientist, a brain chemist who worked with a doctor in Aspen, Colorado. I thanked the caller profusely and called Dr. Bronson. She answered the phone and made immediate suggestions. Her demeanor was firm and confident; she said she could help me. It was a hormonal imbalance causing my symptoms, and she recommended an immediate regimen. I booked an appointment to see her in Aspen. My 95-pound self got on an airplane with my husband at the time. She met with me for two days straight. The bloodwork and hormone tests she ordered confirmed her suspicions and she zoomed ahead. I did everything she recommended and slowly found my appetite. My body and my mind returned as quickly as they had left me. My best friend and I decided it was time to end the business. We put it up for sale.

As Beth saw me start to recover, she asked me to do an exercise: if I could dream and do anything I wanted, what would it be? I closed my eyes. I wanted a store, a community spot where I could sell things. I wanted to show off my taste and weirdness. I wanted a change.

A store in my neighborhood named Heartfelt came up for sale a few months after my dream exercise. I bought the name and the contents of a small storefront. Now, many years later, I have taken calls from women with the same symptoms. Our bodies often shout in order for us to pay attention.

And here is more from my week, I made an incredible red lentil soup.

With love and kind regards,

Darcy