The Washing Machine Years

My last blog post was back in 2020. I think that speaks to the impact of COVID and the aftermath of everything else that resulted. Since 2020, it’s felt like I’ve been on the wash cycle and unable to come up for air, but I told my partner (my ex-husband) that I’ll know I am “better” when I start writing again. Maybe it can also give me some clarity about what exactly happened in my life that I’m still struggling to understand. COVID, first off, made us all feel like the world as we knew it was changing and uncertain. Two of my family members died by suicide that year, and I recognized that I was probably entering the hormonal phase of perimenopause. In an effort to find some degree of control in my life, I set out to open a non-profit mental health clinic. My caseload was too extensive for me to handle alone, and I wanted to do more for the county to expand mental health services and prevent other families from experiencing the loss of loved ones due to untreated depression. 

For a couple years, it looked like I was living up to my goals. I even expanded the non-profit to include an equine therapy farm and my husband (at the time) left his job to work along beside me. The stress, however, of raising 3 kids, writing grants, carrying a full caseload of psychotherapy patients, managing several other clinicians, and running the farm all got to be too much. I felt my mental wellness slipping as I sometimes had to stay up nights to complete paperwork. My motivation to leave the house lessened every day, and I noticed a lack of joy otherwise known as anhedonia…a symptom of depression. Desperate to keep my mental health in check and sensing this depressive episode was lasting longer than usual, I sought help from a clinical trial of psilocybin therapy for treatment resistant depression at Emory university. 

The psilocybin experience was fascinating and I remain a supporter of the therapy for a variety of clinical causes, but in some ways I think this initiated the spin cycle on these washing machine years of my life. Within a week of the psychedelic dose, I called my psychiatrist desperate to get back on my antidepressant medication. I felt emotionally vulnerable and experienced an episode of suicidal thoughts that was far worse than anything I previously went through. Within a few months, I also had memories of early childhood sexual abuse trauma surface that were previously repressed. Even as a psychologist – I didn’t believe in repressed memories up until this point. Also in this time frame, I chose to close the non-profit I had poured my heart into for the last few years. This no doubt caused marital discord as it left both myself and my husband at the time unemployed. We had different resentments toward one another that resulted from working together. This heightened a pre-existing addiction issue on his part all leading to eventual divorce in 2024. 

    

I was a person who never considered the possibility of divorce. We both came from intact families and had a very pleasant marriage for 12 years, so I’m still surprised today that this ever happened, and it happened quickly. We separated in September of 2023, and he called for mediation (essentially divorce) one month later. Fearful of relapse into a previous eating disorder, I quickly started dating to resolve or amend this attachment rupture. Similar to other experiences of grief in my life, I was also numb about the divorce for the first 3 months. As we sat down to share the news with my children, I almost felt like a detached therapist helping them to navigate their emotions with no attachment to my own. When the numbness of divorce trauma wore off and my dating relationship fizzled, the grief hit hard. For the first time in over a decade of clinical practice, I was unable to function fully in my role at work. I took about a week off from work and called it my “shiva” (in the Jewish Faith, families sit “shiva” for 7 days when a family member dies), to mourn the loss of my marriage and family. 

My mental state declined further as I was unable to healthily view my ex-husband moving forward with his life with another woman. My depression had fully taken hold and convinced me that I could not be the “healthy co-parent” I wanted to be and that my anger (a normal initial response to this type of life situation) would never remit and thus harm my children. I self-admitted to Ridgeview psychiatric hospital due to fearful thoughts of harming myself. Spending a week in a psychiatric hospital was helpful for stabilization. I also went to a week long retreat at the Art of Living Center in Boone, North Carolina. I was trying desperately to recover from my depressive episode and regain a semblance of normal life functioning, but it all felt like grasping for something that was unattainable. As a result, I finally surrendered to residential psychiatric treatment at the Refuge in Florida and spent 55 days working toward healing past trauma and my divorce wounds. We had frequent group therapy, individual therapy, psychiatric appointments, and I underwent Ketamine assisted psychotherapy. 

Even writing this now, it all seems hard to imagine that this was my life a year ago. I eventually returned to home and work in August of 2024 and moved back to my farm in January 2025. It’s impossible to put into words what if feels like to separate from the person you planned to spend your life with. It broke me in a way I could not imagine, and I generally think I’m a pretty resilient person. I realized I could move forward and build a life with someone else, but that I would spend forever comparing this life to what it could have been with the person I committed to and had children with. So many divorced people told me how “hard” it continues to be throughout life to grapple with the separation of family and the loss of a spouse, and I decided I didn’t want this. I knew it was a possibility that he was now in love with the woman he spent a year with, but I also needed to know if it was possible that he still loved me. One day I called him and asked the question, and to my surprise he said he ended the relationship and he too wanted our old life back. 

Today it’s not the same…it never will be. The previous relationship ended and we both dated other people and changed in ways that are hopefully for the better. My ego was shattered by the reality that I was in fact replaceable, and I think that humbled me in a helpful way. I realized that no matter how independent and strong you are that life can break you, and it’s necessary to accept help from others in order to heal. The old feeling of anhedonia is now a distant memory, and I feel joy for even the most mundane days of doing laundry and washing dishes in the house I share with matt and my children. I may never know if it was the psilocybin, past trauma, divorce, work stress, perimenopause, or likely a combination of all of these that contributed to my washing machine experience, but for now I’m just glad it’s over. I don’t think I’ll ever marry again, but I’ll always be thankful for the choice I made to marry. My washing machine years have been messy. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve learned a lot too. I think maybe this is the purpose of life – to learn the lessons and be more compassionate humans.