Carried forclose to20 years.

Throughout the years

I have fought many battles with MENTAL HEALTH and with LOSS.

I have been prescribed nearly every medication you can name. Lexapro. Abilify. Buspirone. Risperidone. Zoloft. Prozac.

I would step outside to catch the bus, and death would arrive in my mind before my feet reached the curb.

I was diagnosed with panic disorder and anxiety in the third grade, and that diagnosis has followed me into the present.

I missed the entire third-grade year because of it.

Panic came suddenly, and with it the feeling that I was losing control of my own body. I would sweat until my clothes clung to me. My body would overheat the way a cartoon character does when anger rises off them in steam, ears red, face the color of a beet.

I kept reaching backward, as far as memory would go, trying to find the moment I became this way.

Then it found me.

I was eight or nine, sitting in front of one of those old box televisions, watching a black-and-white film on VHS. Jesus and the other biblical figures. The part I still see is Jesus forced to carry his cross up the mountain. Then the nails. Scene after scene. My mind seemed to fracture. I could not understand how such cruelty could exist. In an instant I was sure I had been born into the wrong world.

Years later, I found other ways to tend the overactive energy I carry.

• Meditation.
• Stretching.
• Anaerobic and aerobic work.
• Martial arts.
• Reading and studying ancient texts and philosophy. Quantum physics, and the strange, fascinating question of how mind and energy move through a body.

If your mind and heart know this road,I am not asking you to watch from the side.I am offering you a place on the journey.

H.E.R.O.Strength for a Greater Purpose