How personal challenges can break, then rebuild you—stronger
By Sandra Dee Owens
When I was 29 I lost my mental health.
It took nearly three years to get it back.
Though a nervous breakdown was the most painful thing I have ever endured, I learned so much about myself, that I am grateful for the experience.
A summer of homelessness and debilitating back pain caused by a degenerating spinal condition (Scoliosis) kept me in survival mode too long. Moving to a challenging living situation that lasted nearly a decade sent my physical and mental health spiraling into unwellness.
‘. . . And A Lark’—acrylic, oil and ink
Cozy
After four years of searching, my husband and I found a small, affordable (read: rough) piece of land we could live on while building a house, a dream my husband had held since childhood.
Clearing out the chest-deep trash, we moved our young family of four into a small, old garage that had survived a fire.
With no tools, experience, or resources to build, we spent the first two years, clearing away the burnt-down house across the yard, with a shovel and our first wheelbarrow.
Because there had been a house on it, the property had power, water, a driveway, a septic system—and a small, old garage. With these important components in place, we were able to live on the land while building.
Laying a makeshift floor over the garage’s concrete slab, we dragged a cast iron sink out of the weeds, made a 2×4 stand for it, and placing a 5-gallon spackle bucket under the drain, made a kitchen sink that doubled as a bathtub for our young daughters.
The 16-by-24-foot garage had a single light bulb in the open rafters. The girls shared an air mattress, while Bill and I slept on blankets on the floor next to them. A portable camper toilet sat in one corner of the room, and a tiny propane heater we found at a garage sale sat on the floor along another wall. We cut a hole in the garage wall to vent the tiny exhaust pipe outside.
Making his first furniture with two-by-fours, Bill made a fold-up table, attached it with hinges to one wall—and we moved in.
There was no running water in the garage.
For the next 8 ½ years, we hauled clean water in 5-gallon containers from a spigot in the burned-out cellar hole to the garage.
For 8 ½ years we hauled gray water out of the garage, and my husband (bless his soul) dumped the portable camper toilet in the septic system inlet at the burned-out cellar hole.
“Daddy, the potty light is turning red!” became his dreaded refrain.
“Everyone should have to deal with their own shit at least once,” he muttered a time or two, generally when kicking open the garage door, heavy, sloshing, toilet base in hand, on a snowy, below-zero night.
‘A Meadow’ — acrylic, oil and ink
Unraveling
Moving to our property was incredibly exciting for us, we were young, grateful to own land, and blissfully unaware of how challenging it would be to hand-build every aspect of our home.
By Year 4, the day-to-day stress of living in a tiny garage with no running water, painfully slow progress on our house, and chronic back pain began unraveling my physical and mental health.
I did not know that I was headed for a nervous breakdown, as I had never had one before. I just knew something was wrong inside me and I was on a train heading somewhere I did not want to go—and could not get off.
Built-ins
According to Merriam-Webster: ‘logic’ is a reasonable way of thinking about or understanding something and ‘reason’ is the sum of the intellectual powers.
Did you know that ‘logic and reason’ are built-in gifts that allow us to stay grounded through a thousand mini tragedies like spilling a cup of coffee, stubbing a toe, or hearing news we did not want to hear.
I did not know that logic and reason could leave me. Until they were gone.
Survival mode is meant for short, intense bursts of stoic endurance. Survival mode is another built-in gift, that I am incredibly grateful for.
As a high-energy and impatient person by nature, I had simply been in survival mode too long. I was young and did not realize that my “glass of stress” had filled dangerously close to the brim.
Until one day, when a fresh load of stress arrived—and I felt myself hurtling toward a concrete wall at a thousand miles an hour with no steering wheel or a brake.
And I heard the crash from inside.
‘Some Trees’ — acrylic, oil and ink
Then, wrapped in an eerie silence, I felt myself drift upward, spinning slowly into a night sky, as I became untethered from the earth and everyone on it.
And I felt logic and reason seep out through my skin like a gas.
And suddenly, my “glass of stress” poured over its rim like a burst dam, and the smallest, simplest tasks, and decisions—became unbearably difficult.
And for the next two 1/2 years, fear and anxiety ruled my world.
Editor’s note: Look for Part 2 of this series next month.
For more info about Sandra, visit:
sandradeeowens.com.
