Questify Your Life Sierra Episode Fifteen: Seven Years of Mental Health Recovery

We meet our hero sitting in the Minneapolis airport. Of course, she’s at her gate with over an hour before boarding, because she was anxious that the TSA lines would be long — they were not. She questions why she didn’t let herself sleep in, but instead, she is writing this as the sun rises. In every direction, the seats are empty around her, with the exception of three people with their backs to her.

She has stuff to do. People to get back to. Emails that have sat in her inbox like letters that deserve an answer but have been deprioritized because of length, topic, or general energy level.

Yesterday, a friend asked, “How are you doing?” and without thinking, our hero answered, “Worse than I think I am.”

Which may be true. Her main companion, her husband, is gone for a year-long work trip. She knew she relied on him to split the effort of a lot of things, but when she went to a concert this past week, it finally sank in that he won’t be around for the rest of 2026. And while she has more friends than she could ask for, they aren’t him.

This past week also marked the 7th anniversary of the beginning of her mental health recovery journey. So she’s been reflecting on these past years with amusement and awe.

Let’s move over to first person for the next sections.

Seven years ago, I was starting to grasp that I did not have to live in the cave of life-threatening depression I had grown so accustomed to. With a lot of effort, luck, and resources, I was able to see a tunnel out, and I slowly started to climb out of the cave.

I stopped wanting to rage-quit life. I started to dream again.

After years of hospitalizations, electroconvulsive therapy (modern-day shock therapy), and multiple college dropouts, dreaming felt like a frivolous act. I had been in and out of hospitals since I was 11 years old. Significant mental health struggles had littered my backstory for so long that I assumed they were my story, and in many way it is a key part of my story. But it’s my backstory, not the whole story.

I thought I was going to be unwell and merely surviving for the rest of my life. Hopeless. Helpless. In so much physical and mental anguish that I couldn’t imagine living long enough to accomplish anything I would admire.

At the time, I didn’t know what mental health recovery actually was. My favorite definition of recovery describes it as “a process of change through which individuals improve their health and wellness, live a self-directed life, and strive to reach their full potential.” I wasn’t chasing that. I didn’t even know that that was the quest I was trying to start. I was just trying to stay in the game.

But that’s the thing about backstories — you don’t always know you’re ending one until you’re already walking into something new.

If you had told me ten years ago what the next seven years would contain, I would have laughed at you.

I went back to school, got my Psychology degree with an Economics minor. I started to volunteer with the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) by facilitating mental health support groups.

Then I applied to and went to law school, one of the most expensive and difficult quests of my life. I’ve become a peer leader, a mediator, an advocate. I’ve shared my story in nationally bestselling books. I did the work to get a tax law master’s degree.

I passed the bar exam.

I built a business I love. I’ve spoken at 100+ engagements and traveled the country doing work I believe in.

I got married, and we moved into a house of our own.

Even now… it all still feels like a dream.

But it wasn’t easy going. I live a dramatic life. I often joke that my life is like a CW drama. Always something happening to add to the plot.

A while back, a TikTok I posted about passing the bar exam went semi-viral. Some of the comments said things like “this is what happens when you don’t give up.”

I find that amusing, because I give up often.

I’ve abandoned countless quests. I called off my first engagement in 2023. I stepped away from a congressional campaign only months in. I turned down an offer to be a tax attorney. I left a job as a social security attorney after three weeks. And more.

Here’s what I’ve learned: knowing when to abandon a quest is a skill, not a failure. Sometimes I learn more from walking away than from pushing through. The goal was never to complete every quest on the board. The goal was to keep playing.

Stats that went way up: Storytelling. Confidence. Audacity. Presenting. Creativity. Advocacy. Civic engagement.

Stats still actively leveling: Content creation. Relaxation. Setting boundaries with myself so I don’t over-give my time.

That last one is the hardest. The capacity to do good things can become its own trap. Saying yes because you can is not the same as saying yes because you should. I’ll likely be learning the difference for the rest of my life.

One of the most unexpected upgrades of the past seven years has been my network. I didn’t understand how important it would be to have deep connections with people doing similar work — or work that lights me up. I’ve developed friendships and mentorships I never could have anticipated at Year 0. I’m currently building something to honor some of those individuals – the Questify Your Life Creative Guild.

Right now, I’m on the quest to find harmony between the adventurous yet heavy aspects of my life and the delightful aspects of my life

I’ve been thinking about the word harmony since my podcast episode with Chryssie Whitehead & Kirsten Wrinkle. During that discussion, perhaps in the recorded version or in the moments before or after, Kirsten mentioned that she aims for harmony, not balance. Balance implies equal weight, like everything should sit level on a scale. That’s not how I experience life, and I don’t think it’s how most of us do. Harmony is different. Harmony is instruments playing at different volumes, sometimes dissonant, sometimes soaring, but together creating something that holds.

In practice, that looks like staying plugged into the real weight of the world, the terrors, the grief, the work that needs doing, while also carving out deliberate space for friends, for art, for storytelling, for play. Both are necessary. And since I have the privilege of flexibility – of a values-based and self-directed life – I intend to practice living it unapologetically while still trying to leave things better than I found them.

Some days I do this well. Most days it’s a work in progress.

Mental health recovery, much like a quest, is a journey, not a destination. There is no final boss that, once defeated, means you’re done. There are harder days and lighter ones. There are quests you’ll complete and quests you’ll wisely abandon. There are companions you won’t expect and milestones that will feel like dreams even after they’re real.

You are worth continuing to try for. You are worth showing up for. The world is better with you participating in it.

I am glad I am still alive. I take every day as a gift — even the ones I spend sitting alone in an airport, writing into the sunrise, not totally sure where this is going.

Maybe that’s enough.

Whatever quest you are on, I am proud of you for going on it.

With warmth,

Sierra