So I had no intention to drop in a podcast episode today until I realized what today was and at the time I'm recording this it is September 2nd

2024 and three years ago this time I started my mental health leave from my day job, my first full

week of mental health leave from my day job in corporate America, and if you've been around

for a minute, you know that that mental health leave changed a lot.

And it was really the beginning of the healing journey for me.

Even though I had been addressing my mental health, I've been working on my physical health before this,

the mental health piece, or really it's the emotional health piece, we say mental health,

but a lot of times we're talking about emotional health, that was the piece that really needed some work and it

wasn't until I created that space for myself that I was able to get some answers.

But I want to talk real quick about leading up to this leave because I remember probably

toward the end of July actually even going back a little bit but for that I had started having panic attacks and

I didn't know what they were right away but I can tell you

there were tears streaming down my face I would be clutching my chest I wondered if I

was dying wondered if I was having a heart attack and sometimes this would even happen while I would be in a work

meeting or a work call and at the time everyone was working from home so I would be

in meetings with my camera off having a panic attack and nobody would know about it.

And then I remember in August things really started to go down here.

So this is August 2021 at this point.

Things start to go downhill where basic work tasks became really difficult. Things like following up on email, putting stuff on the calendar. I found myself just less able to focus overall and I felt a lot of shame

along the way because I knew that I was so much better than what I was producing

or what I wasn't producing at that time.

And it wasn't until later in August when I found out that my manager at the time was taking a mental health leave that I finally said you know what if he can

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