Emotional Support Sisters

Hi, I’m Rae. I’m the youngest of the Emotional Support Sisters. I’m a new mom, wife to a medical student, musician, and home improvement enthusiast. I love to nap, go boating and paddle boarding, take baths, watch tv, and be with my family. I was diagnosed with anxiety when I was around 9, and depression when I was 19. It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve had a great support system from my family. I realize that not everyone has that kind of support. I hope my experiences can help others navigate their way through their mental health struggles. 

I’m Amelia. I am a single, working gal (not that kind, silly). I’m an interpreter. I love my profession, I love the learning it allows/forces me to do and the challenge it presents me. I’m also a soprano, the favorite aunt, random trivia nut, and have dealt with my own mental illness for a couple decades. I was diagnosed with depression when I was about 11 years old, and had an anxiety diagnosis casually thrown into the pot shortly thereafter. Chronologically, I was the first of the sisters to be diagnosed with mental health issues and thus everything about navigating growing up with a mental illness was novel to me and to my parents. Since then social anxiety, OCD, and hypermobility have joined the party, as well as occasional bouts of chronic idiopathic urticaria. I don’t really remember life before mental illness, so I often forget that mine is not a universal experience. Here’s to seeing what I can share with the world.

I’m a wife, mother, musician, teacher, gardener, maker of delicious food and I have invisible chronic illnesses. I haven’t always had them. In fact I didn’t start exhibiting signs of most of them until after I started having children. Before chronic illness I did everything I loved with energy and enthusiasm with the knowledge that after a good night’s sleep I would be back to normal the next day. After chronic illness I have to weigh and measure the energy of every extra activity against the energy I have after I have done the basics.  So what are my illnesses? Hypermobility, migrain, postpartum depression and anxiety, anxiety, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and irritable bowel syndrome.