Meet Louise
I’ve lived between two realities: soaring highs and crushing lows, an exhausting pull between chaos and collapse.
My story is not one of perfection; it’s one of illusion, of love, of survival. Of mental illness, addiction, trauma, and the slow, disorienting process of coming face to face with all of it. I didn’t have the language for what was happening inside me then, only the knowing that my inner world never matched the one around me.
What followed was a stripping away of identities, of patterns, of every version of myself built to survive. Each rise. Each fall. Each moment that left its mark. Until eventually, there was nowhere left to hide.
And in that space, I found something I hadn’t been able to access before: Truth. Myself. Unmasked.
Born in 1982 in Atlanta, Georgia, I was the middle of three girls, raised in a loving home by Zimbabwean immigrant parents who had converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Their pursuit of the American Dream shaped everything: my dad’s ambitions carrying us from Atlanta to New Jersey, back to Atlanta, and eventually to Boston and Rhode Island, all before I turned fourteen.
I’d been imagining dying since 1999, when my mind turned against me for the first time—a switch flipped, and my teenage innocence and happiness unraveled. There, on the third floor of the perfect yellow Victorian gingerbread house, on the perfect street with ocean views, I asked myself the same question: Do you ever feel like dying?
Some thoughts, once you have them, don’t let go.
Hidden away in the secrecy of my bedroom, I faced the beginning of a lifelong darkness, overwhelming, marked by self-harm, eating disorders, and the complexity of family and religious dynamics.
One impulsive decision in 2005 set in motion the compounding chase and allure of four love stories—igniting in seduction and collapsing in disillusionment.
Enter Marco. Married. Tragically unattainable with dangerous ties to the Italian Mafia. I never once said no.
Few things motivate a wedding like a cancer diagnosis, but, as it turns out, Jim loved beer, blow and Mary Jane more.
Drowning in his boyish baby blues, Luke promised me everything I ever wanted, including my daughter.
And finally, I was all too willing to hurl myself 1,400 miles for Patrick, the undeniable villain of my story.
August 18th, 2013, arrived, bringing the most precious gift of all, my daughter. After a lifetime of searching, I tasted true love, and in giving birth to her, bathed in the miracle.
“Normal” shattered just eight months into motherhood, replaced by debilitating manic highs that inevitably crashed into a life-altering low.
In March 2015, I found myself standing at the edge of the overpass at the Dallas North Tollway and Mockingbird Lane. All it would have taken was one small, irrevocable act—just let go.
In that moment, the pain promised silence. Finality. An ultimate exhale.
But my toddler, grasping me with her tiny hand, refused to let me go.
Instead, I was admitted to the psychiatric ward at Texas Presbyterian Hospital and formally diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder.
In 2022, my husband and I, the man who loves me for everything I am, exchanged vows, kissing under the Mexican sun.
May 16, 2021: twenty years of daily debauchery culminated in a single moment. In a declaration that felt like a Tony Award–winning performance, I claimed my sobriety for good.
For twenty-five years, I fought a relentless battle, reaching, grasping for the illusion of balance, desperate to outpace the alternating storms of the hummingbird and the raven.
But the battle was never mine to win.
There is no formula. No cure. And I no longer wish to conquer the storm.
Now, I choose to move beyond the raw, messy middle, feeling the weeks rush by as that version of me fades into the distance, slipping away like a ghost in the rearview.
